To help you get to know our newsroom staff a bit better, a series of question-and-answer posts with each journalist will run on Mondays. This morning, meet hyperlocal web journalist Christine Loman. She’s in the office bright and early — 5:45 a.m. — most mornings to update our websites, and she also handles some Neighbors and Weekly Record content.
Name: Christine Loman
Lives in: York
Hometown: Greece, N.Y.
Position at the YDR: Web copy editor
Years with the YDR: About 4 months
Graduated from: Ithaca College, 2011
With a degree in: Journalism, with a minor in history
Twitter: @christineloman
Whatever you’d like to tell us about yourself: I got my start in journalism at a small daily in a very small town in New York’s Southern Tier. While I was there, I learned to do a little bit of everything. Now I do a little bit of everything during the morning web shift when I update the site from about 6-8:30 most mornings.
1. What made you want to become a journalist? My 10th grade English teacher Mrs. Maurer made me think about being a journalist. I love that every day is different.
2. How do you see journalism changing? I don’t see the basic premise of journalism, disseminating information, changing anytime soon. What I do see changing is the more logistical aspects of how people get their news. Reuters recently reported that nearly 1 in 4 teenagers mostly use their smartphones to get online. The figure is lower for adults, but I think that’s a huge indication of where we’re going to need to go.
3. What do you like most about your job? The rush of breaking news. Figuring out how to engage readers outside of traditional channels. The least? The 15 minutes after my first alarm goes off at 4:25 a.m.
4. It’s 9:30 a.m. on a day off. What are you doing? I’ve probably been up since 6 a.m. and am watching whatever TV shows I missed overnight.
5. What’s been your favorite project or story recently? Why? Somewhat narcissistically, I love the story I did about Scribbles the horse. It was a pleasure to write. More recently, I thought the Teen Lifers series was a thought-provoking combination of powerful narratives and questions about the way the system works.
6. The drink that’s on your desk right now is: Water. Even thought I work the morning shift, I don’t drink coffee or tea.
7. Your favorite journalism-related blog you read or Twitter feed you follow: Romenesko is always interesting. Also, the Times. I’m generally addicted to Twitter in the morning because if you use it right, it’s a really great aggregator.
8. What’s your favorite movie? I’m more of a TV person, but I like older movies, like “His Girl Friday.” On TV, I love “Chopped” and “Game of Thrones.” Book? World War Z. It’s a book about zombies that actually isn’t really about zombies at all, but people and how we deal with disaster. I pick up something new every time I reread it. I also expect the movie to be terrible.
9. What’s your favorite place in York County? Central Market.
10. What’s one piece of newsroom jargon that had to be explained to you? Interstitial. I can’t pronounce it half the time. [Editor's note: An interstitial page is what we use on the Web when linking to outside news sources -- People.com, Penn Live, etc. It includes a headline, some basic information and link to the outside source to read more.]
Last week, we ran a Q&A with general assignment reporter Brandie Kessler. To read all of the staff Q&A interviews we’ve done so far, click on the “Staff Q&As” under “About us” at the top of the homepage.
