Otterblog

One of our reporters had an interesting lesson in new media last week. Bert Gutierrez, who covers city government, was out doing a story on people recently annexed by Winston-Salem. He interviewed a guy named Joe Bryant. Joe has a blog, so while Bert was interviewing him, Joe was doing the same thing right back. He even got the pictures to prove it.

Here’s the link. It’s pretty amusing. Bert comes off as exactly as I would expect him to: honest, to the point, determined.

Citizen journalism is a brave new world, and we in the professional journalism business are sometimes reluctant to acknowledge that you don’t need a) training b) a printing press c) editors to be a journalist these days. That said, I think these things help. Some more than others. For printing press, substitute distribution. At some level journalism is about reaching an audience and writing stories that get read.

Fair update: We went to the DCF on Sunday: Chicken on a stick, awesome root beer (over by the Yesteryear village, 50 cents a cup), WSPD hotdogs, fried snickers, bag of peanuts. Can’t beat it. The biggest crowd drawer/pleaser is the 921 lb. pumpkin. Unbelievable. People were filing by it like it was a dead head of state. This is an N.C. record, and pumpkins this big don’t come along very often, so don’t miss it.