In the newsroom

I was excited about visiting the Knoxville News Sentinel last Tuesday. I had never been there before, and I thought it was about time I learned more about my hometown's newspaper.
Unfortunately, I got lost and was a little late getting there. But the receptionist at the welcome desk was very helpful and called someone to come meet me downstairs.

Jack Lail, managing editor of multimedia, introduced himself and showed me up to the newsroom. I looked around as we walked past cubicles. I noticed some desks were filled with papers, as if someone had been diligently researching for a story. I also noticed one desk had examples of 'good headlines' posted. In the hall, front page stories from the past were hanging on the walls. One was about the atomic bomb, which had been developed in nearby in Oak Ridge. It was interesting to see how the News Sentinel had covered so many historical events.

When we found the rest of the class, everyone was listening to Tom Chester, the deputy managing editor of multimedia. Chester spoke about how using multimedia is important to the success of a news site. He said they are working on ways to attract more and more people to their site by adding more interactive multimedia. Instead of just taking stories from the newspaper and posting them onto the site, news sites need to be more interactive to allow viewers to discuss and comment on the news. According to an article on itnews.com, multimedia sites are receiving more traffic than news and media sites.

Lail, Chester, and other News Sentinel online producers agreed that to be competitive with other news sites, it is necessary to be interactive. According to an article on iCommons.org, Guardian.co.uk is at the top of the list of the 10 best multimedia news sites.

Chester and Lail also commented on how much technology has changed since they first began. Lail reflected on the time when typewriters were still used. Before cell phones, Chester said he used to have pay phone numbers memorized, so that he could contact whoever was on the scene of an event. Now, cell phones and other technology help make newsgathering much faster and convenient.

Overall, knoxnews.com seems to be a fairly interactive site. Compared to other multimedia sites, it does have a long way to go. The site could use more user-contributed content like videos and editorials. But besides that, I think it is a good site for a smaller city like Knoxville.

After visiting the Knoxville News Sentinel, I have learned that technology is constantly changing and, in order to be competitive, you have to learn as you go. Lail and the online producers emphasized this fact. They said that whatever you are learning now may change in a short amount of time. But you just have to keep learning and writing.