Q&A: RedEye's Curt Wagner

Curt Wagner, an editor at the RedEye and Show Patrol Blogger, experienced a big transition in his 20-year journalism career as it sculpted his way into the online world of journalism. After working various positions at the Chicago Tribune since 1993, Wagner branched out into the pop section of sibling paper RedEye and eventually endeavored into his own personal interest of television entertainment.  (Photograph Courtesy Chicago Tribune).

Q: How long has it been since you first entered the journalism field?

A: 1989.

Q: So it’s been a really long time, I mean that was back when you started off writing on typewriters and now with the technology changing, you own multiple Twitter accounts, you manage TV blog Show Patrol. How did you make this transition?

A: I mean that’s just where the business was going. It wasn’t until the last two years I think that I got really into the online thing once I started my TV blog and just this last year RedEye has really pushed the social media angle. But I mean newspapers are kind of going away so everybody’s turning to online now.

Q: Do you find it at all difficult at times to manage all of your social media Web sites?

A: Yea, I mean it would be easier because I’m doing this tool thing as the features editor and I have this TV blog and I’m writing stories for the paper, too, so you know, I have a lot of different things that I have to deal with, so it’s kind of hard. We try to post links on Facebook, Twitter, and on Digg. That’s just a whole other layer of going and posting all of the stuff everywhere, too, so that takes some time and sometimes I don’t get around to it.

Q: I wanted to talk to you about your TV blog that you’ve mentioned a few times, Show Patrol. How did this come about, how did it first start?

A: Well, I have an interest in TV and always have, so we were trying to figure out ways to get columnists in the paper and we had been using just wire stuff for TV stories and I was like well you know I should just start watching stuff and writing it and starting to do it and then when we started to put this in the paper then we thought let’s put it online and start a blog so we started doing some blogs.

Q: Is this something you developed yourself?

A: It pretty much was. I just decided to do it and then our web guy was like why don’t you write it as a blog and I said cool, I will! So that’s what we did. It was purely out of my own interest.

Q: I don’t want to take up too much more of your time, but I do have one last question for you. You made this transition into all of these social media Web sites and the online journalism field has seen a significant growth in the past years, would you suggest to current journalism students going into the field that being platform agnostic is a required ability to have?

A: I always think that you should know, even when we were doing newspapers, how to do everything. At that point, I thought you should be able to copy and edit, you should be able to write stories, you should be able edit stories, you should have all aspects, and be able to do everything. I think that’s useful.

They always used to say even for reporters, you should be able to report about different subjects. I think that’s true even in what you are capable of doing, like not just reporting, but in all of these different forms of media. I make video clips to go on my blog site and I know how to design pages for the newspaper and all of that kind of stuff.

Mashups... What??

What exactly is the purpose of a “mashup”, you ask?  A mashup is a helpful and information-packed tool for journalists, offering a range of reporting necessities from national statistics to shows playing at the neighborhood theater.  The information available on these mashups aren’t necessarily solely for journalistic purposes, but rather just an interesting tool for everyday people to look up specific information. 

Mashups are readily available to the general public; however, it seems as though this tool is mainly used by journalists for researching a topic and incorporating it into a story.  Personally, I didn’t even know these databases existed if it weren’t for my Online Journalism course and I’m glad I came across these helpful creations. 

Mashups like Statemaster serves a strong journalistic purpose.  It provides national statistics and state comparisons and can be used as research for a story regarding specific state percentages of crime.  Politifact is an excellent tool for journalists researching the authenticity of certain political facts.  Politifact also offers a great “meter” detail that illustrates Obama’s fulfillment in keeping his promises. 

Everyblock.com and ThisWeKnow.org are great mashups to look up information within a specific location through an address, zip code, or city.  Everyblock.com is a site that I would visit regularly to search events and current news within my neighborhood.  ThisWeKnow.org offers more specific information within the political standpoint of a neighborhood.  For example, I can find that my neighborhood releases almost six million pounds of over one hundred pollutants within 15 miles.  I found this mashup as the most fascinating and thought provoking because it offers information that I wouldn’t regularly look up and certain facts are really intriguing. 

It seems like mashups are mainly created by journalism outlets because the topics are compiled of political views, statistics, and crime reports; however, Everyblock.com has an aspect similar to Craigslist as it offers real estate listings and even local deals ranging from hair salon discounts to oil change discounts.   Although Everyblock.com provides some journalistic attributes, it is comforting to know I can use this database simply to look up local shows and deals within the Lincoln Park area.