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ONLINE-EDITING TRACK
Wild Wild Web
In
cyberspace, the news cycle
never ceases and the rules
are evolving. Yet online
journalism is still journalism,
and opportunities abound
for those with solid editing skills
By
Kate Karp
With nearly every paper in the country
supporting an adjunct Web site, copy desks are jumping
into fast cars and driving the Information Superhighway, leaving
print-only in the dust.
At this year’s
ACES conference in Miami, an online journalism track was
introduced to address questions and topics that plague or intrigue copy editors:
necessary skills to facilitate a culture change, job cuts and opportunities,
the importance of a print medium in a cyber world and what
sort of animal exists as a Web page.
“What rules do
we follow?” asked Robert Griffin, assistant news editor
at The Oklahoman.
According to John
Russial of University of Oregon and co-presenter of “Editing
in a Multimedia World,” all bets are off, for now. The rules are still being
written, whether by individual editorial staff, reporters, online producers,
print editors or a combination of any and all. Online journalism
is still in a fledgling state, but has a wingspan that
seems to be extending indefinitely. READ MORE
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CLOSING GENERAL SESSION
An uncertain future
Amid turmoil in the newspaper industry
and the stampede to the Web,
copy editors ask themselves,
"Where do we go from here?"
By
Jackie Kunzmann
“These are times that try copy editors’ souls.”
With those words, Hank Glamann summed up what’s been happening
in the newspaper industry: Newspapers have been sold; previously
large companies have ceased to exist; staffs have been
reduced. And, through it all, copy editors have been asked to change the way
they do their jobs.
An unease is brewing in the ranks. We are concerned about
how we maintain our standards as the newspaper industry
changes around us.
“We are very much where we were when
we met for the first time 10 years ago in Chapel Hill,”
Glamann said, referring to the initial meeting of ACES at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. READ MORE
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| Mackenzie Warren (Fort Myers, Fla., News-Press) discusses
his paper's emphasis on all things local. |
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"GOING HYPER-LOCAL"
Local news in overdrive
A
Florida newspaper finds
success by deploying an army
of "mobile journalists" to
cover neighborhood happenings
for the Web and by publishing
all-local section fronts in print
By
Khari Williams
A southwest Florida newspaper is adding
readers by working its “mojos.”
Managers at The (Fort Myers) News-Press,
aware they cannot compete with the likes of the St.
Petersburg Times or Miami
Herald on state
or regional coverage, have embraced a “local-local” philosophy of saturating
neighborhoods with coverage of everyday happenings and
continuously posting local reports on News-Press.com.
The result has
been a spike in readership online and new revenue opportunities
as advertisers take note, said Mackenzie Warren, News-Press
managing editor for information distribution, during his
session titled “Going Hyper-local” on April 19 at the ACES
conference in Miami.
Central to the hyper-local movement is a team of mojos,
or mobile journalists, who are much more likely to write
about a new hot dog stand than they are to cover a school
board meeting. The idea, Warren said, is to get at the issues that matter
most to readers: how they spend their time and their money.
Of the paper’s
65 content-gatherers (reporters and photographers), 52
are full- or part-time mojos. They are equipped with $2,000 worth of equipment
in a backpack that Warren says is “road-tested and scoliosis-approved,”
and their tools include their choice of one of two types
of laptop computer with a built-in audio recording device,
a wireless access point, Nikon Coolpix camera with video ability,
MP3 recorder and cell phone. READ MORE
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ROBINSON PRIZE
| One
of the highlights of Friday's banquet was the surprise announcement
of Tim Lynch, right, as the winner of the second annual Robinson Prize for
editing excellence. Lynch, of the Los Angeles Times, didn't know he won the
award until the announcement by judging committee chairman
J.A. Montalbano (Albuquerque Tribune), left. See the Robinson Prize
page for a story and more photos. |
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BANQUET
| Debaney
Shepard, editorial manager at Business 2.0 in San Francisco,
shares a Kodak moment with banquet speaker Dave Barry. Visit the banquet page for more photos and reporter Emily Seawell's
stories about the banquet and Pulitizer Prize-winning humorist Barry's side-splitting
speech. Also read Gerri Berendzen's story about the silent auction, which raised a record $5,648 for the
ACES Education Fund. (Photo by Sue Blair) |
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OPENING GENERAL SESSION
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| Recognition
of the ACES scholarship and headline contest winners was
among the highlights of Thursday's opening general session. At left, Krysten
Chambrot (University of Missouri, Columbia) was one of five scholarship recipients. At right, Rachel Dunn (Los Angeles Times)
walks off with the plaque and a $500 check as the winner
of the large-circulation division of the headline contest. Also announced at the opening session
were the 11 winners of the ACES election. Go
to the opening session page for Katherine Drouin-Keith's roundup
story, the text of ACES President Chris Wienandt's "State of the Society"
speech and more photos. |
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RETURN TO
THE ACES HOME PAGE
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