5 reasons to pay attention to the veterans in the newsroom

By Kristen Hare

When she was a fellow for Poynter this summer, Gurman Bhatia emerged from Roy Peter Clark’s office one day looking very excited. And she was, she told me then, because she’d just watched Poynter’s senior scholar for reporting, writing and editing compose a tweet.

His first pass at the tweet went like this: “My writing improved when I learned the difference between reports and stories.”

“He then stopped for a moment and said ‘Hmmm… I have 17 characters left,’” Bhatia remembers. “He then added ‘dramatically,’ transforming the sentence to ‘My writing improved dramatically when I learned the difference between reports and stories.’ In that moment I realized that I might understand algorithms and ‘social media strategies,’ but Roy reminded me of the weight you can add with each character.”

On Tuesday, I wrote about Gurman and other young colleagues who have a lot to offer our newsrooms. But as Roy demonstrated through his masterfully crafted tweet, veterans have more than a thing or two to teach young journalists, too.

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