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Behind the Scenes
A lot has changed since 1999, and throughout that time Jesse Sarles has been working as an online journalist. He has been riding the wave of change since he started at a Web site for a CBS television station in Wisconsin.
Before Twitter, Facebook, iPods and even before blogs, Sarles was sharpening his skills in this new medium. A classically trained journalist, Sarles worked in radio and TV news before jumping into the new world that is the Internet. Since then, he says he has spent countless hours learning how to use software that is now antiquated, seen the Web sites he's worked on go through countless redesigns and has even been laid off two different times (as the dot-com bubble burst in 2001).
Sarles has been at the helm of cbs4denver.com since 2002, and says his proudest moments have come during elections. On election nights the station has always pulled out all the stops for Web visitors, producing extended, commercial free Webcasts. These Web-exclusive presentations have included roundtable discussions with everyone from political experts to rock stars and have engaged people in new and interactive ways.
Sarles has won three regional Edward R. Murrow awards, two Emmy awards, a Colorado Associated Press award and a Colorado Broadcasters Association award for his work. He's a graduate of the Poynter Institute's program for online leaders, is a member of the Radio-Television News Directors Association and has partnered with the Annenberg Public Policy Center in two different studies of Internet user behavior and online trends.
He was quoted in 2006 talking about his profession in in RTNDA's Communicator (a magazine "targeted to news directors, reporters, anchors and producers at radio and television stations"). (Full Article)
Milton Academy in Boston, where Sarles went to high school, ran a feature on journalism in their school magazine and included an interview with him.
Sarles is a father of three and can often be found at home teaching his young children how to use a mouse and surf the Web. "It's never too early to start," Sarles says.
