>> My name is Daniel Victor.
I'm a staff editor for social media at the New York Times.
So, my role is largely one day a week I run the main NY Times Twitter accounts.
Other days I work with the metro and sports desks on how to integrate social media best
into the reporting, how to train the reporters, and use crowd sourcing tools, tips, tricks,
finding ways to put social media into the reporting process.
Well the great thing about is that it has become just such a powerful reporting tool.
As a reporter, in the old days you might have to,
you would only have access to a certain amount of people.
Maybe the people that you already know that are already in your rolodex.
Maybe the people who happen to be on the street when you go out in the street.
Now you have access to this vast network of people
who never had access to the newspaper before.
So, using social media, you can make the reporting better.
You can have a better connection to your readers and they can have a better connection to you.
At a traditional newspaper, the, at least when I started out,
the focus was on the next day's paper.
It was almost singularly on that.
I think that the difference for a dot com is
that there's always something new that you can be trying out.
There's always some new platform, there's always some new tip or trick.
Whereas a newspaper, you tended to focus on that print product.
Newspaper organizations have gotten much better about embracing the web
and embracing those new platforms.
So, a good print product, like the New York Times that has a good web portion as well,
I think that's the ideal place to be.
I love that in this role we get to kind of combine the, the core of traditional journalism
with all this fun, new stuff of social media
and everything else that's emerging in the journalism world.
It is so crucial that we're verifying what we put out there just as much as it was
when we were putting it in print.
Sometimes it seems as though there's a conflict between being first
and being right, and I don't see it that way.
I think if you're not first, you're not right.
It's as simple as that.
So we like taking all, every little bit of, of the, the news writing skills, the ethical skills
that we learned here at Penn State and translating that to the news system.
[Pause] I think it's exhilarating that we don't know what tomorrow is going to look
like in the newspaper industry, or in the new industry, I should say.
Its possible print will go away, its possible print will be here forever.
We don't know, but what we do know is that good journalism is always going to be needed
and I think people will always value good journalism, and I'm excited to be part of the,
the crew that will be deciding how that's going to look.
Figure out what the best ways are to tell stories.
Figure out what the best way to involve readers into the process.
It's really exciting to me that when I graduated, my job didn't exist.
And here I am on one of the leading edges of it.
So, the idea that another four to six years from now,
I could be doing something entirely different, but equally exciting.
I love it.
I think that's exhilarating.
[Pause]
I think the most important thing is to make sure that your skills as a journalist are rock solid.
Using social media is a test of your judgement every single day.
Not just every single day, but several,
several times a day depending on how much you're tweeting.
I would make sure that you know exactly how to make those ethical decisions,
work with editors so that you can develop that sense, become a great writer,
become a great journalist, know which questions to ask,
know what makes for an interesting detail,
and then those skills you'll be able to apply to Twitter.
There are so many skills that are unique entirely to social media
that you would want to start out on that end.
I would encourage people to just build a core proficiency, experiment as much as you can
with Twitter and other tools, and whatever comes up, give it a shot.
A lot of it comes with simple experience.
During my internships, I learned firsthand how to make that snap decision.
Do I quote this person, do I not?
Do I use the word allegedly here, do I not?
Learning how to make those decisions on the fly is what really makes you a great journalist,
and that doesn't immediately come, that doesn't just come in the textbooks.
It's great to learn that way by getting writing experience, working with professionals,
working with professors who are happy to mentor you, that's how you really kind
of develop that sense as a journalist.
[Pause] So I went to Penn State and I studied journalism here.
At the time, I thought I was going to work my way through the newspaper chains.
I thought I would start at a small paper, spend two years there, go to a mid-size paper,
go there for two years, and then finally I'd end up at the Washington Post
of the Philadelphia Inquirer or some kind of dream newspaper like that.
And even though I am at the New York Times right now,
I did not follow the path that I thought I was going to.
I, I had, I was, for four years, a reporter at a mid-size newspaper.
I moved to three different websites in between and I always thought I was going to work
for dot coms before this opportunity on the digital side of the New York Times came up.
So it was a very different path than I expected.
I'm doing an entirely different craft than I thought I was going to, but in the end,
both paths just meant I wanted to quality journalism
and I've been lucky that I've been able to do that.
So, my, after my sophomore year, I got an internship
at the Patriot News in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
And, after that internship, I hopefully impressed my editors enough
that they were willing to give me writing assignments from here in State College.
So during the year when something big would happen at Penn State or they wanted a feature
from here on campus, they would call me up and say, hey could you do this for us?
So the editors got to know me very well, they got to see over and over that I was reliable,
that I met deadlines, that were my stories were clean, and after graduation,
it just so turned out that somebody left at just the perfect time so I was able
to just slide into a reporting role there.
Very lucky.
I feel very, very fortunate that it worked out that way, but that's, again,
it comes back to networking, and I knew them, they knew me,
they trusted me, and I was able to slide in.
[Pause] I would encourage students to find a way to distinguish yourself.
The job market is difficult, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.
And when you're up against a stack of 100 resumes from other journalism graduates,
you want to have that keystone project that you can show off.
You want to have that one insight that you had that maybe other college students don't.
Find some way to make yourself unique.
Find some way to show that you are the absolute best.
And not just that you're proficient, but that you're going
to bring great ideas to that company.