Invisible Inkling

Caught on tape by Digidave

Ryan — Tue, 20 May 2008 11:06:01 +0000

David Cohn, fellow Knight News Challenge winner for his crowdfunding project, Spot.Us, turned his point & shoot on me last week in the hallway in Vegas.

Here’s the results:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OPRStOGRds

Previously

2000 strong at Wired Journalists

Ryan — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:14:03 +0000

So many milestones this week…

Here’s another one: Wired Journalists now has more than 2000 members.

The Ning-powered social network that Howard Owens, Zac Echola, and I created back in January has exceeded our expectations, in terms of numbers, interaction, community, and the learning/teaching that’s going on there.

Plus, it’s really bringing some people out of the woodwork.

I’m talking about beatbloggers like Matt Neznanski and Web staff from smaller papers, like Carlos Virgen from Walla-Walla.

Jay Rosen has been talking about using Wired Journalists as a pool of talent to find reporters and editors and bloggers like Matt and Carlos as they bubble up to the surface of the network, and I’m excited about the possibilities.

We created Wired Journalists to connect the non-wired with the wired, to give everyone a place to speak freely about online news and experimentation on the Web, as it’s happening in newsrooms around the world.

I think what we’ve learned, in the first 120 days and 2000 members, is that not only are there thousands of journalists out there ready to improve their craft and expand their skillset, but that journalism is alive and well around the world, in all demographic groups.

In recent days, I’ve seen members at Wired Journalists from Iran, I’ve seen a French version of the network, I’ve seen high school journalism students join the network to extend their education, and I’ve seen entire television news staffs join up over the course of a day or two. (What’s up, Topeka?)

So, thank you.

Thank you for answering the call to join Wired Journalists and thank you for helping each other learn about what’s next for journalism.

Previously

The Challenge

Ryan — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:00:02 +0000

I’m proud to announce that ReportingOn won a Knight News Challenge grant. I’m in Las Vegas at the E&P Interactive Media Conference for the announcement of all the winners.

Yesterday, Brein McNamara, another News Challenge winner, said more or less that we’re all in over our heads to some extent.

That’s the right idea.

We’re supposed to take a good idea that we don’t necessarily have the resources to polish into a great idea on our own, then use the funding from the Knight Foundation and the growing network of winners to finish the process.

And that’s the challenge.

I’ll add a link to the full list of winners when I have a free moment, but I’m betting you’ll be able to find it at newschallenge.org.

There are some awesome projects on the list, including Radio Engage (Margaret Rosas and the whole Quiddities crew are seriously representing Santa Cruz out here), Spot.Us (David Cohn’s community-funded enterprise journalism project), and a CMS/front-end system project headed up by the editors of the Daily Bruin.

Nothing about ReportingOn has changed today. Follow reportingon on Twitter, send a tweet about what you’re working on to @reportingon, and find journalists working on similar stories.

Then, the easy part: Help each other out.

Huge congratulations to all the winners, and thanks to everyone involved in making this happen so far. Now the real fun starts…

Previously

Expand your media blogosphere today

Ryan — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:22:03 +0000

Like many readers of blogs about the news business, I started big. As in, with the big guys, the heavy hitters, the bloggers who showed up in Romenesko and were hard to ignore. The Jays and Jeffs and Dans of the media blog world.

I’ve dramatically expanded my reading list since then, but meeting journalists and bloggers through Wired Journalists has led me to even more.

Here are a few you should add to your reading list if you’re ready for some expansion:

Enjoy. Follow those links down the rabbit hole, find more unsung media blog heroes, and add your own list here or, hey, on your own blog.

Previously

I spent last week in the midsection of the country

Ryan — Tue, 06 May 2008 11:12:54 +0000

(Flickr photo originally uploaded by David!!!!!!)

Here are the highlights, in no particular order, from my trip to Missouri and Kansas:

Talking shop with Will Sullivan and Kurt Greenbaum from STLToday.com.
Getting much better at making my presentation on the mysterious world of Web-first publishing.
Watching reporters get excited about pothole maps and point & shoot video.
Pizza and pitchers with Clyde Bentley, Isabelle, and Beth at Shakespeare’s in Columbia, MO.
Looking over a publisher’s shoulder as he signed up for YouTube and posted a video he had edited while I talked with his news staff.
Finding the best local lunch spots by looking for crowded parking lots.
Driving through Kansas City, MO at sunset after three days in the middle of Missouri.

Previously

Server shuffle

Ryan — Sun, 04 May 2008 01:00:42 +0000

I’ve moved this here blog and most everything else at ryansholin.com, reportingon.com, and a domain to be named later off to WebFaction ’s servers.

