Beat the clock

There's a saying on The Orion's mission statement that reads "Get it first, but first get it right." I've been discovering, in the world of online journalism, the first part is specifically true.

I'm a pretty competitive guy, and journalism is a competitive field. The Orion's attitude is that not only should it be competing with the other local publications, we should be breaking stories on campus. Even if other publications print sooner or more often than The Orion does.

A good example of this that happened this week was the story dealing with the shooting in front of Normal Street Bar. A photographer was listening to the scanner at the time that the police call came across. He then started the phone tag, which eventually led to the story being posted online within a few hours of the shooting.

I can't take any credit for this, because I wasn't on this particular phone tree. But, there's still the joy in the fact that, for 16 hours, The Orion Online was the only news source for the shooting, until the Enterprise-Record printed.

Of course, they did get a little revenge by beating out The Orion on reporting a plea bargain in the Chi Tau trial, compliments of having a full-time courtroom reporter.

Online allows a weekly newspaper like The Orion to go toe-to-toe with a daily paper. Online journalism doesn't have to wait for a print run, so in cyberspace, The Orion can essentially be a daily newspaper, even if print only comes out once every seven days.