Journalism Lives

Best of 2010: Four noteworthy future of news blog posts you may have missed

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 06:00:00 -0800

1. South African Paper's Mobile Site Focuses on 'Nowness'

Knight News Challenge, May 24

It pains us to see news organizations devote so much of their limited resources to platform-specific apps — frequently at the expense of their mobile sites. Apps are costly to develop, tedious to update, and, for all their trouble, serve only a fraction of the market.

On top of that, too often, they're more flash than substance, merely repackaging regular Web content rather than catering to mobile users' unique needs.

For all these reasons, it was a breath of fresh air to read about Grahamstown NOW, a nuts-and-bolts newspaper mobile site focused on "nowness."

It's not fancy or shiny - on the surface it appears to be just another mobile site. But there's a lot of depth below that surface. What it lacks in glitz and glam, it makes up for in its ability to serve up a snapshot at any given point in time of what's just happened, currently happening, or about to happen in Grahamstown.

2. Tag-team journalism: A case study of the California Watch distribution model

California Watch, July 27

News organizations are getting that serving more than one platform at a time and collaborating with the folks formerly known as the audience are no longer choices.

What they're not getting quite as well is that they don't have to use all platforms at all times and that the same technologies they're using to work with the folks formerly known as the audience should be used to work with the folks formerly known as the competition.

Investigative reporting nonprofit California Watch is an exception, as the education package — involving almost 20 media partners — detailed in this case study makes plain.

If we had one word to describe our distribution model it would be this: flexible. We craft a new distribution strategy for each story we produce, depending on the topic and the intensity of local interest.

3. The kids are alright, part 2: What news organizations can do to attract, and keep, young consumers

Nieman Journalism Lab, Aug. 19

Observers and especially practitioners can get so absorbed in anticipating the future they overlook that the future is right down the street at the neighborhood school. I wrote as much in my very first blog post for grad school last fall.

Today's young people are your (or someone else's) future users. They're already exhibiting some of the habits and tastes you will have to satisfy. To the extent they're not, you can shape their habits and tastes.

This applies to the news industry as much as any. Christopher Sopher, a University of North Carolina senior and author of the Younger Thinking blog, offers some insight.

News organizations need to learn from soda and snack producers and systematically infiltrate schools across the country with their products. There’s strong evidence that news-based, experiential, and interactive course design [pdf] — as well as the use of news in classrooms and the presence of strong student-produced publications — can both increase the likelihood that students will continue to seek news regularly in the future.

4. How the shift to mobile is revolutionising online news design

TheMediaBriefing, Oct. 10

Most of today's news sites aren't going to win any beauty contests, we blogged in August. Of course, this goes more than skin deep. Inefficient and cluttered design interferes with the communication itself.

Fortunately, the constraints of small screens are forcing cleaner, smarter designs, Guardian information architect Martin Belam writes.

Designing for mobile first means getting down to the real atoms of delivering news. And services like Instapaper, or Readability are reminding us that news stories are there to be read without clutter. By concentrating on the pure reading experience, and ditching the bells and whistles that make up so much online furniture, they encourage deeper and more engaged reading.

Image by ilco.

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What if newspapers were invented today?

Sun, 05 Dec 2010 14:40:00 -0800

What would newspapers look like if they were invented today? Swedish media group Bonnier's News+ tablet concept is one answer.

As elegantly demonstrated in the video below, News+ iPad apps seek to create an intimate daily news narrative that "filter(s) out the din of the Web."

Users receive a new edition each morning that has a clear beginning and end. During the day they can follow updates on specific topics across devices, share reactions with friends and journalists and bookmark content for later. At night they can return to what they saved and browse selections recommended by their social network and the publisher.

I have to say, I don't think there's any piece of marketing that's done more to make we want a tablet, not even those snappy iPad spots. I'm special, of course: I'm a newspaper geek. Newspaper geeks, however, aren't a growth market. As one commenter on Bonnier's video put it, "It's interesting to also target people who love the newspaper. Who are those people?"

They might not describe themselves as such, but there are more newspaper geeks out there than you think. Even those who've never picked up a newspaper want to feel connected to and understand the world around them, two things newspapers, perhaps more than any other single medium, have long helped people do. The modern fragmentation of information sources, I'd offer, increases, not decreases, demand for context and belonging.

Even those who've never picked up a newspaper want to feel connected to and understand the world around them, two things newspapers, perhaps more than any other single medium, have long helped people do.

Another video commenter observed that News+ doesn't really do anything that isn't already being done. "Other than tablet-based formatting," he asked, "where is the Web 3.0 / semantic Web innovation here?" I don't disagree, and toward that end, would like to see News+ or something like it be developed for the open Web. But, what's wrong with saying, "Let's get what we know and understand right, package it smartly, and iterate from there?"

Indeed, some of News+'s most brilliant features are about, now that we have the technology, righting longtime Web 1.0 and 2.0 wrongs. These are things publishers can and should be righting on all digital platforms, things like:

Offering advertisements that are useful and add value to rather than distract from the experience. In the video, a user browses a map of real estate listings and books an appointment with an agent directly within an ad.

Giving visual journalism "its rightful place as an important part of the news narrative." Honestly, if I were a photojournalist or videojournalist working in mainstream news, I would hate the current setup. Only in rare spaces does the presentation match these mediums' awesome storytelling power.

Recognizing that less is more, that expert news judgment is best applied helping people sort through their seemingly infinite choices rather than piling on more.

What do you think of News+? If you were recreating the newspaper, what would you keep? What would you change?

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UGC (the remix version)

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 12:27:00 -0800

On its face, it's just a list of restaurants. All it accomplished, however, is a list in itself.

My paper's 50 best restaurants list, unveiled in countdown fashion last week, introduced readers to our new dining critic, drew visitors to our website, sparked conversation on social media, let us play in emerging spaces, recruited text alert subscribers, showcased our (relatively) recently revived entertainment tabloid and reaffirmed the online and offline authority of our brand.

Of course, it wouldn't have done any of this if it weren't engaging. One of the most revealing symptoms of that engagement was an unsolicited user contribution. A reader saw value in our list to the degree he felt compelled to add to that value — "Cognitive Surplus" and "Spreadable Media" economics in action.

