That’s one of my basic rules of journalism, and never has it been so delightfully true as today, when we can not only tell you what someone said, but let you hear how they said it — in their own voice.
One of my students got a very rude awakening last semester thanks to an Embarq screwup, but she turned the incident into a very nice piece of digital journalism.
Have a listen to what she produced and published:
The challenge for the students in my digital storytelling class was to choose the right medium for the story, whether that was text, sound, video, graphics or still images. In this instance, telling the story through text wouldn’t have really done it justice. The sound makes the story.
Las Vegas Sun reporter Tim Pratt, who covers social services and the poor, wrote a piece Jan. 5 about the other victims of this bonehead snaffu by Embarq and the Clark County Housing Authority.
When he interviewed me, Pratt made it clear he understood the power of all things digital by asking if Ruby’s video might “go viral” on the Web.
That would be nice.
What’s important is that journalists no longer need a big old printing press, a radio station or a television station to publish and broadcast stories.
But knowing how to use digital recorders, cameras and editing software is increasingly important.
Just gather the facts, pick a medium, weave the story and publish!
P.S. — Check out the Sun’s Website redesign, which went live today. Among other essentials, they’ve added a field for comments under news stories, acknowledging that news is a conversation.
Charlotte-Anne Lucas 
Glad to see a story was written about that whole snafu Kristen went through….at least the class got a laugh out of it!