Great debate, now blog it!

The need for speed on the web often comes into conflict with our desire to be accurate and thorough and the debate we had last night takes place every day in newsrooms across the country. No two organizations approach breaking news in exactly the same way. Here is a link to the protocol we developed at seacoastonline for breaking news. We put in some checks after getting burned by publishing too quickly on the web.

I very much appreciated your candor, passion and willingness to keep the class going an extra 15 minutes last night.

Don’t let too much time go by before you blog about Damon’s presentation and our discussion about standards and ethics. Annie Hamilton and Steve Bodnar have already written excellent — and very different — blogs about last night.

One important takeaway from Damon’s presentation is just how new all this technology is and how much has changed in an instant. Unlike the rules of print journalism that have been set in stone for decades, the concrete online is still wet. If you enter this exhilarating field you will be among those creating the new standards and guidelines for generations to follow. This may have been the first time you debated those issues we discussed last night but I promise it won’t be the last.