Over lunch, the reader used free online tools, mostly Google Refine, to create a data-rich, mobile friendly remix. His presentation does not include any information ours does not, but it repackages the content nicely.

Granted, this isn't from just any reader — it's from EveryBlock co-founder Paul Smith. But its lessons apply broadly: Strong user-generated content doesn't have to be new content, and, often it is generated spontaneously, outside of traditional UGC channels.

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Before you get all app happy… The case for HTML5 over native apps

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 12:07:00 -0800

There's an app for that. And that. And that. But should there be? Or will there be? Platform-specific mobile applications might seem like the next big thing, but there are indications that they could be a passing fad, like Flash splash pages.

That's the comparison offered in a MobileBeat article this week, one of a few recent readings that make a case against native apps and in favor of standardized solutions like HTML5. The two other pieces, from mobile notification and purchase vendor Urban Airship and tutorial site Nettuts+, respectively, address developers' and businesses' mutual interest in creating consistent user experiences, which native apps complicate, and cover ways HTML5 can already be used in app development.

Like Flash splash pages, Peter Yared writes at Mobile Beat, native apps are expensive to develop and cumbersome to update. And, for all the resources they require, each serves only a fraction of the market.

On top of that, Yared goes on, apps easily get lost in app stores (especially on Android), forcing publishers to hawk them on their sites anyway. In the case of iOS, it's worth adding, apps are subject to a sometimes lengthy approval process that enforces restrictions on publishers' content and how they monetize it.

In part because publishers are going to be developing websites and mobile websites with HTML5 anyway, HTML5 apps are an attractive alternative. This synergy, the comparatively greater pool of HTML developers versus platform-specific programmers, the removal of any app store restrictions, and the ability to serve all platforms with a single app, would expectedly reduce the cost and hassle of building and maintaining apps.

HTML5 apps can't, at least not easily, achieve quite all of the functionality that native apps can — like accessing devices' cameras and local files systems. And this is something one would expect mobile companies to try to maintain through the design of their software and hardware. Still, the Nettuts+ article notes, HTML5 can accomplish most if not all of what the average publishers' requires.

At this point, there are merits to both approaches, but, publishers, especially smaller ones, should carefully weigh what they are gaining and what they are giving up by packaging content in a native app versus an HTML5 app — or even just incorporating it into a robust mobile website.

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Embrace change, it happens

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 05:30:00 -0800

Storytelling is changing, so says the headline in a Journalistics post by Bethany Bengtson. Yes, of course she’s right, but I like her point. Some journalists have spent too much time lamenting new forms of publishing technology, like the web, blogging and social media, but storytelling will continue to evolve at a blistering pace. Get used to it, my friends.

Oh, and Bethany advises you also embrace shorter form content, keeping those blog posts under 500 words. Man, I hope she doesn’t take offense to this long post or this one.

Speaking of change, Jim Brady is no longer at TBD. We’ve followed TBD from the beginning, and you could count us as fans of their work. TBD Publisher Robert Allbritton said he and Brady had some “stylistic differences,” and it would seem Allbritton wants to focus more on original content. Under Brady, TBD was/is all about aggregation and technology.

While I doubt the talented staff there will lose sight of what’s over the horizon, the article surfaced a few questions for me. 1. Can news orgs afford to focus on just one of these – content, aggregation or technology? 2. If newsroom leaders must focus on more than one, how do they balance the attention each important aspect receives?

What are your thoughts?

Image by statianzo.

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Three free resources for covering the mobile/location-based midterm

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:04:00 -0700

The previous three election cycles, blogs, Web video and social media emerged as mainstream tools for covering and influencing the political process. This time around, it's the mobile Web and location-based services that are making inroads. If you've only just caught up with the first three, don't panic. With these free, easy-to-implement resources, virtually anyone can have a place in this newest space.

Google Election Center

Google Election Center offers an embed code for a customizable map widget your readers can use to find their local polling place, ballot information and contact details for election offices. If information for your area is incomplete, you may add to Google's database. (Mobile publishers can point their audiences to this version of the map.)

Foursquare I Voted data visualization

Foursquare is also offering an embeddable map. Available starting election day morning, it will aggregate real-time check-in data for more than 100,000 polling locations.

Twitter Fast Follow

If, on election day or any other busy news day, you ever need to create a text alert service on the fly, Twitter Fast Follow is a way to do it. In fact, every Twitter account already doubles as a text alert system. All you have to do is promote the fact that anyone with a mobile phone — whether they're on Twitter or not — can receive your tweets via SMS by texting “follow NameOfYourTwitterAccount” to 40404.

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Guardian's Martin Belam on developing and designing news for the mobile Web

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 03:29:00 -0700

It's remarkable how much newspapers look like their parents. And grandparents. And great grandparents. With their medium in its second generation, a similar thing is happening now with news Web pages.

Why this is, and what it means for publishing's next iteration, is the thesis of a short, stimulating piece published this week on TheMediaBriefing.

Products of their times

Newspapers and news Web pages look the way they do, Guardian information architect Martin Belam writes, because of the technological envrionments in which they were created.

In the days of physical type, "interchangeable blocks of text with common widths" were a good way to accommodate late-breaking revisions. In the early days of the Web, "chunks of articles of broadly similar length" served a similar function on larger-monitor, consumption-oriented desktop computers.

Well, we're in the early days of mobile and tablets now. And it's getting later by the second. To paraphrase Mel Brooks' "Spaceballs," then will be now soon.

Tiny screens, many models

In "How the shift to mobile is revolutionising online news design," Belam previews what then will look like. Once again, form will follow function. The influential factors this time will be mobile screens' small size and the diversity of device types.

Design implications

There simply isn't room for 15 related story links, a most read panel, and 100 ways to share an article on the screen of a smartphone or small tablet - not to mention advertising. This forces a concentration on what the user is most likely to want to do next after consuming a story. ... It also means thinking about what are the real interactions you are hoping to encourage from the reader - to share the story, to comment on the story, or to dive deeper into a specific topic?

