BY JOE MOLINELLI
A group of writers and reporters gathered in SCAD’s River Club on Feb. 14, not for any heart and cherub themed event, but to hear about the experiences and insights of Daniel Wakin, a reporter in the Culture Department of the New York Times. Standing in front of the audience with his collar button unfastened and his notes written on the back of recycled paper, he began his speech.
Daniel Wakin started as a clerk for the Associated Press in New York City, moving up to one of AP’s Newark, N.J. reporters, covering mobsters and corruption at a breakneck pace. His passion for journalism came out through the fondness he had for these memories. In the Newark newsroom hung a framed quote by Chicago journalist Sherman Reilly Duffy.
Wakin said, “Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender but spiritually he stands besides Galileo. He knows the world is round,” which he followed by asking, “How do you know the world is round? You check it out.”
Much of the information people get today is aggregated and regurgitated, but all that information comes from someone who was physically there. Arguably the most important point Wakin made was for students to go out and get their information first hand.
After working for AP, Wakin began writing for religion on the Metropolitan Desk for the New York Times. Wakin was even one of the first reporters to experience writing at the continuous news desk, the first attempt to keep the New York Times website up to date.
It was a job he was able to get from his experience at the AP writing quickly and accurately while pulling together lots of information. Now he covers classical music and dance for the New York Times, from new technologies to a first hand account of playing with the New York Philharmonic.
While well versed in traditional forms of media, Wakin also talked about what happens at modern newspapers in terms of new media: blogging, tweeting and posting to Facebook when a new story goes up. Using audio and video pieces to enforce a story. Even something as simple as linking to different documents referenced in an article is an example of how newspapers are trying to reach an audience who are more prone to reading from the computer.
One new role of reporters in new media is to field comments made on articles. Reporters are now encouraged to join readers in the comments, mostly to promote interesting comments, and remove offensive ones. These efforts create more interactive learning and discussion by, “clarifying and furthering the discussion,” as it relates to these comments.
While talking about new technologies at newspapers, Wakin brought up an effort by the New York Times called the Knowledge Network. Knowledge Network is a series of online courses where reporters teach subjects they have been researching to their enrolled readers.
This allows reporters to use their knowledge to reach a different type of audience interested in specific subjects. It also allows them to take advantage of some other aspects of interactive and new media that are not traditionally used in a newspaper, such as video chats and forums.
This isn’t to say that he believes print media will ever die. Wakin stated that the layout and single function of a print newspaper forces the reader to be exposed to articles they may otherwise not click on if they were reading online.
Print does offer a more distraction-free reading experience, as well as the information being immediately available no matter where you are, though Wakin also stated, “It’s a question of preference—it comes down to reading a paper and knowing what’s going on in the world, to be aware of our ideas and horizons; to be tolerant of what other people think.” He left off with the idea that reading the news is, “part civic instruction, part entertainment [and] part intellectual enlightenment.”
You can see some of Dan’s articles in the New York Times’ Music section or by clicking here.