So far, so good. WebFaction support is already impressive, hitting me up with detailed instructions on how to easily import my WordPress database using ssh. (Yes, I used the command line. Be proud of me.)

That said, forgive me if I haven’t had time yet to get all my static files in place, and your DNS may vary, so if something doesn’t ring up quite right the first time, just bang on your favorite refresh button.

Thanks for your patience, pardon our dust, mind the gap, etc.

Previously

Building a local news site from scratch

Ryan — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 03:30:10 +0000

[If you're reading this in late April 2008, I've managed to post something on time for this month's Carnival of Journalism, hosted by Yoni Greenbaum this time around.]

Lately, when failing revenues and/or an ill-fated JOA results in a newspaper closing up shop, there’s talk of “what if” they continued publishing online, but I have yet to see anyone actually pull it off.

And this is where the update will go when twelve of you tell me about papers that have shut down in print but stayed online. I’ve definitely seen signs of papers that have switched from daily to weekly and boosted their online presence, but what I’m after are examples of papers that have totally folded, but rebuilt themselves as an online-only news source in town.

Once you get past the ugly preliminary steps (think: layoffs, dismantling the press, moving into a far smaller space), the fun part (yes, yes, perfectly aware of how flip I’m being about the ugly part) starts:

What tools do you hand a few reporters and photographers (and readers) to start from scratch?

My short list:

Drupal, for built-in community, commenting, reader blogs, and profiles, plus integration with third-party services like Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, and news aggregation.
Nokia N95 or similar phones for live video via Qik, live text coverage of local events, and calling in audio reports. Lots of this should flow live to the site, unedited.
Laptops with wireless cards to file stories from anywhere, anytime.

Also, a good pair of walking shoes, because your reporters are going to be out in the community all day long, walking their beat and getting to know the locals. This is not a job you can do from behind a desk. If you didn’t leave the newsroom today, think about talking to a source in person tomorrow.

What’s on your short list of must-haves for reporters starting a local news site from scratch?

Previously

Culture shock

Ryan — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 02:27:42 +0000

Trying to turn the tide of the decline of newspapers from the inside involves a great deal of evangelizing and pontificating and running through sets of common scenarios with folks who are still firmly planted in the Paper business rather than the News business.

That’s no surprise.

And it’s no surprise that top-down, do-it-this-way mandates don’t work just because the ideas are sound.

Taking those two obstacles as a given, my basic goal when I talk with the staff at a newspaper is to try to identify — or bring out of the woodwork — one early adopter. This might be a photographer or a reporter with a personal blog or an editor who got sent an interesting link in their e-mail and ended up bookmarking a blog.

The important part of the job isn’t speaking to the first 20 people on the conference call for an hour, it’s maintaining contact with the one person on the call who has the potential to Get It: Moving from the Paper business to the News business isn’t as simple as picking up a different skillset; it’s about changing the mindset of journalists.

So find those early adopters and corner them. Point them in inspiring directions and let them start to work out - on their own - where to go next.

Because you can’t mandate mindset. But you can grow culture.

Previously

Migration and alternate reads

Ryan — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 13:45:14 +0000

I’ve been a little busy for the last week or so moving across the country, although going weeks between posts isn’t really anything new here, eh? As always, I’m posting to Twitter far more often than I could hope to blog here.

While I’m slammed with life and work busy-ness, please check out the following if you haven’t yet:

Sean Blanda’s Confessions of a journalism student: “The problems facing journalism schools are similar to those facing colleges overall: industries moving too quickly, lower barriers of entry into certain job markets, and the cost of education outpacing the reward.”
Shawn Smith on How to write Web headlines: “Be interesting, not mysterious! Interesting doesn’t mean making readers guess what a story is about. A web reader won’t often click into a story to figure out what your headline means.”
The Knight News Challenge runners-up: Including Matt Waite’s Louretta CMS for small-town news sites.
Hartnett introduces us to Backyard Post: “What I’d really like to leave you thinking about today is simply the foundation on which Backyard Post is built: Neighborhoods. Not cities, ZIP codes or some other vague, gigantic or similarly off-the-mark stab at reaching actual humans in the actual neighborhoods where they actually live.”

Our new washer and dryer will be here any minute, so I’ll leave it at that. Rumor has it our car is in New Jersey, so we’ve got that going for us. Moving is easy. Migration is hard.

Previously

Five minutes with Peter Shankman of HelpAReporterOut.com

Ryan — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 01:48:13 +0000

I asked Peter Shankman a few easy questions today about his Help A Reporter Out project.

You can listen in or download the mp3 below.

(I recorded the call with cinch.blogtalkradio.com, for those of you keeping score at home.)