Development implications

In order to serve a wide range of devices, with differing screensizes and aspect ratios, rather than starting from scratch with a unique app and codebase each time, publishers will most likely ultimately have to develop "one-size-adapts-to-all" systems, relying on open standards like HTML5 and CSS3 to deliver content.

For newspapers and other legacy media organizations this is the best possible news. It's a back to basics approach that rewards their core values of editorial efficiency, consistency and quality.

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It's a post, it's a list, it's a baseball analogy: 17 'smallball' tactics for big digital success

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 03:07:00 -0700

This blog is nearly three months old, and somehow we've avoided baseball analogies.

Until now.

Last week during game 6 of the ALCS on TBS, I caught the tail end of a segment extolling the Texas Rangers' smallball prowess. The announcers were carrying on about a list of 17 run production virtues (which I can't find online for the life of me) the team posts in its dugout. You know, the little things — moving runners over, taking the extra base — that, when strung together, can lead to big things.

That got me thinking: What would a smallball list for interactive news look like? What are small, fundamental things that virtually anyone can do that, if embraced widely and consistently, can make your news team a digital winner?

The meandering list below — containing 17 best practices, like the Rangers' — probably isn't refined enough to post in your dugout, or, er, cubicle. But it should get you thinking. The best part is these are specific tasks (except for, well, the first two) that almost anyone can do, not just multimedia vets or Web development power hitters.

But first…

Two overarching rules

These are kind of like "There's no crying in baseball."

1. Let the story determine the platform, not vice versa.

2. The process is becoming the product. The less you fight this and the more ways you find to work with it, the easier life will be.

Now, on to the nittier, grittier suggestions, organized by subject area.

News gathering

3. Make a note of PDFs and other electronic documents — or even websites or online videos — consulted for a story; users might like to consult them, too.

4. Encourage every smart phone owner in your newsroom to install basic live publishing apps like Qik and Ustream for video and Plixi and Instagram for pictures. If they find news or news finds them, these might come in handy, even if it's just to share information with colleagues.

SEO

5. Include alt text, description meta tags, keyword-rich titles.

6. Link to related content. (Good for context, too.)

7. Retain the same story URL for the duration of a breaking news story, writing through it, or, probably better, updating it in a serial, blog-like fashion. (Also good for context.)

Mobile

8. Include thumbnails with lead stories.

9. On social media, link to mobile-friendly versions of breaking news stories.

10. When applicable, append mobile articles with addresses of places mentioned in or related to the story. Most mobile browsers automatically pull up a map when users tap locational text.

Social Media

11. Respond to social media mentions.

12. On Facebook, post articles with photos; on Twitter, RT, @ reply/mention, use hashtags; on Foursquare, leave tips.

13. Include reporters' Twitter handles at the end of their articles.

14. Reserve your brand name on the "next" platform/service/network, even if you don't plan to use it now.

UGC

15. When soliciting content, link to previous contributions users can emulate. This also shows people their stuff isn't going into some cyberspace black hole.

16. If a submission is exemplary, or just every now and then, personally thank your contributors.

17. Pretend you're a user and you see news breaking. Pretend you have a photo/video/tip and want to share it. Pretend you don't know how. How many clicks/taps on your Web/mobile site until you do know? If you're unhappy with your answer, make this information easier to find.

Creative Commons photo by Flickr user Nero.Lives
Modified Creative Commons photo by Flickr user erik jaeger

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Being mobile ready just means being ready

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 04:00:00 -0700

These days, it’s almost sacrilege for news sites not to have a mobile presence.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 40 percent of adults use the internet, email or instant messaging on a mobile phone (up from the 32% of Americans who did this in 2009). But what’s a small news operation to do?

Some smaller organizations may not have the budget for developing a mobile site or app. While that excuse may not be valid for long, there’s one thing you can do if your organization lacks a mobile-specific site.

These rules look familiar

Follow the rules of building any solid website. As Stefan Nagey, a managing director at Qorvis, says: “When you’ve done things right, people won’t be sure if you’ve done anything at all.” Nagey presented “The Mobile Web is Dead” at a MeetUp event, hosted by the Web Content Mavens group in Washington, D.C. He also emphasized the importance of leaning toward developing an app rather than a mobile site since apps tend to be a richer, more popular experience for consumers.

Bur if you lack the funds for programming a mobile app, he relayed some good advice for creating any site, like:

making sure your interface priorities match your business priorities.
writing clean, semantically correct markup.
creating SEO friendly content.
designing a clean, simple user interface.

Use what he called a “light touch,” and your website will function well, even though it’s not officially mobile-ready.

What do you think? Should news orgs definitely be mobile ready?

Photo by sgback.

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Crowdsourcing's many functions and how to apply them to news

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 16:55:00 -0700

Every field has its buzzwords. You know, words that are used so often to mean so many different things that their meaning starts to erode. At Journalism Lives, we've made restoring their meaning part of our mission. We blogged previously on "digital first" and "interactivity." Today we examine "crowdsourcing."

So, what is crowdsourcing? We'll let participants from the Oct. 6 #wjchat both show and tell you.

@henrymlopez: Commenting is crowd sourcing, if for nothing more than a diversity of opinion. So are scientific polls. #wjchat
@zachbehrens: Q1. Crowdsourcing is using the people as a news wire (you should still fact check, though). #wjchat
@ryanjz crowdsourcing is essentially putting a concept out there and soliciting data from the world at-large i.e. open-source journalism. #wjchat
@kimbui Q1: Crowdsourcing, using the wisdom of the crowd to enhance your reporting and your story presentation. #wjchat
@jeffsondermanCH: “Crowdsourcing” is used to describe many different things. From asking an open question to gathering scientific samples #wjchat

No definition is necessarily right or wrong or even better or worse. Some speak to specific applications while others try to be all-encompassing. Below I seek to organize the varying applications into what I'm calling crowdsourcing archetypes. But first, the broader definition.

Targeted, functional

Like some of the chat participants said, crowdsourcing can be very simple and traditional. @henrymlopez's observation that comments and polls are crowdsourcing, if only to obtain a diversity of opinion, is an insightful point.

At its heart, though, and what differentiates crowdsourcing from user-generated content at large, is its utility. It is targeted enough and involves enough people that it can solve important problems that would be impossible or prohibitively difficult for one person or group to solve on its own.

