ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the roles of the digital journalist. Digital offers journalists speed, immediacy, interactivity, and a global reach. It also enables new ways to gather, report, and distribute information. In digital spaces and places, writers and editors are expected to interact. Audience interaction can yield better stories and more interesting content, but it also opens the door to arguments, mindless debates, and comments so inane, so egregious, that we might want to pull the plug on the whole enterprise, as many have done. The computer-assisted, data mining journalist uses the statistical methods of social scientists, the mapping tools of geographic information systems, and the visualization skills of graphic design to create data-driven presentations and stories. The inverted pyramid often is appropriate for digital spaces, where information should be structured to facilitate scanning or drilling down. Historically, the inverted pyramid also accommodated wire service feeds, which came into the news room much as blog posts and tweets are published.
