ONEYA: The misunderstood life of an online journalist

Apart from curating content, which is often mistaken for copy-pasting content, we also write and edit stories. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Apart from curating content, which is often mistaken for copy-pasting content (again, why would any organisation pay for copy-pasting?), we also write and edit stories.
  • One could even say we play the combined roles of editors and reporters.
  • Do you feedback on this article? Please email: [email protected]

You are attending a cocktail party, breakfast meeting or the launch of an obscurely named product.

You don’t really care about the product but you heard the hotel has croissants to die for and who knows? You might actually get an exclusive, career-changing story.

Anyway, you are generally minding your croissant business when a middle-aged man (sometimes woman, stay with me) asks you what you do for a living.

“I’m a journalist,” you say in between loud sips of that really expensive imported cinnamon tea.

RELIEF

The middle-aged  person wants to know where you work.

“Nation Media,” you respond idly, and then watch the relief  wash over your small talk partner’s face when they realise you don’t work for one of those media houses that uses half-naked women on covers to sell papers.

“TV?” they ask. You say No. They are crestfallen. They are hoping you will say TV.

They want to be on “The Trend”. On “Living With Ess”. Hell, they want to be on prime time news and despite how unfamiliar your face looks and the weird behind the camera hairstyle you spot, they hope you work for TV and hope you can introduce them to Amina.

Or “anybody who works in TV”. To somebody who can feature their “powerful” story.

SPEAKING OF POWERFUL STORIES

Here’s a little secret:  When someone claims they have a powerful story,  it means they don’t.

Good wine needs no bush kind of reasoning, pardon the cliché.

You know how this kind of story usually goes, so you try to save the person from missed calls and ignored emails.

You explain that you are in fact, a digital journalist. You hope this will shake this person off but it makes them more curious and they tenaciously hang on to you, their supposed ticket to “The Trend”.

“So you said you do Facebook for Nation?”

“No, digital. Facebook is just a fraction of it.”

“But Facebook is also the internet?”

"So you are a blogger?"

"I'm not a blogger per se."

It dawns on you that your tea just got cold and as you rise up to get a refill, hoping it will also be your escape route, the man holds your arm urgently and says:

“Before you go, please give me your card?”

He studies it as one would the instructions to an exam paper before asking if you can put his story in the newspaper.

“I’m not a newspaper editor either,” you explain gently as you slip away.

The man watches you walk away and you can sense the confusion following you as you serve your tea.

Later, you will realise you had judged him too harshly. You take a second look at the story idea he had and your journalistic instincts tell you there is something there so you decide to run his story online.

He calls you almost immediately to thank you profusely for a well done article, and then comes the question:

“Let me ask you, will it run in the newspaper as well? And can you also connect me with the NTV guys?”

You sigh. You are exasperated. You are tired of explaining what you do.

It’s a vicious cycle, I tell you. One that will continue with the next and the next person.

NOTHING NEW

His attitude and questions are, unfortunately, nothing new to online journalists like myself.

To many, we are the curious last born children of our bigger brothers broadcast and print, or perhaps we are the accidental children born from legacy media’s dalliance with technology.

Either way, the fact is that we are often misunderstood and underappreciated.

A colleague once recalled a comment from a college mate who thought our job entails “enjoying social media the whole day”. Surely, why would any organisation pay anybody to just do that? And if there is one, point me in that direction!

WHAT IT REALLY IS

Online journalism is a contemporary form of journalism where content is distributed via the internet.

Unlike what some people think, the fundamentals of journalism all apply in what we do. We are bound by the same ethics, too.

Apart from curating content, which is often mistaken for copy-pasting content (again, why would any organisation pay for copy-pasting?), we also write and edit stories.

One could even say we play the combined roles of editors and reporters.

The online journalist also uses various editorial analytics tool to determine the needs of audiences and uses this information to give content that resonates with them.

I could go on and on but the bottom line is that online journalists are not busybodies whose job it is to make sure your stories get to TV or print media.

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Do you feedback on this article? Please email: [email protected]