blackandbrownnews.com

blackandbrownnews.com

As we learned in class online journalism is made up of not just text on the screen or on your digital media device, it has multi-media elements. These elements can consist of a photography, info-graphics, video, sound recordings, etc. There seems to be no limit to how you can cove a story in the new world of online journalism. For this newborn child of media the field is wide open. So how does an online media outlet traverse this new arena and deal with this fast changing landscape of digital media? Even more than that how does a online media outlet that serves a minatory community deal with it? For an answers to that other questions and more I turn to Blackandbrownnew.com and it publisher and founder Sharon Toommer.

As journalism evlousi   some people see blogs as the voice of the community as community in a sense. How do you think that is going to fit ?

Sharon: Not all blogs are equal some are escordinary well written well information pieces. Always what our concern is and what my concern is not just with blog but with new in general I see journalistic outlets doing it, the passing around of bad information. But I think there is place for voices that we never heard from before.  

Why separate yourself (blackandbrownnews.com) from a blog?

There are principles of journalism. We have writers that write stream of consciousness and that’s what   bog is. But we go thou the steps of vetting and not all blogs do that. Blog you can just in front of you computer and write whatever you want and its your fact. But its not really your fact, you did have al the information you didn’t check with as many sides as possible. In opinion is different from reporting. There is editorial and there is reporting I think reporting is still a necessary part of the democracy.

Who is doing it well?

We have writer that I like a lot Dádìsì Idọwú Ọlùwátọsìn and I like him because he is very careful. He is an option writer he write commentary but he treats it as very important rule and so he is careful in not what he say or how he says, if he is citing facts he has done the do diligent. If he is making statements he is backing it up. I think all of that is very important partially with a community that suffers from to much bad information. We are inundated with a lot of lifestyle like entertainment so we need creditable information. You know be creditable.

What biggest lesson you have learned via technology?

Always stay I mean this notation of putting it out there and just seeing how it goes. Always be looking be nimble be really flexible flexible and not so wedded to any one thing, because things are rapidly changing. I hear it referred to as the wild wild west and it is. So if your stagnate you just become irrelevant. So always be open. Even if it’s something I would wan to do I always have people that say way we should do it and that helps us to stay relevant.

A lot the rules of online journalism are still be written. How is this effecting what you are doing?

I stick with the core (principles). Yes you have a online publication and you can publishing ever hour. But we don’t have the capacity for that.  There use to be a time back in the olden days when people would get their news once week. Hence we have the Brooklyn town crier. But I think if you stick with these core principles then there is so much more that you can toy with and that you always keep the reader best interest ahead of yours. Any example is that we are not going to get the story first but we do want to get it right.  We might be a day late but we don’t want to be the once correcting what we wrote the day before.  And that is more challenging in this arena of  it happened a minute ago and its already out there. An example was and this is relatively old example was Michele Jackson’s death. We kept on hearing conflicting reports is he dead or is he alive. So we didn’t post it until the medial examiner (said he was dead). Not when TMZ put it out but when the medial examiner. Not saying that TMZ doesn’t get it right because a lot of the time they do.  But how they get their information. They pay for their information that is not a principle of journalism. But you know we are moving into that arena where these intuitions are paying. But you have to question when exchanges (hands).