A recent Slate piece, mentioned in the #wjchat, on crowdsourcing medical advice, says Wired editors invented the term in 2006 to mean just that. "Seeking a problem's solution from a wide community," was how they put it.

Now, on to the types of problems crowdsourcing can solve and news and non-news examples for each.

Needle in a haystack

The more eyes looking at something, the less likely patterns or outliers will slip through the cracks.

News use: The Texas Tribune is a leader in promoting data content and making it accessible. Its efforts attract loads of page views as well as industry praise. The ability of all those eyeballs to uncover story leads was part of the reason the online-only publication made its most popular feature (data or otherwise), a state government payroll app, more user friendly.

Common use: Citizen scientists are fulfilling this archetype when they flag shapes or irregularities in thousands of telescope photos to help astronomers identify and classify galaxies.

Microtasks

The assembly line for the digital revolution. Split up large, tedious or complex projects into simple microtasks anyone can complete.

News use: On its citizen reporting network blog, ProPublica recently explained how it uses Amazon's Mechanical Turk to collect, reformat and de-duplicate data.

Common use: You're applying this function every time you fill out a reCAPTCHA, which in addition to fighting spam, digitizes books.

Wisdom of the crowd

Take advantage of people's collective knowledge and experiences to get more, more creative ideas more quickly or to hone in on the most popular ones.

News use: Tracking election day snafus with Crowdmap, like TBD did.

Common use: David Pogue's Twitter APB for hiccup cures is a fun example.

Network of networks

Study or enlist crowds to discover relationships. Good old fashioned networking but mapped out for you by the social graph.

News use: Everyday social media sourcing. Let the organizing power of online communities steer you to the person or piece of information you're looking for: Purusing Twitter lists to find like-minded people, for example, or identifying Foursquare mayors to find people who know a place or area well.

Common use: Every time you search for or stumble upon contacts on Facebook you're using crowdsourcing this way.

Crowdsourcing also is…

Before ending this post, and opening things up to the wisdom of the crowd, it's worth noting that crowdsourcing doesn't have to involve humans, doesn't have to involve computers and can involve internal audiences like coworkers as well as users.

With that said, wise crowd, what would you add to or change about this list?

Creative Commons photo by Flickr user victoriapeckham

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Embracing the power of the to-do list

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 19:42:00 -0700

Journalists and content creators have a lot to do.

Excuse us while we track down sources, mine Twitter and blogs for story ideas and attend editorial meetings and brainstorming sessions. Oh, and of course, I’m forgetting the distractions that pop up and the fires we have to extinguish every day. That being said, how do we keep track of the important tasks that need to get done, especially in a new media world where the responsibilities continue to stack up?

For me, it use to be an enormous amount of sticky notes, pasted around my computer screen. Thanks to technology – that’s changed.

Google Calendar: Steve and I have started using this tool for the very blog you’re reading now. It reminded me to write this post, but I wouldn’t have forgotten. Swear.

Benefits: Accessible from anywhere, sharable, able to be synced to many devices, email reminders.

Remember the Milk: I wrote a quick post on this tool on my personal blog. It’s another free service that allows you to create and categorize to-do lists in various ways. The crew at Remember the Milk has a premium version that gives you access to mobile apps for the iPhone and Android, support, plus other features.

Benefits: Fun-to-use interface, smart lists, unlimited lists and email reminders.

Why time management is crucial for content creation

If you’re not wasting time on the small stuff, you can concentrate on the big stuff.
You’ll have more time to write, photograph, code websites and create cool stuff.
You won’t forget things and tick off co-workers, sources and other people you rely on for help in creating your content.
The most important part of creating engaging, sticky content just might be planning. And with these tools, you’ll be on your way.

This is what has worked for me. What do you use to manage your to-do lists or projects?

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Create news experiences to keep your customers coming back

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 08:08:00 -0700

You're working in journalism in one of the most scary but exciting times in its history, what are you going to do now? You're… going to Disney World? If you can afford it, maybe you should. Why? Because, like Disney, you're in the business of creating experiences. At least you should be.

That's the gist of an essay, "The Third Way to Media Success," published this week by Miller-McCune Research. Chronicling work by Northwestern University journalism researchers, the piece challenges publishers to find a middle ground between spoonfeeding audiences what they think is good for them and blindly following analytics.

Drawing on examples from the Food Network, The Arizona Republic and Popular Science, among others, it proposes a "'third way' that couples creative expertise with deep knowledge of audience experiences to build long-term reader and viewer loyalty."

Rather than framing their work according to terms used by journalists like "news" and "features," the essay offers, content creators should frame their work according to terms used by their customers, like "makes me smarter," "feels good," "kills time," and "talk and share." In other words, they should seek to create experiences their audience enjoys.

A source in the article, whose firm publishes a Web portal for health care professionals, put it even more succinctly.

"Real success for any community-based site is getting people to come back on their own,” said Mike Alic, Advanstar’s vice president of strategic planning. “To do that, you need to be part of the narrative of their life.”

Another piece out this week, Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellow Joy Mayer's interview with California Watch public engagement manager Ashley Alvarado, struck a similar theme. Following a discussion of what engagement means and some of Alvarado's duties and projects, Mayer concluded:

We learn early on as journalists that people love pets and babies. Ashley also knows that they love to see themselves in the news, and for California Watch, that means covering what they’re invested in and have a personal stake in. They’ll come back over and over for that.

We recommend giving both pieces a read. Each is a "makes me smarter" experience.

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Interactivity is… well, fun. But what else?

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 03:00:00 -0700

Close your eyes. No, wait. First read the rest of this paragraph, then close your eyes. When you think of the word "interactivity," what comes to mind? Seriously, close your eyes now and think about it.

Open your eyes. Open your eyes. I said... OK, somehow that worked. Enter what you thought about in the box on this page.

Now look up at the dog. Now back at… Kidding, kidding. I'll leave Old Spice parodies to Elmo.

I'll guess that some of you thought of two people having a conversation. You know, the old-fashioned face-to-face kind. Others probably thought of the new kind of conversation taking place on social networks. Many, however, likely thought of something with more pizazz. Maybe a Flash presentation with moving graphics, video, sound and 3D-like effects. Certainly this is the right answer. Certainly this is more interactive than a simple chat or — is it, is it OK to say this, New York Times? — tweet.

