Rob Curley Visits George Mason University

 

When Rob Curley walked into a small meeting room in George Mason University’s Student Union Two Building, it was easy to deduce that if you had never seen the man before, chances were you didn’t realize it was him walking in. 

Sporting a t-shirt and jeans, the Washington Post genius walked into the room like one of the 30-some students who had come to hear his lecture.  Only, lecture isn’t the right word to describe the presentation brought by Curley, who started by turning off the lights and saying, “I look better when you can’t see me.”  

 The presentation that followed was filled with comedic instances and brilliant intellect.  The self-proclaimed “Mac-Nerd” told students that new web-journalism must be a series of dialogues, not monologues. “Newspapers should have understood this, but they didn’t.”

Curley believes that while newsrooms are getting smaller and interests in printed news are decreasing, newspapers are not headed for obliteration. The Washington Post is a perfect example of a newspaper adapting to the new Web world.

“Websites must be built by the way they work, not the way they should work,” Curley said, which is one of the reasons The Post has one of the most visited news sites in the U.S. Most notable is the on-line video series entitled “On Being.” Curley presented “episodes” of this popular web show that features “regular” people discussing their lives as they live it.  But, when asked if this constituted as journalism, Curley only had one thing to say: “I don’t know.”