CoPress

This week, CoPress directors Daniel Bachhuber, Andrew Spittle, Lauren Rabaino and Adam Hemphill are attending the National College Media Convention in Austin, Texas. These are reports from the field. For more updates, follow the conversation on Twitter.

In “Defining What’s Good in Digital Journalism,” Mark Briggs led a panel discussion featuring Bryan Murley from the Center for Innovation in College Media, James Wickett from impactnews.com and Gary Chapman from the University of Texas at Austin.

The session began with the showing of a video produced by Lexington Herald-Leader photographer Charles Bertram about a one-legged Little League player. Despite simple production values, the piece garnered an unprecedented amount of page views after going viral. According to the panelists, the story is a prime example of what is good in digital journalism and its success was incumbent to that.

Murley summed up the general feeling of the session with a quote:

“Digital media is quantity or quality.… As long as you have the facts right and you have a good story to tell — that’s quality on the Internet”

Afterward, the panelists went on to touch on a few topics, among them:

• Weighing analytics metrics against what “your gut tells you is more valuable”
• Audience — not news organizations — defining credibility
• The more-than-basic skills necessary to land a job in this climate; five text clips aren’t going to cut it
• The 3 key parts of news stories you usually don’t get

Briggs’ presentation is available here.