Aaron Besecker, Criminal justice and breaking news reporter at the Buffalo News held a conference at our class this week. He was invited by his coworker and adjunct professor Keith McShea. Besecker originally graduated with a degree in sociology from UB in 2002, but then went on to do his Masters in magazine, newspaper and online journalism from Syracuse University. Since then he has been working with the Buffalo News for the past 12 years.
Students asked him all kinds of questions. When asked what his first gig was, He said that his first report was a tryout for the Niagara Falls Gazette at a courtroom. He’s also had times in which he had to drive to snowstorms and even come across some gruesome crime scenes to cover a story. I was very interested in the business model of the whole newspaper business so I decided to ask whats the main source of revenue for the buffalo news website, I was curious whether it was Ad revenue or a subscription-based model, to which he replied that website is now leaning towards getting more people to subscribe, as in the past 70% of revenue was from subscriptions whereas 30% came from Ads that are displayed on the website. Right now he says that there is not much revenue from Ads and that most of it will be coming subscriptions and circulation, as they only make a certain fraction of a penny from each view on their Ads. He also mentioned that the Buffalo News business model is different from regular newspaper business models as they differ by the audience that they have.
I was also curious if he a story published and then had to remove it for any reason, to which he replied that it has not happened to him yet, but the only thing that would happen is edits to existing stories. He said that sources or families would contact him if they needed a name redacted or if there are any new updates to a story to which he would perform the necessary updates. I also found it amusing when a student asked Besecker where he sees himself in the next 10 to 15 years, he replied:” I don’t wanna think about man ”. Which kind of what I would say when asked the same question.
I feel that this conference was very beneficial to the students of #UBeng397 as it showed us first-hand experience of how it’s like to be a reporter and it was a great privilege to have some with great experience such as Besecker to have been in our class.
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