PRINTMissouri Honor Medalists: David Plotz
MU recognizes seven journalists with the presentation of the Missouri Honor Medal
Courtesy of David Plotz
David Plotz will receive a Missouri Honor Medal Oct. 20.
October 15, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Next Tuesday, Oct. 20, the MU School of Journalism will honor seven distinguished journalists with the Missouri Honor Medal. The award has been bestowed upon the who’s-who’s of the field since 1930. This year’s recipients — Mazhar Abbas, Rance Crain, Doug Crews, Bill Eppridge, Rod Gelatt, Deborah Howell and Slate — join the ranks of Tom Brokaw, Walter Cronkite and Winston Churchill. Awardees have the chance to share their knowledge and experiences with the public by presenting master classes during the day followed by a reception and dinner in the evening. Vox looks at what makes these distinguished journalists tick.
David Plotz, Editor of Slate
What: The Enemy Is Speed: How to Save Online Journalism From Itself
Date: Tues., Oct. 20
Time: 9:30-10:45 a.m.
Location: 100-A RJI, MU Campus
Slate magazine was one of the first publications of its kind. Launched in 1996, the web-only magazine has been investigating the reach, utility and future of the Internet since its birth. Current editor David Plotz joined the staff after one “doomed” year as a paralegal and a short stint at the Washington City Paper.
How did you move to Slate?
I heard in 1996 that Michael Kinsley, who was one of my journalistic heroes, was starting an Internet magazine. I had never even been on the Internet at that point. Mike recommended that I start at the at the two-person Washington bureau. I was just the junior boy in the D.C. office, doing a lot of grunt work when we launched it.
Did some people think you didn’t know what you were doing?
Totally. It took years for a whole certain class of people who didn’t use the Web. That was an obstacle for a long time. We would do stories, and they would get read by a lot of people that we cared about, but they didn’t have in any sense the universal reach that the Web had today.
How would you describe Slate.com to people who haven’t visited the site?
Slate is a general interest Web magazine, which is very fast, witty and smart. It’s a place to go, not to get your first bit of news probably, but when you want to understand what the news is. When you want a really smart, sharp take on what a particular event means, when you want to read something funny about it or you want some question that hasn’t been answered by the news answered, Slate is the place you go.
Is Slate’s current reputation and place in the journalism market what you expected when you started?
It’s far exceeded what any of us anticipated. At the same time, journalism has changed enormously. When we launched it, some of the people who started Slate came from the The New Republic, and we thought we would be lucky if we ever match the The New Republic. Today, Slate is read by, conservatively, 15 times as many people as the The New Republic.
Where do you think is the future of Slate?
The big thing that I see for the future of Slate continues to be this information overload for readers. There’s just too many ways that readers get information, too many outlets supplying it, too many people aggregating it. It makes it very difficult for any single news outlet to be a sustainable business.
What was your reaction when you heard you were receiving the Missouri Honor Medal?
It is gratifying to see the work you’ve been doing and the place you’ve been working for is being recognized for being creative and important to shaping journalism. To have it done by a place that is as prestigious as Missouri and to have it done unexpectedly was one thought. What Slate is and whatever achievements Slate has had are attributed first and foremost to Mike Kinsley, founding editor, and Jacob Weisberg, editor for six years after. I wanted to make sure that even though I’m the person that gets to go and get the medal, that it should be them.
Your master class is called The Enemy is Speed: How to Save Online Journalism From Itself. What will you be speaking about?
Obviously one of the great things about the web is the way it has changed the metabolism of journalism. I do think there’s a kind of double danger that it presents to journalism as a profession. People that are going into journalism have to work speed jobs. When you’re writing all the time and there’s an enormous pressure at every minute to have a new thing, there’s very little muddling around time, which I think is the generating force for a lot of great journalism.
Twitter
Facebook
