Categories: OLD Media Moves

Why a NY Times tech reporter likes to print out documents

Erin Griffith

New York Times technology reporter Erin Griffith talked about the technology she uses for her job and why she still likes paper documents.

Here is an excerpt:

What tech tools do you rely on the most for work?

This is least techie answer possible, but aside from email and my phone’s voice recorder, it’s probably paper. (Sorry, trees, including the one this article will be printed on.) For every big story I do, I print out huge stacks of background reading on the executives and industry. They’re good for flights since there’s no danger of bad Wi-Fi or no outlets.

When I’m writing a longer story, I print out all my interview notes and spread the pages across my kitchen table (or floor), in the manner of a chef’s mise en place. This helps me organize my thoughts before I dive into the writing. I don’t understand how people can work off 30 different documents on one tiny laptop screen.

I also find it very comforting to constantly make and remake to-do lists on whatever paper I can find — old envelopes and junk mail, receipts, notepads shaped like my first initial, Post-its. I leave a trail of these everywhere I go, like the Johnny Appleseed of productivity.

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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