It might be. It might not be. I'll make the case, though, that this humble blog post is more interactive than many more sophisticated presentations.

Interactivity has become such a buzzword that many otherwise thoughtful people don't fully think about what it means. They confuse bells and whistles for interactivity. Bells and whistles can contribute toward engagement — a topic for another post — but don't in and of themselves contribute toward interactivity.

More than any other two elements, interactivity is about multilateral feedback and choice. This blog post allows for ongoing human-to-human feedback — you can answer the poll or write a comment, I can respond to it in the comments or with a new post, and you can respond to my response by writing another comment or answering another poll — and virtually infinite choice — each of us can write pretty much anything we want.

The average Flash presentation allows for sporadic human-to-computer feedback — you hover over a button, it changes color; you click on it, up comes new text and graphics for you to click on or hover over — and limited choice — your options and Flash's responses have all been pre-determined by the developer.

Am I saying that text polls and comments are better than Flash presentations? No. What I'm saying is 1) Don't overlook opportunities for simple interactivity. And 2) Don't assume something's highly interactive just because it's highly involved.

Always think in terms of value-added. How is presenting this this way adding value for users? How is users accessing it this way adding value for you?

Creative Commons photo by Flickr user SMN

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Leaping and … landing

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 02:00:00 -0700

Giving up a good job to go back to school is never a small matter. Doing it during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression is something else altogether. Yet, both of us made the leap without looking back.

To us, the short-term uncertainty facing the economy was lesser than the long-term uncertainty facing our industry. Print was faltering because the folks formerly known as the audience wanted to be active, not passive. We worried that if we were passive, and not active, our careers might falter as well.

We wanted what we would later recognize as fundamental tenets of our newly chosen field: We wanted choice and control. Advanced degrees in interactive media, we were confident, offered us a level of choice and control that staying on our current tracks did not. Like we said, we leaped and didn’t look back. But we also could look ahead only so far. Without employers to return to after graduation, we did not know for sure what awaited us on the other side.

Well, now we finally know. This week we both started new full-time jobs. Steve is a community coordinator for The Baltimore Sun in Maryland. David is an online marketing specialist for The Arc in Washington, D.C. With the aforementioned short-term economic uncertainty stretching out a little longer than we — and millions of other job seekers — had hoped, we were fortunate to have found work of any kind. We are blessed to have found work in our field — work that we think will benefit this blog.

Dream job

by Steve Earley

It will take a lot more than yesterday's rainy commute to dampen my enthusiasm for my new job at my hometown newspaper. I grew up reading The Sun and long dreamed of working there. Helping steer its storied brand into a new journalistic era is a dream come true.

As one of three community coordinators on the newspaper's five-person community engagement team, I will represent The Sun online as well as offline and will support journalistic as well as promotional efforts. Maintaining social media accounts, networking with local bloggers, planning neighborhood events and managing digital projects are some of things I'll be doing as I start out. As my employer and industry evolve, so will I.

Tracking industry trends and testing emerging tools, part of the mission of this blog, is also part of my job description. This is among the many reasons I am confident that even though I have a lot less free time now, Journalism Lives will thrive, not suffer, as a result of my employment. I am already seeing that questions that come up here will lead me to answers at work, that questions that come up at work will lead me to answers here, and so forth.

I’ll share more about my work at The Sun in the weeks and months ahead. For now, however, I mostly want to thank the Journalism Lives community. By sharing your insights, you provided me with knowledge I applied during my interview. By sharing our content, you quickly built Journalism Lives into a brand I could trade on. Thank you again. Here’s to what’s next.

Content (and strategy) anyone?

by David A. Kennedy

I left journalism three years ago thinking I had left for good.

I wanted to go to grad school, study creative writing and pen a novel. It’s amazing what happens when you’re open to new possibilities. No matter which writing or English program I looked into, none of them felt right. It didn’t matter how passionate I was about writing, I just couldn’t convince myself that the path I thought I would embrace was the one for me.

I stopped fighting it, and a few days later I discovered Elon’s interactive media master's program. I stuck with storytelling, but added a new element and learned to tell stories in a much more multidimensional way. At my new job, with a national nonprofit that helps people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, I manage the website, social media and other new media efforts. To sum it up: I’m thrilled. I’ve never worked for a nonprofit, but I’m excited to be working for such a good cause.

Is it journalism? No. Do I still get to tell stories? Absolutely. Does it change the way I blog here? Maybe. I’m not a journalist anymore. There’s no dancing around that. I’m a former journalist, joining a large cadre of folks who once lived for scoops, deadlines and the rush of getting it right and getting it first.

However, I’m a content guy, pure and simple. All I do all day is manage it and think of ways to create compelling kinds of it. I’ll bet my marketing approach (dirty word to some journalists, I know) on posts here may serve our readers well. Journalism will continue to evolve faster than ever, and it will need new ideas from all angles. That includes former journalists with a passion for news and information, and a hungry, intelligent audience ready to participate — just like you guys.

What's next?

We plan to keep on analyzing, strategizing, writing and posting right here. We hope you'll keep reading. In many ways, we strive to keep leaping and landing.

Creative Commons photo by Flickr user Jesse Gardner

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We see video in your future

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 16:40:00 -0700

A confluence of trends is making online video more important, and, in many respects, easier to do…

Candidates "broadcasting themselves" — and their opponnents — by now seems like old hat. And it is. This fall, Web video is part of virtually every big campaign's toolbelt. With political spots spreading across the net like stink bugs, it's easy to forget that this is just the second midterm of the YouTube era.

That's right, four years ago online video as we know it — fueled by Flash compression and broadband adoption — was just beginning to hit its stride. If Web video was only getting going then, there's no telling what it will look four years from now. The five trends outlined below, however, offer some clues:

Internet TV

It looks like the gamechanger that is the marriage of the Web and television sets might finally be upon us. The new Google TV, a revamped Apple TV, their competitors and next-generation video game consoles promise to finally deliver true Internet TV, possibly as soon as this fall. Consider this your save the date.

