Amy Swann I learned from the greatest editor ever, James Folker at The Augusta Chronicle, to ask all the questions, talk to as many involved as possible and try to put the event into context.

He taught me to love crime writing and to take it a step above the usual recitation of a police report. I remember one night after a shooting he asked me how many bullets were in the gun. I had no idea so he had me make calls until I knew the answer. He also taught me the importance of knocking on doors and wearing down shoe leather. (I’m fixin’ to sound old) In the late 80s we didn’t have the Internet to track down people. We had to rely on our city directory, our in-house library and working our sources.

Those lessons served me well 15 years later when I was night city editor at The Chronicle. We had a breaking story where a pediatric oncology nurse was missing and there was evidence she had walked in on a burglary at her mother’s house. We ended up, through lots of calls, getting a name of a “person of interest” – I hate that cop speak. In our library we found out the guy had dated the woman’s younger sister and had been her escort to her debutante ball. That was such a great detail and no one else had it till we printed it.

I was editor all four days of the search and eventual recovery of the woman’s body and arrest of her killer. When my reporters came in each day (I had a team for this) we wrote a list of questions on a big white board, which we crossed off as they were answered in the stories.

We won an award for the coverage and I credit Folker, my curmudgeonly nemesis/mentor for that. As for new media. my opinion is that stories written exclusively for the Internet are shallow, play loose with the facts and poorly sourced. I understand that we are in transition and I embraced posting breaking news online because for the first time, we had an edge over TV.

Maybe I’m just cranky, but new media needs to grow up and put on their big boy pants.

Until then, I’ll remain skeptical.