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Crosscut: Reinventing News in a Mobile Market

Crosscut is an innovative news organization that has been reinventing itself since 2012. With a focus on highbrow stories for the Puget Sound area, Crosscut experiments with the mobile market and offers a unique blend of daily newspaper, alternative weekly, magazine, and citizen journalism. This article explores the challenges and opportunities of journalism in the internet age, including the importance of online news readership, the rise of niche-oriented news websites, and the role of professional journalists versus semi-pros and citizen journalists. It also provides tips for approaching news organizations and pitching in-depth stories.

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Crosscut: Reinventing News in a Mobile Market

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  1. Crosscut.com basics • - Almost 6 years old. • - Started to reinvent itself in late 2012. Still reinventing itself. • - Experimenting with the mobile market. Most news organizations are experimenting with the mobile market. • - 1 publisher, 3 editors, 2 admin/support staff members. • - Small group of contract writers. • - Large stable of freelance writers

  2. Crosscut's editorial direction -We're still tweaking this. -We tend towards highbrow stories for the Puget Sound area. -We're trying to focus on the "how" and "why" of news. We're still working on how to do this. -Our stories and writers are a strange, hard-to-define mix of being a daily newspaper, an alternative weekly, a magazine, citizen journalism, op-ed page, and essays. -We lean towards politics, environmental issues, urban life and arts.

  3. Journalism on the Internet • - New skills are coming into play. Old skills are being downplayed. A struggle is underway to find a good blend of the old and new worlds. • - Few journalists are experts in the entire range of old and new skills. • - The primary readers of online news are people who read at work. • - People who read on mobile devices are becoming more important. • - Poor people have little access to online news, and are being marginalized.

  4. Newsgathering in the Internet Age • - Journalists extensively use the internet • *Good -- We have access to vastly more • information. • *Bad -- We've become lazier. Legwork and • street smarts are being downplayed. • - Linking to other news organizations stories has become routine. This would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. • - News Web sites have become more niche-oriented like cable television channels. • - Small staffs/shoestring budgets • - Less professional journalists. More semi-pros and citizen journalists.

  5. So you want to approach a news organization about a complicated story? • - Different Web sites, newspapers, TV stations and radio stations vary greatly in their philosophies on stories. • - There are good and bad newspapers, good and bad TV stations, and good and bad news Web sites. Pay attention to which are good in your region. • - If you want pitch a telecommunications or energy story, find a news organization that has a track record of actually covering that subject or a similar one. • - Some news organizations won't touch anything complicated or time-consuming. Some love that kind of story. do. Know which are which.

  6. Other tips on pitching for in-depth stories • - Have a well-defined idea in mind. Don't pitch something broad and fuzzy. • - Good reporters love documents. • - Good reporters love interviewing people with compelling stories. • - Hunt for a geeky reporter who likes to do in-depth stories.

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