Mobile video

Web video on family room bigscreens promises to be, um, big, but so does video on the smallscreens in our pockets and purses. Mobile video is "exploding," and should grow even faster as more 4G networks come online, ReadWriteWeb reports. Meanwhile, tablets, another technology that appears to be finally living up to its hype, are creating a brand new market for longer-form, higher production value Web video.

Social video

Even the least social media savvy among us probably knows the term "viral video." Yes, as Rick Astley, Kevin Heinz and Jill Peterson and Antoine Dodson know all too well, videos are the most spreadable of spreadable media. Videos also promote the stickiness, or prolonged engagement, advertisers covet. All of this makes video likely to be a big part of any social network's growth strategy, as we're seeing with the #NewTwitter. Twitter's biggest update since its 2006 launch allows users to view video and other media embedded in tweets without leaving the service.

Broadband expansion

One out of every three American adults does not have high-speed Internet in his or her home. Watching video, tedious on dial-up, is impossible, obviously, for the 80 million Americans with no home Internet access of any kind. The federal government and corporate projects like Google Fiber are making earnest efforts to bring highspeed into more households. This, in addition to providing residents with a service some countries have deemed a human right, will increase demand for Web video.

Production and distribution advances

As demand for online video increases, it's, fortunately, becoming easier to fulfill thanks to technological advances in video acquisition, editing and distribution.

Bursting onto the market three years ago, super portable, super easy to use Flip video cameras turn anyone holding one into a potential videojournalist. By offering similar functionality plus live-streaming ability on a device users are already carrying around, video camera-equipped smart phones could displace Flips and similar cameras as quickly as they arrived, some predict.

The rise of cloud computing, meanwhile, both simplifies storage of this data-heavy medium and creates exciting collaboration opportunities, as video editing community Stroome demonstrates.

Finally, HTML5, in addition to enabling some real nifty interactivity, eliminates the need for video plugins, making life easier for developers and providing users a consistent experience across platforms.

…Yet, few news orgs excel at it

Newspapers and television stations should excel in online video. However, the results have proved spotty for a number of reasons: the news industry has seen massive layoffs in the past few years, resulting in fewer individuals who may have the skills to create videos and less money to devote to new projects; journalists are crunched for time, so creating quality videos becomes a challenge; and repurposing video content on an ever-evolving news cycle makes for another huge challenge.

What to do, what to do? Our advice? Baby steps. First, let’s take a look at some examples of how some news organizations use video.

60 Minutes

This journalistic giant uses video incredibly well. Of course, it helps that its main medium is television, but notice how all the big pieces are chunked into shorter videos, a better fit for an online audience. They have longer stories, like this one on football players coming from the island of American Samoa. But notice the shorter clips featured as well. Viewers have a choice as to how they want to consume that content.

The New York Times

The Times has a nice, visual, browsable video page, complete with a variety of content. This includes a daily news briefing and even simpler photo-driven stories. What works best here is the design. That’s not video-related, but you’d be hard-pressed not to click on more than one video story on this page.

The Roanoke Times

This Southwest Virginia paper has found success with its high school football video coverage, and that makes sense, since football is popular in many areas, especially the South. The Times also launched a multimedia investigative series on Interstate 81 crashes. It has a number of interactive features, but video drives the content, with several shorter videos that help weave a larger narrative.

The Shelby Star

This smaller newspaper in North Carolina has a specialized SUV, equipped with a dash-cam. Web users can watch the camera live if a reporter covers an event with the Star Car. This approach delivers such immediacy to Web users, and gives them that “I was there” feeling in the most convincing way.

Tips for better online video

If you want to start diving more into video, check out this resource from the Newspaper Association of America on online video. It’s two years old, but much of the advice still proves relevant. Next, dive into five simple tips that will help you make better online video for your news organization:

Aim for short. Two to five minutes still seems to be best practice in terms of video length. We would say, if you plan to go longer than two minutes, you better have a good story to tell.

Follow the basics of storytelling. You’ll want to make sure you gather footage that will set the scene and establish your characters. This footage is often called B-roll, and extends beyond the interviews you conduct. For example, if you’re shooting a high school football game, make sure you get close-ups of players, crowd reactions, action shots of cheerleaders and band members, scenic shots of helmets, stadium and signs and anything else that’s visually appealing.

If you nail only one thing, make sure you have excellent audio. Without solid audio, no one will stick around for the entirety of your videos — guaranteed.

Speaking of basics: use a tripod. Nothing screams amateur louder than shaky shot after shaky shot. You can shoot without a tripod, but make sure you have plenty of stable footage before you go it on your own.

Think outside the box and embrace simplicity. This video thing doesn’t have to be complicated. Perhaps behind the scenes footage of your newsroom planning sessions are just want your audience wants. And hey, you know you could just ask them what they want using social media.

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Use Scribd to share engaging documents

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 16:38:00 -0700

This is the second post in our weekly “Friday” series on news applications of social media tools. Yes, we know today’s Sunday. Wanna fight about it? Thanks to Scribd communications director Michelle Laird for helping us find examples and for explaining some of Scribd’s features.

The next time you have a print document you want to share with your audience, you might want to consider sharing it with Scribd. Not only does the YouTube for documents present content elegantly and load it quickly, its social functions connect it and your brand to millions of potential readers, including mobile users.

The free cloud-based service, which offers monetization opportunities for publishers, processes PDF, text, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and other file types into its special iPaper format, posts the converted documents on its searchable, Facebook- and Twitter-integrated, community-minded website and makes them embeddable on virtually any third-party space.

Here’s an example from one of Scribd’s most prodigious news org users, USA Today:

Yep, that’s the First Family’s tax return. How much did the president make from his two books? What charities did the Obamas donate to? Answers to these questions are just some of the financial details disclosed within the return’s 65 pages.

We’ll forgive you if you take a pause from our post and scroll through it a bit. We know users are fascinated by raw content. Maybe you’ve experienced this phenomenon with raw photos or video you’ve published. Well, it applies to documents as well. Police reports, court documents (last month’s order in the California gay marriage case went viral) and personal correspondences can be just as spreadable, and Scribd’s an excellent tool for spreading them.

