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Let's keep things going.
Your news report is brought with total reaction that is amazing.
The audience is telling you hey, we've got other ideas did you think about this,
did you know about that?
What do you do of all this information?
Guess what it's a fantastic opportunity for
you to do more reporting on the subject.
You've hit a vein, which is exactly what we want as journalists.
We need information to help keep the discussion going.
So, talking to your audience, listening to your audience can help your reporting and
your interviews on the subject going.
More news reports, that's always good.
See the audience as an asset, they can help you reach new sources.
Hey,did you know about this guy?
You should talk to him for the next time you discuss the park.
You can find and uncover new facts.
Sometimes people have information they wished to share but
they didn't realize that other people cared about it.
You might be the conduit for that information for another news report.
Also it can bring up new facets of discussion,
like that park example we've talked about in other courses.
If you find out more new details about the park, such as there is a river going
through it that needs to be protected, maybe they didn't know that before.
But somebody in the audience lets you know that's a whole other story of news
reporting for you and you need to pursue it.
And having more outlets to report such as in the park story,
you can really then keep the conversation going.
Talk about things that matter to your community and, by the way,
you're serving your audience too.
So we get all this information, how do I use it?
When you communicate with the audience who is either emailing you or tweeting you or
leaving you phone calls.
Ask them, hey, thank you so
much for letting me know theres more to this news report than I thought.
What do you know?
Listen to them.
Find out what their new news, tips or information can be.
Don't just explicit, hey, thank you so much for reading out.
You need to do more than that.
Listen to them.
Ask some questions.
Ask them for sources.
But these all feeds into something you've already done.
You restart the newsgathering process.
You might know a little bit already, but
you want to take it to the next level by using the people around you
such as crowd sourcing, except the crowd is coming to you this time to do this.
So what if people are telling you all kinds of things but
you're not sure if they're true.
I hate to tell you this, sometimes people lie, sometimes people get things wrong.
Check everything out before you start doing your process of
filing another news report.
Just because somebody tells you something doesn't mean it's true.
Not saying that people are just liberally trying to mislead you.
But guess what?
People might be deliberately trying to mislead you.
Audiences can be biased,
they may try to lead you to discussing things from one point of view.
Maybe there's an election going on and they might be for one candidate and
you wrote about the other candidate.
They might be trying to sway you so you write about the other candidate.
The power of journalists is huge and people try to sway us.
So always, always, always be aware and do your homework.
You can also do something for yourself on the other side.
The source that you used for your original news report?
Check in with them.
Say hey, how you doing?
I hope you saw that news report was published last week or yesterday or
this morning.
Is anything else going on?
Has there been new developments?
Is there anything that I need to know that I maybe didn't have room or
didn't know about to cover the last time?
Fresh information from them can drive it, and also,
because they've now seen your work, your news report, they might trust you with
things that they didn't want to maybe discuss with you before.
So you've opened the door, you need to walk through it.
You always say to advance the news and I'm not saying make up the news and
say advance what the news is.
New news report, new discussions of things.
A best journalist can cover or follow a news beat for years.
Their constantly finding new things or
about innovative ways looking at things that's on them.
That's creativity of reporting.
Looking at things from a different way, talking to different people.
But the audience is a big part of that discussion,
especially today with social media, they can help lead you in different directions.
Go ahead and follow them sometimes.
But also remember, the wrong assumptions are out there.
There are bad facts or sometimes even hoaxes.
Yes, deliberate hoaxes.
So don't fall for it.
Be smart, use your journalistic skills, report, interview,
verify, then check it all again.
Work the news gathering process that we've been talking about and
always stay ethical.
The audience reaction can be an amazing force to drive your report forward but
you have to stay in charge.
You're still the gatekeeper of the information.
You do all that and the audience can help lead you to some great stuff.
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Joanne GerstnerSports Journalist in Residence
Jeremy SteeleSpecialist
David PoulsonInstructor
Eric FreedmanInstructor
Joe GrimmInstructor
Lucinda D. DavenportDirector & Professor
