Jim Iovino spoke with students from George Mason University’s online journalism class about what it is like to be a professional journalist in the digital age.
Iovino, Managing Editor of nbcwashington.com, gave advice on how to gain a following and get your news to the community. He also emphasized that a journalist should have the proper tools in order to provide a story by showing the class a video that he made of the recent snow storms on his video camera.
Growing a strong following is important to any journalist. Iovino used examples from different social media sites that reporters are using to link to their stories.
“I liked how fast news gets around on twitter,” said Gary Cuesta, a junior in the class. “A reporter can break a story and get it to a lot of people quickly. It’s fascinating.”
Another method that Iovino uses to get the story out is sending code for their videos out to a network of partners that the website has built over time. “People don’t even have to come to our website to see our content,” Iovino said.
“It’s a good idea that they send out their video to be embedded on other websites,” said Britni Petersen, a sophomore in the class. “That way they reach more people.”
Regardless of the way it’s done, getting the story out is what is important. If the community gets the news, the job is getting done. “We don’t see ourselves as a TV website,” said Iovino. “We see ourselves as a city site.”
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