CNN and Telegraph

Probably my favorite day of class visits was Monday when we visited CNN London and the Telegraph. As a broadcast journalism major my ultimate goal was always CNN. I have since discovered that my real passion is print journalism, but I still love broadcast and geeked out a little but when we stepped foot into the newsroom at CNN London.

I was not expecting it to be able to be on set of a live broadcast or visit the control room to watch the producers work. The experience was nothing like anything I’ve ever seen before. We met with Richard Greene, a supervising editor. He was explaining how he got started in journalism, and he said he just sort of fell into it. Which is funny because I feel like that’s how everyone gets started. I mean, I did start out as a computer science major and look where I landed.

Something that stood out to me was when Greene said that CNN aims to never secondary report and only goes to air with what they have checked out or information they have collected themselves. Greene also pointed out that the organization is split between two areas: web and TV. It was interesting how he said they were working to integrate those teams and how they were learning to work closely together.

The Telegraph was a lot of fun too because we got a tour of the newsroom and got to see the new technology that they are working to bring to their readers. Apparently 1 in 3 adults in the UK come in contact with the Telegraph at some point, which is interesting. Also, 38% of their website traffic comes from mobile phones, and the paper is only 20% of their daily content. I think this shows how the rise in social media and new technology is affecting newspapers because they are forced to concentrate on how to integrate that into the way they put out the news.