By Nick Ubels (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: January 9, 2013
It’s no secret that journalism is changing. While the obligation of journalism to present the best obtainable version of the truth on newsworthy items and to provide a forum for public discourse remain the same, digital and social media have changed our expectations for how and when news is delivered.
Enter Twitter. As a collection of micro-broadcast networks, Twitter provides instant updates and the opportunity to report news as it happens, with all the inherent risks that entails.
At The Cascade, we’ve begun live-tweeting events that we think are important to students. So far, this has mostly involved varsity and Abbotsford Heat matches as well as high profile SUS meetings. We’re still feeling it out, deciding what works and what doesn’t, but it’s all part of a process to bring real-time news to the majority of students who can’t make it out to Mission for a 9 a.m. meeting.
Other than our sports-exclusive feed @cascade_sports, which is still run by sports editor Paul Esau, we’ve had individual reporters use their own personal feeds to tweet from these events. This policy has attracted some criticism from a few members of the UFV community, particularly after our coverage of the November 30 SUS EGM concerning the fate of the currently nameless campus pub formerly known as AfterMath SocialHouse. The argument is that Cascade-endorsed live tweets from other accounts lack the same standard of objectivity they would be held to if sent from @ufvcascade.
Here’s why the editorial board favours our method of live-tweeting: on-the-spot coverage is never going to be perfectly fact-checked and vetted for objectivity. But that’s part of what makes it worthwhile. What we ask of our reporters is a dedication to relaying essential information and key moments to people who can’t be there. A big part of that is taking the pulse of the room, getting a feel for the atmosphere and making observations about more intangible things that can’t be captured with just a snappy quote.
Sometimes this misfires, or a tweet isn’t quite worded the right way. But it’s all in the interest of keeping up-to-date as best we can. You’ll notice that the articles that stem from this sort of coverage are a lot more carefully examined, facts-checked, any biases ferreted out before we commit to print. What’s valuable about these live tweets is our reporters’ individual take on the situation, which would be lost with a generic Cascade feed. Somebody’s Twitter handle gives them the freedom to be themselves and to be held accountable for the content they post. Think of it as a byline on an article like this one. The writer is staking their reputation as a journalist on the line with each tweet.
It’s likely our policy will evolve and grow alongside the medium as we try new things, and more likely than not make a few mistakes along the way. But you can expect digital and new media to make up a bigger and bigger part of what we do in the coming years.
