The Web Journalist

Jesse Sarles ’93 manages and maintains cbs4denver.com, the Web site for KCNC-TV, a CBS station in Denver. The station bio describes Jesse as a “classically trained journalist,” who “worked in radio and TV news” before “jumping into the new world that is the Internet.”

What about your transition to Internet journalism: How or why did it happen and what are the significant changes from a journalistic point of view. At this point, do you consider your role—an online journalist—is new and evolving, or is it well-defined and stable?

I knew I was interested in journalism early in college. It hadn’t hit me at Milton. In journalism schools, such as the one I attended at the University of Wisconsin, they set you up in sequences; essentially you can choose to prep for several years to work in public relations, newspapers or TV and radio. The Internet wasn’t really a medium for news then, and there certainly wasn’t a class where all you did was publish news online. I think a lot of J-Schools around the country are still lagging in this area, actually. Enough online news jobs are out there to warrant a separate online sequence.

Out of college I found work in radio and then moved on to TV in an assignment desk role. At that time my TV station was hiring for the Web, and I decided I wanted to switch gears. The concept of being able to publish news online whenever it broke was appealing to me.

I quickly found out that learning to work with no deadlines was only the first in a series of drastic shifts I would need to make to my journalist’s mindset if I was going to make it in this medium.

I also had no idea about the rough road that was ahead in terms of employment. After the dot-com bubble burst I was laid off two different times, and it was only with luck that I landed this job in Denver. Within the past two years, I’d say online news jobs have grown more stable, and there are more positions every day. However, journalists looking for online jobs should know that things are still very fluid with the Web and new technology and software is cropping up around every bend. One must not fear change if he or she is working in an Internet position.

How would you describe your job?

My job has changed drastically just this year. For three years I was our TV station’s “Webmaster,” meaning I was the only guy whose full-time concern was to keep our Web site going. This year, as Web manager, I’m leading a team of people we’ve hired who are all devoted to online news.

All Web sites are different, but I’d say most online news gigs require a certain amount of ego-letting; your face isn’t going to be on TV and your byline won’t be plastered on top of a news story each day.

This doesn’t mean the Web doesn’t have its rewards. Our news director comes to me daily with questions about what we can do with our Web site (Can we live stream our helicopter’s footage over a wildfire? Can we post a 50-minute-long one-on-one interview a reporter did with a notorious convict? Can we present an all-night Web-exclusive broadcast on election night?) I almost always am able to smile and say, yes, we can do just about anything you’d like on the Web. It’s a flexible medium, and with the right level of commitment a Web site can become the ultimate authority for any particular news story.

On a nuts-and-bolts level, my job is essentially that of an aggregator—someone who disassembles what we put to air and rebuilds it, enhances it in some way, and repurposes it for our online audience. It takes a different skill set from your more traditional journalist, but a lot of the traditional skills do transfer.

What are your professional priorities?

A) -To remain employed. (Hopefully another dot-com crash isn’t in the works.)

B) -I’d like to think that in five years, instead of managing a team of three or four people, I’ll oversee a Web team of 20 or 30. At whatever Web site in the future, I want to present the news with as much thought and care as possible.

Who is your audience and what do you know about them? Are they the same folks who watch the station, for instance? How do they use the site?

The majority of people visiting our Web site are from the area, and they are concerned about breaking news and local issues. We try to accentuate the unique local angles of our site for that reason. Because it’s a very competitive market for news, we know that we have to be just as aggressive in publishing our news online as we do on-air.

We drive people watching our TV news to our Web site frequently, but at my site (and for other media outlets this is also true) a large number of people who never watch our TV station rely on the Web site. The majority of our traffic comes from the working public. It’s just so easy for someone to take a quick break from what they are working on at their desk in the office to check our headlines and see what the weather forecast is.

We’re also seeing growth in our online video, which is increasingly becoming a source for ad revenue and is a feature that gives us a big advantage over newspaper Web sites. Despite all the text out there on the Internet, there are still a large number of people who want the news to be told to them. Online video is perfect for these types of news consumers.

What are the important characteristics of your medium (Internet) that redefine old notions of journalism?

A person pursuing a position as an online news editor might want to prepare himself in some non-traditional ways. A Computer Science 101 course might come in handy. So might some basic advertising classes. And then there’s also graphic design. I’ve found that it’s necessary to be a jack-of-all-trades in my position. The core tenets of journalism are still in play on sites like mine, though, and good writing skills and sound ethical judgment should be the centerpiece of any news Web site that strives to be a leader in the field.

The Web is exciting, and possibly overwhelming at times, because of the limitless opportunities to enhance and expand any simple news story. We aren’t limited to a number of inches, and there are no time limits for a video report. I’m fully aware that I could spend all day on one story—adding online polls, posting the unedited original interviews, adding links and resources as well as other multimedia elements. For the most part, though, Web teams are pretty small and we have to be wise when choosing which stories to expand.

The way in which people get their news online is also a point of study. Many times people are looking for the latest updates and only want to skim through a few stories that matter to them. For this audience, a long newspaper-type story doesn’t work. I’ve found that concise, tight writing and headlines that draw you in to the story are very helpful in building an online audience. Posting breaking news items is also an invaluable practice.

What are your predictions about the direction of broadcast stations and their related Web sites?

Broadcast stations are admittedly behind the curve when it comes to devoting resources to their Web sites. Newspapers, which have already faced declining ad revenues, generally have created larger Web staffs. They sell more ads online and they tend to dominate markets for online news. Many TV stations’ Web sites are now playing catch-up. At this time, declining on-air revenue is starting to affect TV stations, and as they seek out new ways to make money, I think they will increasingly turn to the Web.

Having meteorologists and expanded on-air reporters who know their turf are clear competitive advantages for TV station Web sites, and I think doing exclusive online newscasts and live streaming news events is going to be more and more common. Radio stations don’t have these assets at their disposal, so I think they’ll have a much tougher time keeping up in the digital world and making money from their Web sites.

People will likely be watching our news and getting the weather in their cars, iPods or wireless devices in the near future. So much is still set to change with the way people consume news. We’ve got to be ready for it.

It’s an exciting time for me. The Internet is really starting to boom. With the rise of blogging, advertisers pouring money into online ad campaigns and rapidly growing broadband connections, it’s a great time to get into online news.

With what kinds of issues is the Poynter Institute’s program for Internet leaders involved? [The Poynter Institute is a resource for journalists.] Has participation there affected your professional growth?

In May of 2004 I attended a lengthy seminar for online news leaders at Poynter. It covered a whole range of topics, from the separate set of ethics involved in publication of news online to effective strategies for laying out news on a homepage while still pleasing advertisers who want substantial visibility. The seminar leaders also introduced us to a study called Eyetracker [www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004], a massive research project devoted to analyzing how study participants viewed and consumed news online. This was a big confidence booster for me: this and other online behavior studies are helping to take a lot of the guesswork out of online news presentation online. I want to make it as simple as possible for people to get the news and information they need, and it’s becoming less of an experiment every day.

Cathleen Everett

 

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