No time to sleep on a Web job

Posted on March 13, 2007 by Melissa Worden

New York Times columnist Mike Freeman talks to TheBigLead.com about sports writers, his career and the journalism industry. In that interview, he says:

“You hear a lot of reasons for the demise of newspapers and the growth of the Internet. Many are valid and some are more important than others. Now having worked in both mediums I can definitively say one reason for the troubles of newspapers is something few people talk about and it has to do with work ethic.

“Too many newspapers have become lazy; too many newspaper reporters have become lazy. No one in the industry wants to discuss this. This is not everyone in newspapers of course but almost everyone I know writing for the Internet works far longer hours and writes more than most newspaper guys I know. It is not even close. I think readers know this and appreciate the difference.”

Web editors and producers know this — we have constant deadlines and a product that’s never put to bed. Every reporter and photographer should sit at a Web producer’s desk for at least one day to see what it’s like. I think it’d be quite an eye-opener.

(Link via Jim Romenesko)

Comments

2 Responses to “No time to sleep on a Web job”

Bryan Murley on March 13th, 2007 10:47 pm

If you devote any length of time to developing a weblog, you get a sense of the pace of the web vs. the pace of the newspaper. My first job in a newspaper was interning on the sports desk in the late 80s. The pace at that time was positively glacial compared to what it is today on the web.

As for the long hours, doing a good job teaching will require far more than the hours “in the classroom” would indicate, as well.
Howard Owens on March 19th, 2007 1:35 pm

Bryan … good point … another reason “everybody should blog.” It teaches yout about web pace.

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