04.17
So I did something I don’t normally do this morning. I read the paper. Now, technically speaking I always read the paper, several in fact. I peruse the RSS feeds from a couple of area papers and occasionally I find a story of interest, but this morning I read the paper paper.
You see yesterday the “news” coming out of Virginia Tech was a mess. One shooter, no two. One shooter was killed, no wait he was captured. One dead, no 20 dead, no 30. One headline I saw was creative: “20 to 30 dead”. My Dad, a rocket scientist, would always explain to me the difference between “accuracy” and “precision”. Well, at least “20 to 30 dead” is accurate.
TV was worse. Bad helicopter video and talking heads who spent most of the day trying to fill airtime with news and information they didn’t have. I couldn’t get Don Henley out of my head. At least we didn’t have Dan Rather decimating classic journalism quotes.
Now, I could have spent all day reading news sites and endlessly refreshing web pages for up-to-the-minute speculation (because that’s what it was at that point, speculation) or I could go on with my day and tomorrow, over my doughnut and Mtn. Dew breakfast (hey, the name is Journo-geek ok?), I could read it all, clearly and concisely, in the paper.
So I did.
You see some guy in some national office did spend all day reading news sites and probably calling contacts and probably collated reports from field reporters and he (or she) put together a 120″ story that ran over the wires to my paper. It was long but full of (hopefully) verified facts. It was a far cry from the guesswork reporting of the day before.
Now I’m informed. I have a better idea what happened. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
We on the web pride ourselves on being able to get the news out fast, just like TV. But sometimes the news requires some thought, some time to see how the pieces all fit, in short some journalism.
