A new perspective at CNN

By Donecia Reed
October 11, 2017 11:52 p.m. ET

This CNN logo made of license plate numbers stands proudly outside of the newsroom.

The Cable News Network (CNN) represents the gold standard of news coverage and success for many journalism students. As an Atlanta resident, I have toured the CNN headquarters many times. Normally, a visitor sees news studios and journalists in the newsroom from a distance. But on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017, I took a behind-the-scenes tour with Monte Plott, CNN digital news editor, that changed my perspective on how news works.

During Plott’s tour, I stood in the midst of a newsroom full of journalists who didn’t have the time to pay attention to me. Some of them were sitting at their desks, answering emails and looking up information, while others were up pacing and jotting ideas down, lending new meaning to thinking on your feet.

“The only thing we (journalists) have going for us is credibility,” says CNN Digital News Editor Monte Plott. “If we lose that — if we get things wrong, doesn’t matter why or how we got them wrong, just that we screwed up — then we’re out of business.”
I witnessed journalists in the business, working hard to get it right.