Interview with Leslie Primack, student journalist

As a former student journalist, I'm interested in the relationship between print and online journalism particularly at the college level, where many papers don't have the resources necessary to make the initial investment that developing a serious Web presence requires.

For that reason, I emailed with Leslie Primack, a fresman at Brown and a reporter for the Brown Daily Herald, to get her thoughts.

Q: As a consumer of news, where would you say that you primarily get your information -- online or in print? Blogs or newspaper websites?
A: As a college student, I primarily get my global news online at washingtonpost.com, but most of my information comes from reading our school newspaper, the Brown Daily Herald. When I am at home, most of my information comes from the Washington Post each morning and news articles in the New Yorker.

Q: As a student journalist at the Daily Herald, can you describe how the papers' editors view their Web site -- i.e., do they plan extra content for it? Is it treated as a separate publication or just a different medium?
A: Though I’m not involved in online publication, I don’t think the editors plan extra online content, though they do offer numerous options such as Facebook sharing applications and convenient ways to subscribe to the newspaper via email. Blogs are not prominent: though one can register with blogger.com, there are not blogs on browndailyherald.com itself, to my knowledge.

Q: How do you personally use the Web for research in your reporting?
A: I use the Web extensively for each story. It’s invaluable for finding contact information (navigating through the department websites to find professors and officials to interview), and I always begin to set up an interview by emailing the subject. I’ve done interviews with alumni over the phone, and I use their websites to familiarize myself with their background so I can have so questions in mind going into the interview. I’ve also used facebook to find students to interview. (For example, when writing a story on video downloading, I searched for students in the Brown Film Society to get their perspectives.) However, I avoid actually contacting subjects over Facebook, as I feel that using their Brown email address is more professional.

Q: Are you at all concerned about going into newspaper journalism as a career, given the business problems that newspapers are having and their seeming inability to compete with the Web?
A: Yes, only this summer I’ve seen the New York Times increase its price and reduce its size, showing the financial trouble of print journalism. I’d hesitate to go into newspaper journalism because I wouldn’t want to end up writing for a purely online publication or getting laid off.

Q: Would you consider online journalism (working for a blog or news site exclusively) as a career? What do you see as the pros and cons?
A: I wouldn’t consider a career in online journalism. I prefer concrete print publications because I see entirely online things as somehow more abstract and not as reliable (though this may not be the case). I feel that the news loses its power when it can be scrolled through quickly online, and I know that I don’t read the washingtonpost.com very thoroughly because it is difficult to navigate and I get tired of staring at a screen for so long. The positive aspect of online journalism is that it is that the news is so timely and I often find things online just after they’ve happened, instead of in the newspaper the next day.

Q: How do you feel about the shift to online journalism?
A: I think it’s a shame that journalism is shifting to online. Maybe I’m old fashioned but I like holding a newspaper in my hand and seeing the headlines jump out at me. However, I must admit that online publications are more convenient and for the most part free, so many consumers prefer them.