Yahoo! News Editor packs his (book) bags

Posted August 9th, 2006 at 6:30 am by Doreen Bloch, Yahoo! Intern

Number of Comments 9 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

John Briggs, senior editor for Yahoo! News Full Coverage, is getting schooled! As a recipient of the prestigious John S. Knight Fellowship, John will join a class of 12 U.S. and eight international journalists given the opportunity to “study and reflect, far away from newsroom deadline pressures” at Stanford University this fall.
John Briggs

The Knight Fellowship is in its 41st year, but John, a nine-year Yahoo! veteran, is the first U.S.-based Fellow in the history of the program whose journalism experience comes exclusively from a web-based news outlet. (Former Knight Fellows Bill Gannon and Elizabeth Osder came from backgrounds in traditional journalism and now work at Yahoo!.) I had a chance to sit down with John to get some skinny on his path to glory and what this distinction means for online news.

A native of Madison, Wisconsin with a degree in East Asian area studies from his hometown university, John spent four years in Japan after graduating, but when he returned in 1995, he still wasn’t ready to settle down. He began a yearlong global excursion with stops in Latin America, Africa, and Europe, and eventually settled in San Francisco.

In 1997, he got a gig at a little-known company with a funny name. “Yahoo! was looking for people with a lot of general knowledge, so it helped to say I’d seen some of the world,” he explained to me. John began work at Yahoo! as a surfer, finding and categorizing web sites for the Yahoo! Directory, and joined Yahoo! News Full Coverage a little over a year later.

Back then, the Internet was just a baby. John believes that his selection as a Knight Fellow reflects the coming of age of web-based news. “The Internet has such incredible visibility and such immense influence on journalism, and I’m absolutely honored to have been selected,” he said. “Only in this last year has Yahoo! had truly original content, with Yahoo! News correspondents like Kevin Sites. I think picking somebody from Yahoo! really adds to the status and recognition of online journalism.”

Before going back to school, John had to create his own independent study program. His topic is the “framing of political communication, and its effect on news coverage and public opinion.” He became interested in this topic due to his work at Yahoo! Full Coverage, where users can find topical collections of news, analysis, op-ed content, and multimedia from sources all over the Internet, programmed by human editors. Early on though, most online news came from wire services. “They’ll send us version after version,” says John. “But the earliest articles they send are raw communication; there’s no analysis, no sourcing, and no second points of view. When we post these early versions of a story, people get unfiltered, framed political communication. I was curious about this process, and I wanted to study it.”

Besides academics, networking is a key advantage of the Fellowship program. “I didn’t work in a newsroom before I worked at Yahoo! so my industry connections are pretty limited,” John said. The program has a strong commitment to selecting a diverse class of Fellows, from reporters at The New York Times and The Washington Post to a representative from UOL, an online publication in Brazil. “That’s why this is a tremendous opportunity for me to get to know 19 other journalists,” he said.

Overall, “the Knight Fellowship will give me the chance to reflect on my work by virtue of the fact that I get to step away,” says John. “Hopefully, I can incorporate the ideas I get, both from my peers and the university, into the ever growing media outlet that is Yahoo!.”

Good luck, John, and make sure to take lots of notes!

9 Comments Add your own

Comment gc | August 9th, 2006 at 7:26 am

Nice.
Good luck, John.

Comment Siddhartha | August 9th, 2006 at 9:02 am

Doreen!

What a delightfully catchy and punderful first sentence! The story provides the perfect balance between the strict somber attitude of a “news story” and the semi-informal, free feeling of a “blog” (“Good luck, John, and make sure to take lots of notes”). It fulfills its role as an easy-to-read Yahoo! Anecdote.

Best,

~Siddhartha

Comment havi hoffman | August 9th, 2006 at 9:49 am

Go JB — you’re the hardest-workin’ news guy I know. (And congrats Doreen on your first YA post. A brilliant debut.)

Comment Helen | August 9th, 2006 at 10:17 pm

An extremely well-written story, both humorous and informative. It’s great to see an intern able to write pieces of such caliber. Best of luck to john.

Comment Sathya Prakash | August 10th, 2006 at 10:58 am

Congratulations John. What a great achievement.

Comment Laura Hertzfeld | August 11th, 2006 at 11:25 am

Life on full coverage won’t be the same! I can’t wait to sit in on a ‘Prof.’ Briggs guest lecture about the wonders of the Internets.
Congrats again!

Comment Randy Stewart | August 18th, 2006 at 5:34 pm

I knew my little Johnny would grow up and make me proud! Congrats dude. I knew you wouldn’t be in LA long.

Cheers,
Randy

Comment marvin menzin | November 9th, 2006 at 8:49 am

To John Briggs, News editor Yahoo

I use Yahoo as my home page- but am thinking of changing. I would like contact info for news editor so I can privately email comments on your coverage- which in some areas needs improvement. thanks

Comment Linda O'Byrne | October 30th, 2008 at 8:11 pm

I agree with Marvin. I also use Yahoo as my home page, but am considering changing due to the political news coverage. I would also like contact info for the current news editor.