Steve Fox
Shutesbury, Massachusetts 
Homepage: http://umassjournalismprofs.wordpress.com/
Steve joined the journalism faculty at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in August 2007 and has been working since then to incorporate multimedia across the curriculum.
Since arriving at UMass, Steve has developed several courses modeled after his multimedia journalism course. The courses allow students to work in teams in a newsroom-like environment where they work on packages — using video, audio and photos to tell stories. He also works with students on amherstwire.com, a Web site focused on long-form multimedia journalism that is staffed completely by students.
Steve has been involved with Web journalism for more than 15 years. He joined The Washington Post’s Web site in 1996, just months after the site went live on the Web. He edited one of the first news blogs on the Web and was involved in planning and editing multiple multimedia projects at The Post.
Steve has more than 25 years of experience as an editor and reporter for print and online publications, including 10 as an editor at washingtonpost.com. He also edits part-time for espn.com with the NFL and college football blog network.
He began teaching part-time at the University of Maryland in 1998 and has spoken at a number of conferences on issues including Web journalism, blogging, ethics and political coverage.
Steve has consulted for several start-up Web sites and also collaborated with Mark Briggs and Jan Shaffer in producing Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive — A Digital Literacy Guide for the The Information Age.
Contact:
These articles are the work of their author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of nor an assignment by OJR.
January 27, 2012
A couple of weeks ago I was at a hockey game with my son. During the game, as I absentmindedly checked emails on my phone, I saw a Twitter note from an alumni of the UMass program saying "Look at what this person is saying about you!" Without thinking, I clicked on the link....and instantly kicked myself for doing so, as the link spawned a Twitter spam, sending the virus to hundreds of my Twitter followers. It was the first time for me, but definitely reminded me about the power of social media. I heard from friends, colleagues and students about the spam, and ended up apologizing more than once for not following my own advice to students: Think Before You Click!
The social media dustup surrounding the early and inaccurate reports of Joe Paterno's death once again brought to the forefront how the rapid nature of social media can lead to bad journalism. It was deja vu all over again: A year ago NPR mistakenly reported that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had died after being shot in the head.
Why do journalists keep botching the facts on Twitter?
I posed a question along these lines on the Social Journalism Educators group on Facebook and received some of the requisite "it's not Twitter's fault;" and Twitter is "only" an amplification device. As much as I love most of what Matthew Ingram writes, his post on the Paterno screw-up being another example of "news as a process" worries me. Defenders of the social media realm rarely seem to want to get at why these massive ethical lapses continue to occur on Twitter. And I just won't buy the idea that "this is the way it is" or "letting everyone know you made a mistake is great for transparent journalism."
Don't get me wrong, I love the many benefits of social media and I teach about its journalistic value. But I also feel that we all need to begin practicing "safe social media" practices to protect us all.
After the Giffords debacle, Alicia Shepard, the former ombudsman for NPR, wrote a column about the need for journalists to re-learn the lesson of checking sources. And she counters the shrugs inherent in many comments from social media defenders by reminding us all why it's important to get it right, even if it's not first: "...To report a death, incorrectly, is a serious, serious error and may have caused untold grief and pain for many who know Giffords." Journalism is about process but the process is to get the correct information out, not to throw spaghetti against the wall, see what sticks and sort it all out later.
So, what to do? More...
2 Comments | 
Archive Link
RSS Feed
