Think you'd like to be a newspaper editor? Keep tabs on a website like DelcoTimes.com? Be able to publish news in an instant with a click of a mouse?
This job has changed dramatically over the last five years. We've gone from delivering news via one platform - namely print - once a day, to giving our readers information updated by the second, 24 hours a day, across several platforms.
The explosion of social media has opened the floodgates when it comes to the dissemination of information. We are no longer alone when it comes to publishing. Sure, you can make the argument that we bring a certain expertise to the job at hand, but the business has been fundamentally altered.
It's hard to explain just how the changes in journalism have affected what I do for a living, the decisions I have to make every day, now seemingly every second, in terms of breaking news.
No one story in the past five years has driven that point home to me more than the sad saga of Sunil Tripathi. You might remember the name. He was the Radnor High grad and Brown University student who went missing - seemingly without a trace - earlier this spring.
But for several hours in the early-morning hours of April 18-19, he became the unfortunate focus of the biggest story in the universe.
And for a few hours, I was wrestling with the idea that this story was about to fall right into my lap.
So you want to know what it's like to sit in this chair, to make the decisions I make every day? First I would like you to read this story on the Sunil Tripathi situation.
Then read this story that appeared on our website later in the morning of April 19.
And finally my blog, which appeared a few days later.
I'm revisiting the topic today because it has been on my mind all weekend. I've shared this New York Times piece with as many people in the business as I can.
To me it defines the new world we all now live – and work – in.
I won't ever forget those hours of Thursday night, April 18, and even more importantly the early-morning of April 19.
Just thinking about it again gives me that horrible knot in the pit of my stomach that seems to go hand in hand with my job on the bad days.
I won't ever forget that drive into the office, all the while hearing a talk show host clearly identify the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing as being the missing student from Radnor, right here in Delaware County.
Of course the report, stemming initially from some chatter on a Boston police scanner, was incorrect. Sunil Tripathi was not connected to the Boston tragedy.
But in a business that now operates second to second, that would not be known for several hours.
At least one Radnor cop also had heard the radio report – they dispatched a squad car to the Tripathi house, where the media already was descending.
Social media, Twitter and Facebook, had been ablaze with the possible connection for hours. But I didn't have any confirmation, so I waited.
I can tell you that in other circumstances, I have cited other media reports on breaking stories. This time, I didn't. It was too big. Too important. I wanted to wait until I had someone in authority telling me that. It's what we have always done, and it's what we still do, even when delivering news instantaneously.
I am proud that we never posted or obviously printed anything naming Tripathi as a suspect. But I can tell you it was close, and we had staffers on social media following all the “chatter.”
This story, maybe more than any other I’ve dealt with, showed me that we now live – and most importantly work – in a different world.
My job has changed. We're not going back. And I don't want to. We will continue to deliver news 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
That is now what our readers expect. They also want something else from us, I think in part because of what we do, and what we have done for years. They turn to us more than ever for context and meaning in a world that bombards them with information, in particular when it comes to breaking news, sometimes unfiltered, and not always accurate.
I love being able to deliver news to readers when they want – and as soon as we can get it – on the device the readers want to receive it.
Anyone who thinks we should be going back to the old ways is a fool.
But I also am aware of the immense power that we continue to wield, the notion of sharing and transmitting news in an instant.
I have to tell you sometimes it can be a humbling, scary experience. The early-morning hours of April 19 was one of those times.
And why I'll never forget the name of Sunil Trapathi.
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