Photos by Robert Hubner, WSU Photo Services
The Murrow Symposium morning plenary session, seen in the photos above included: (l-r) Phil Gomes, senior vice president, Edelman Digital; Jeff Barr, senior evangelist, Amazon Web Services; Jeff Lanctot, managing director, Microsoft advertising; Pat Costello, president and general manager, King Broadcasting; Lauren McCullough, manager, Associated Press; Kathy Best, managing editor, Seattle Times Online; Lawrence Pintak, dean, WSU Murrow College of Communication.
By James Tinney, WSU Today
PULLMAN – The panel of experts for the first plenary session of the Edward R. Murrow Symposium, which assemebled 9 a.m. Tuesday, had plenty of expertise in New Media and its evolving role in journalism, advertising and public relations.
However, the discussion often came back to a long-standing and fundamental role of journalism in our society, providing credible information to help news consumers separate fact from opinion, news from rumor.
“The biggest responsibility we have as journalists is to still seek the truth,” said Pat Costello, vice president and station manager, KING 5, KONG 6/16, and NorthWest Cable News. “Journalism will always win out because truth will always win out.”
Jeff Lanctot, managing director of Microsoft Advertising, said we have moved into a “second stage” of Internet information in which people are seeking ways to filter through all the available data to find what is credible.
Existing media operations are trying to fill that role, while still being far more interactive with their readers and viewers.
Kathy Best, managing editor of Seattle Times Online, said that her newspaper has reached out to a network of online community bloggers, both to fill in the gaps created by newsroom cuts and extend the newspaper’s reach.
“It has allowed us to cover neighborhoods we could never cover before, in-depth,” Best said.
The Seattle Times monitors bloggers to make certain that their information is credible and that it is true to the Seattle Times brand, she added.
Lauren McCullough, manager of social networks and news engagement for the Associated Press, said that AP uses news media both as a way to gather and to disseminate news. She discussed an interactive news effort that the AP tried during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Reporters used Twitter, she said, to send out background information about what was happening in the hearing room. In turn, they heard from people who were following their feeds along with the broadcast coverage and had questions about different aspects of what was happening.
“It’s so simple, but for our reporters, it was so liberating to be able to approach the event with fresh eyes,” McCullough said.
As mainstream news outlets cut back on news coverage, more corporations and other organizations who might once have been the subjects of extensive news coverage are now finding it worthwhile to distribute more news about their operations through on-line channels.
Panelists agree that, while that is a worthwhile strategy, companies that use it must be open and honest to retain credibility.
“There are a lot of people on-line who are really, really smart,” Best said. “Be transparent and let people decide for themselves.”
“They can sniff out fluff, they can sniff out spin,” Lanctot said. “You have to be adding value to the conversation.”
Lawrence Pintak, founding dean of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communications, moderated the panel discussion. He was asked by an audience member how the Murrow College was adapting to the changes in the media landscape.
“We are, on a daily basis, looking at what changes we need to make at the college to adjust to these realities,” Pintak said. While the college will never be able to teach students about each new technology, the goal of its curriculum is to help students become digitally literate and able to adjust to changes as they occur.
For details and a schedule of events, visit www.wsu.edu/murrow