A digital journalist is in charge of writing news stories and/or blogs for the Internet. Journalistic stories are more formal than news blogs, which are more informal and written individuals. A digital journalist usually provides videos or still photographs in addition to writing original web content for computer or new media audiences.
Only newspaper or magazine stories and still photos are used in traditional print journalism. Along with website text, Internet journalism includes multimedia creations such as audio and video clips. A digital journalist works with the equipment required to produce audio, video, and text for an online newspaper.
For their news stories, digital journalists frequently use the Internet as a research tool. They must check and verify facts as well as conduct interviews over the phone, via email, or in person. Rather than using a newspaper office or television newsroom as a base, a freelance digital journalist can send all of his or her stories to an editor via email from a remote location.
A major responsibility of digital journalists is to generate story ideas and turn them into finished web copy. They may also be given journalistic feature pieces to write for an online newspaper. Digital journalists must often write eye-catching headlines for their stories in addition to writing the articles. While the headlines and stories in digital journalism jobs are similar to those in print publications such as newspapers and magazines, the format and style is different.
Writing for the web, for example, must be more concise than writing for print publications; reading text on a screen requires more effort from the eye. Digital journalism should use shorter, easier-to-read paragraphs. Subheads, also known as subheadlines, are more commonly used in digital media journalism than in print journalism. For maximum readability the web audience, digital journalists must carefully edit their articles.
A digital journalist may write news articles, blogs, or both. If the journalist’s online news publication is based on a specific geographic area, he or she looks for story ideas that are relevant to that area. In blogs, the journalist may share personal experiences or express opinions on current events. Digital journalists write objectively and report facts rather than express opinions or relate personal experiences in journalistic news stories.
Training others is a common task for many digital journalist jobs. Experienced digital journalists, for example, could mentor journalism students assigning them stories and editing their final work. In such cases, a group of student writers could be managed remotely a digital journalist.