Monday, April 27, 2009...3:17 pm
Why journalists should sometimes look beyond the phone
I just got into an interesting spat with Tim Luckhurst, professor of journalism at the University of Kent’s Centre for Journalism.
Apparently he thinks only the phone is good enough for journalists to use to chase up stories.
For contact with interviewees or sources of information the telephone is ALWAYS the right way to make the first approach […] There is no room for debate about this.
Well, uh, I think there is (hence his slightly snarky defence later on in the post’s comments section).
I use email far more than the phone now when writing features (OK, that’s not news reporting – I understand that. But then, journalism/media isn’t all news reporting either.)
It has clear benefits – particularly if you’re dealing with people in different time zones, the people you’re dealing with prefer to use digital communications rather than the phone, or simply that you’re trying to contact people at a tech firm.
Tech firms in particular live online – it’s the water they swim in, so it makes a lot of sense to fish in that pool if you want to reach them.
As a journalist, I’ve covered the response of retail and service companies to the explosion of digital communications available. The savviest companies expend some effort in making sure they use the right one to reach their customers – not everyone wants to be called up; not everyone uses email; some people still prefer a letter.
It’s a lesson that journalism needs to learn too. There’s a generation growing up who only use SMS and Facebook to communicate. In a few years’ time, when a journalist from Kent University is beaten to a story by someone who understands that and gets to a source by text first, maybe the penny will drop…
[HT: FleetStreetBlues]
4 Comments
April 28th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
I hate cell phones so i dont care what they do with em
May 3rd, 2009 at 9:08 pm
You would not get very high marks for accuracy if you were one of my students. My post, to which you responded, was written in direct response to a specific issue arising from the work placements on which my students are currently gaining experience of reporting. Your summary is misleading about context and content. I advised my them to use the telephone instead of e-mail. They should, not only because their editors want them to but because it is faster and more likely to produce interesting results. I also acknowledged that face to face communication works tremendously well.
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