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Political Reporting
keep refreshing the blog and home
page with something new, especially
in the mornings and afternoons. It’s
the reverse of the print cycle.
Reporters and editors have less and
less time and more and more responsibilities
to file, and to keep filing.
While a few others and I are dedicated
solely to political Web coverage here
at the Times, more commonplace are
multitasking journalists: candidate
reporters on the bus filing posts by
their BlackBerries, uploading recordings
of news conferences, and taping
their observations for Web audio. And
somewhere in the middle of the day,
filing a summary of their plans for
articles for the paper and then writing
on deadline in between rallies, townhall
meetings, and boarding planes.
Competing Forces: Web and
Print
As the newspaper industry shrinks and
convulses and staffs become smaller,
I realize that I’m in a fortunate posi-
It is not easy to do anything for the
first time when working for a newspaper
founded in 1889. The more
I think about the long history of my
paper, Helsingin Sanomat, the largest
daily in Finland, the more privileged
I feel about being its correspondent
covering the 2008 U.S. presidential
campaign.
This election cycle is historic for
reasons no one now needs to repeat.
But the historical nature of this campaign
goes—at least for my paper and
our readers—beyond the selection of
8 Nieman Reports | Summer 2008
tion, because the Times still maintains
a vast array of resources. But even
here, we’ve just begun to acknowledge
the impositions posed by our dueling
missions of Web vs. print—and the
crushing workload that many journalists
face by trying to serve those two
purposes in the wake of competing
pressures.
While most of the print articles are
posted online, we have yet to agree
on how (or whether) to accomplish
the reverse. Many journalists balk at
the idea of publishing in print the
more conversational blog items or
first-person-on-the-trail pieces that
live naturally online. Citing print
standards or adhering to a more rigid
newswriting style, these gatekeepers
(with completely admirable goals)
contribute to the ever-expanding
workload. And to some extent, that
continues to undermine the notion of
truly integrating newsrooms for the
Web and print.
As much as the newspaper prides
itself on quality journalism through
candidates that Americans are making.
I am also the first correspondent
from my newspaper to report on
the U.S. primaries and the general
election for a radio station that has
become part of my paper’s daily life.
And I am the first correspondent to
record and edit video reports from the
campaign trail on a regular basis for
our Web site. Add to these firsts the
fact that I am surely the first of many
Helsingin Sanomat correspondents to
know how my election stories from
the United States rank against, say,
enterprise and analysis, it has yet to
establish a system that would value
reporters (myself excluded here) who
have shifted their commitment and
coverage to the online world on an
equal par with those whose sprawling
print enterprise is so highly praised.
In essence, even as the political cycle
has evolved and provided a rich and
encouraging environment for Web
journalism, a two-tier system remains
for many of its practitioners, online
and off.
While that’s worrisome to me, I
imagine that our ever-changing industry,
one filled still with promise
because of the information continuum
that has radically transformed the
ways in which we synthesize and
transmit news, will ultimately come
to terms with the landscape of the
Internet.
Kate Phillips, a 2003 Nieman Fellow,
is the online politics editor for The
New York Times. She writes and edits
for The Caucus, the politics news blog.
Adding Radio and Video Web Casts to Political
News in Print
‘… am I becoming the first correspondent in my paper’s history who has no
time to think?’
BY PEKKA MYKKÄNEN
a story of a heart attack of a famous
singer or the stabbing of a taxi driver
in Helsinki.
Turns out that I’ve been very encouraged
by checking the “most read
articles” of the day or of the week after
my stories about an important primary
contest have appeared on our Web site.
They are consistently among the top
10, no matter what has been going on
in Finland. Same goes with my videos.
Often, after my stories are put up on
our Web site, what follows are lively
online discussions. From these, I feel