Buttons within the viewer above (historically Flash-based, Scribd’s default view now uses HTML5) streamline reposting (via social networks or another embed) and downloading (as a PDF or text file).

For more than files and forms

Although probably the most popular use, primary documents — government and think tank reports, architectural renderings and political fliers are other examples — are far from the only type of content news organizations are sharing on Scribd. Here’s a look at some other ways outlets are using it:

Newspaper and magazine layouts

Although other tools in Scribd’s sphere like Issuu might be better for showcasing entire editions, Scribd is well suited for showing off a dynamic cover or front page or other high-impact layouts, like this Forbes spread on caddying for Jack Nicklaus.

Historical articles

As part of its coverage of this summer’s oppressive heat, The Dallas Morning News shared a print article chronicling a similar stretch of scorching weather 30 years ago.

Detailed maps and visualizations

The State newspaper offers University of South Carolina football fans this printable guide to gameday traffic.

Interactive cutouts

The Stanley Cup’s annual adventures with the champion hockey players who ferry it across the globe is a well-documented tradition. The paper of record in the hometown of last season’s NHL playoff winner invited its readers to join in the fun by printing out a 2D version of the legendary trophy and posing with it during their own travels.

Any other cool uses of Scribd you’ve seen out there? Any new ways you think news organizations could be using it? We’d love to hear about it.

Scribd Branded Reader

We’d be remiss if we didn’t highlight Scribd’s Branded Reader (used in each of the examples above), which is specifically targeted at media companies. News organizations and other outlets can now automatically apply to have documents they upload displayed in special viewer branded with their logo.

This encourages users to patronize the organizations that posted the document and ensures they get credit for posting it as it spreads across the Web. Right now branded readers are reserved for larger media companies.

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Five ways to make your content sharable

Sat, 18 Sep 2010 05:57:00 -0700

In today’s Web world, most of us journalists and content creators want what we produce to be shared. A share is one of the Web’s highest compliments, right next to a link. So how does this happen?

Well, it’s not easy to create sharable content. Why? It’s not an exact science. What strikes your audience as sharable one day might not work on the next. Frustrating? Maybe, but we encourage you to take that as a challenge.

On Labor Day, Steve and I collaborated on a post called “The changing face of journalism jobs.” To date, according to BackType, it’s our most shared post. We were thrilled at its success. Heck, if this were our post on news games, we’d be wearing newspaper sailor hats. But let’s not dwell on that missed opportunity for our audience... Instead, let’s focus on what Steve and I learned in creating that jobs post, why we think it was shared, and continues to be shared so much.

Be relevant. The post focused on jobs and was created on Labor Day. So the nature of what people do for a living was on the forefront of our readers' minds. The journalism industry itself is in an massive evolution, so journalists new and old want to know where they fit in. This post does that in a way. Plus, as Anna Tarkov pointed out, it may have been shared to cheer up a lot of out-of-work journalists.
Be able to change plans quickly. Steve and I had planned a different post for that day, but we ditched it when Steve realized a post about journalism jobs would be a better fit. He was right, and I’m glad we started from scratch on the jobs post.
Make it unique. Good, sharable content is core content, or the kind of content that is difficult for others to reproduce. Our own employment searches informed a lot of the post; we’ve seen the evolution of the journalism job market first hand.
Make sure your content can spark conversation. We made sure we included a lot of links in our post to give it more weight. We also included snippets of job ads. We wrote witty sub-heads and tried, as always, to create scannable, easy-to-read content. We were lucky Steve Buttry stopped by and added some links to related posts he had written in the comments. This really added value to what we wrote. All this contributes to content that can invite conversations and sharing.
Participate and Analyze. When we wrote that post, we really had no idea it would be so popular, but we’re glad people have found it valuable. We’ve made sure to thank the many of you who shared it. I would have thought our post about news site designs would have received more links and retweets than it did, but sometimes you can’t predict what readers will go for. You can only analyze, participate in conversations with them about what they want and react to those wants and needs. We’re always analyzing why things work the way they do (like this post!).

What can we add to this list? What makes content sharable?

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New tools empower non-techies to create mobile, augmented reality content

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 02:00:00 -0700

Remember when blogs opened up Web publishing to virtually anyone? Not that there hasn't been collateral damage (I'd rant about it, but that would be hypocritical), but, on balance this of course has been a very good thing.

Well, a similar thing is happening now. Free, accessible tools are greatly expanding the population of potential developers for emerging platforms like mobile, augmented reality, tablets and location-based services.

It's a win for the companies behind the platforms, because it grows the content offerings on their network (though, like with blogs, there are quality trade-offs). And it's a win for news organizations and other resource-limited publishers because it lets them reach these networks without over-extending their employees or budgets.

Over the summer I bookmarked four such tools I thought would be of interest to journalists. I'm planning to give some of them a try and to share how things go. If you're familiar with these tools, or know of similar resources, tell us about it in the comments.

App Inventor
If you can drag and drop, you can make an Android app with Google's App Inventor. App Inventor developers can access devices' GPS, motion sensors and third-party Web services like Twitter just like professional developers. Google's accepting invitation requests and is slowly but surely e-mailing out invites. (I applied in July and am still waiting on mine.)

Augmentation
Layar partner Hoppala's cloud-based GUI/CMS lets non-coders create augmented reality content. How might news organizations use augmented reality? Superimposing planned developments over their proposed sites, publishing interactive festival-guides, pinpointing the locations of crime incidents — the possibilities are endless. Augmentation is ready to use now. Simply apply for a Layar developer key, then, once you receive that, register with Hoppala and follow the instructions that start at the 2:00 mark of this screencast.

Crowdmap
The Ushahidi open source map wiki, which aggregates text messages and online postings and displays them on an interactive map, can now be deployed by non-techies via cloud-based Crowdmap. Perhaps best known as a tool for relief workers in disaster zones, Ushahidi has been used by journalists to monitor conflicts, snow removal and public transportation problems.

MagCloud iPad app
OK, this last one isn't as robust as the other three. But, for magazine publishers interested in replicating their print product on the iPad, MagCloud's app gives them a way to do it without any real effort of their own. All publishers have to do is opt in and users can download an iPad-optimized version of their product in a single click. Yes, ideally iPad content is interactive and multimedia — multimedia at least could be on its way to MagCloud — but for those without the time or expertise to optimize their offerings for this popular platform this is a nice, simple solution.

