Eddie Leonard is pleased with his Digital Footprint but he is still looking to improve it

I was very pleased with the results I found when I typed in, “Eddie Leonard UConn” into Google on Tues­day. The first result that popped up on to the screen was a link to my Twit­ter pro­file. I am com­fort­able with this because I want pro­fes­sion­als to look at my pro­file. I always keep it clean and I always pub­lish my best work on my pro­file for peo­ple to view.

I would rate my dig­i­tal foot­print as an excel­lent foot­print so far. I came up in the first nine links links when I typed in “Eddie Leonard UConn”, the first nine links when I typed in, “Eddie Leonard UCTV” and the first ten links when I typed in, “Eddie Leonard Dai­ly Cam­pus.”

I was real­ly impressed with the search results because all of my work over the last cou­ple years was right there. One sim­ple click of  a Dai­ly Cam­pus arti­cle brought me to an archive of most of my arti­cles. The same is true for UCTV. A cou­ple of my broad­cast pack­ages linked to UCTV, where all my work is located.

I believe my dig­i­tal foot­print reflects pos­i­tive­ly on my rep­u­ta­tion as a jour­nal­ist because the only thing that appears is my work in jour­nal­ism over the past cou­ple years. Google showed a vari­ety of work, in both print jour­nal­ism at the Dai­ly Cam­pus and in broad­cast jour­nal­ism at UCTV.

I believe I need to con­tin­ue to con­duct myself in a pro­fes­sion­al man­ner in order to gain an audi­ence’s trust. It may seem sil­ly now bom­bard­ing high school friends with con­stant broad­casts and arti­cles, but you have to grow up soon­er or lat­er. Using Twit­ter to be the fun­ny guy is great for some peo­ple but it is not great for peo­ple who want­ed to be tak­en seri­ous­ly in the field of jour­nal­ism upon grad­u­a­tion. I save my per­son­al and “fun­ny” remarks for face to face con­ver­sa­tions with friends.

Audi­ence Engagement 

I am com­fort­able with the role of being a con­ver­sa­tion leader and not just a broad­cast­er. The rea­son I am com­fort­able with this is because I am a jour­nal­ist. A jour­nal­ist is sup­posed learn infor­ma­tion and help the audi­ence under­stand it. Some­times it can be as sim­ple as broad­cast­ing but every news out­let in the world is doing that. It is not unique at all.

I also believe that jour­nal­ists should not be afraid to let read­ers post com­ments on their blogs. I agree with Richard Gin­gras’ arti­cle, Online Chaos Demands Rad­i­cal Action by Jour­nal­ism to Earn Trust. Gin­gras empha­sizes that jour­nal­ists should open them­selves up to their read­ers in order to gain their trust. Allow­ing com­ments and tweets is a per­fect way to do this. Sure, some peo­ple may abuse the priv­i­lege, but most peo­ple will offer insight­ful remarks that may lead to oth­er sources. That is what jour­nal­ism is all about.

For exam­ple, say the pres­i­dent is shot. How do I sep­a­rate myself from the mil­lion oth­er sto­ries describ­ing the who, what, where, when, and why. Hon­est­ly, it is very dif­fi­cult. How­ev­er, the new role in jour­nal­ism allows jour­nal­ists to express them­selves. I can build a fol­low­ing with an audi­ence on a spe­cif­ic aspect of why he was shot, what can we do about it, and the dif­fer­ent par­ties impact­ed. There are hun­dreds of ideas and con­ver­sa­tions that can be gen­er­at­ed in a sto­ry rather than just relay­ing the same information.