Image by jomirano.

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Use Diigo to bring more knowledge and context to your newsroom

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 11:02:00 -0700

Some might say that much of the magic that happens when creating news content happens in editorial meetings. Reporters, editors and other staffers toss around ideas for stories, features and more.

Traditionally, that brainstorming process has been closed off to readers and users of news content. However, as journalism professor Jay Rosen pointed out in a recent presentation, the communications power structure has shifted and people have become a bigger part of the process. They are not just consumers, but users and creators. With a social bookmarking tool, like Diigo or Delicious, newsroom staff can help add context to stories and bring readers into the news gathering and planning process.

This post will be the first in a regular Friday series on how to use different social media tools and integrate them into the newsroom. Today, I’ll focus on Diigo, a social bookmarking site that I recently started using. The possibilities for Diigo are many, and I won't be covering all of them, so if you have more, add them to the comments.

How does Diigo work?

Diigo V5: Collect and Highlight, Then Remember! from diigobuzz on Vimeo.

Diigo functions like Delicious except with a few twists. The video above will explain this quicker than I can. Give it a watch before you read on. In short, Diigo enables you to not only bookmark websites and URLs, but also annotate them, save them as full HTML pages (in case they ever go away) and form groups centered around topics.

How can journalists use it?

Bookmark stories. These can either be stories your news org produces that center around a specific topic area or stories that other news orgs and people produce that add more context to your coverage.
Save and archive primary documents. This way, readers and website users can always access Web pages or other information that may be yanked down for various reasons.
Create sticky notes for your stories to spark further conversation. The interactive sticky note feature of Diigo could be a nice way to highlight the holes in a story. Of course, audience members would need to have a Diigo account to see these public sticky notes. Sticky notes can also be used among newsroom staff, so your audience sees a live conversation about the story involving the staff that produced it.
Create a knowledge repository around topics and news events. Diigo makes it easy to collaborate as a group. What if you used this tool to collaborate among reporters and editors, or set up a special group for your most engaged readers and users? The possibilities for more context-driven news exist, thanks to bringing the knowledge of many together.

These are just for starters. What other ways can journalists use Diigo and other social bookmarking tools?

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If sites welcome corrections and post them promptly, why do we need MediaBugs?

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 02:30:00 -0700

Somewhere on every news site you'll find a notice extolling the publisher's commitment to accuracy: Corrections are welcome and errors are promptly fixed, it says, in so many words. Sounds swell. But if publishers were as welcoming and as prompt as they say they are, why would Salon.com co-founder Scott Rosenberg and Knight News Challenge panelists see so much opportunity in a news corrections clearinghouse?

The Knight Foundation gave Rosenberg's startup MediaBugs $335,000 to solve a problem news organizations should be handling themselves. Currently focused on the San Francisco media market but planning an expansion in the coming weeks, MediaBugs solicits "specific, correctable errors" from news consumers, communicates what it sees as actionable mistakes to the organizations that published them and chronicles the entire process on its website.

Now, by filtering error reports, compiling corrections data, sharing widgets and source code and advocating for civil correspondence among stakeholders, MediaBugs does more than just pass along complaints from users to publishers. But passing complaints from users to publishers is its main gig. (MediaBugs, for the record, deals with all mediums, print, broadcast and online.)

Why can't news orgs do this themselves?

Why do I feel like "The Bobs" in Office Space? You know the scene. The one where the two same-name consultants interrogated Tom Smykowski over why Initech needed him to take specifications from customers. Why, they demanded, couldn't the engineers just do it themselves?

Well, why can't news organizations properly process error complaints themselves? (The answer is kind of like Tom's answer: News orgs, like Initech's engineers, in a sense, exhibit poor people skills.)

While MediaBugs' streamlined system makes managing corrections more efficient, technology is not the fundamental barrier here. There's no reason a newsroom committed to the task can't effectively execute it with a simple PHP interface or with a dedicated e-mail account with a few customized rules and folders.

The fundamental barrier is an uptight, insular culture that resists the kind of transparency it demands of others. This doesn't describe all news organizations, of course, but judging by the attention MediaBugs has received and its accounts of its interactions with media outlets, it describes too many of them.

Institutionalism's unintended consequences

Ironically, the institutional framework that some news organizations claim makes them more accountable than some dude blogging from his bedroom (hey, that's me!), can in fact make them less accountable. A former Bloomberg journalist, for example, suggested to MediaBugs that the business news service's "personnel policies came down so hard on employees who made errors that they were reluctant to admit them at all."

While the opportunity to improve the quality of their journalism should alone be enough to move news organizations toward an as-open-as-possible culture, there are plenty of other incentives.

Truly welcoming, truly prompt attention to user feedback humanizes journalists and the journalistic process. It shows sources and audience members that, no matter what their paranoid fantasies tell them, journalists don't willfully publish lies to settle personal vendettas or to serve some centralized media agenda. It shows that journalists in fact hate, hate, hate making mistakes, even comparatively minor ones that sources are content to laugh off.

A direct line to the coveted engaged user

Moreover, a responsive error management system puts news organizations directly in touch with the most coveted kind of user: An engaged one. Think about it: Someone who reports a mistake was not only paying close enough attention to notice it but also cared enough to tell the media outlet about it.

He or she might have some other thoughts the news organization would be interested in hearing, thoughts he or she might not mention to third parties like MediaBugs or thoughts such third parties, unfamiliar with the outlet's brand and coverage area, might misinterpret or dismiss as unimportant.

Whether it's part of their official job description or not, today, all journalists are in the customer service business. They all serve the communities they report on. New tools make it both harder to hide from this responsibility and easier to fulfill it.

We welcome your feedback!

Again, I realize there must be many news organizations who do an exemplary job managing corrections online, and I'd love to highlight some of them in a future post. So, let us know: What outlets do corrections well?

Oh, to report an error in this post or in any others of ours, e-mail us, @ reply or DM us on Twitter or let us know in the comments. We welcome corrections and will fix errors fast, promise.

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