Tag: journalism Page 2 of 4

I’m not sure where newspaper execs are getting their PR advice these days, but whoever/whatever it is needs to be fired. The print news sector has put out some head-shaking proclamations this week – all of which have a common theme of holier-than-thou insults directed at online news consumers.

First up is the absolutely appalling handling of a new business model by the Tallahassee Democrat. The paper is going to start charging for news online – which the publisher finally gets around to saying on the second page after a long-winded, self-congratulatory monologue.

The column says:

It no longer seems fair to have only half of our readers pay for content while the other half reads for free online. This is about changing how we do business, not simply putting up a paywall on digital content.

Unless the TD happens to charge quite a bit for their print edition, the print subscribers aren’t paying for that journalism any more than the digital readers. They’re merely paying to have it delivered to their homes on expensive paper. That payment isn’t covering the cost of the reporting and editing. More on that later.

Aside: The same column that says online readers aren’t paying for content is unnecessarily paginated into three pages in order to rack up page views and generate online ad revenue. Talk about adding insult to injury.

But at least the paper’s publisher and editor were only trying to pull a fast one over on digital readers. A columnist at the paper upped the ante, going so far as to equate online readers with shoplifters.

He also seems to espouse the belief that the paper’s journalists are apparently above criticism, especially from the criminals who consume their news online. I won’t bother excerpting, as the entire column is essentially about this point.

Both pieces not only reflect complete distaste for online readers, they also seem to be a bit behind the times. The production of journalism is paid for by advertising revenue, which has been largely generated by printed ads in the past (hence why these guys want to keep readers there).

I suppose the Democrat must have missed the news that online advertising will soon be surpassing print. Maybe they’d be better off finding new ways to market themselves to online readers to keep more eyeballs on their site.

That brings us to the other newspaper industry wishful thought of the week: The classic “we’re the only trusted source for news” mantra.

McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt told the Tri-City Herald a bedtime story about how “real” journalists are far more trustworthy than bloggers.

It is often impossible to know if anyone has verified the material that’s on the internet or whether anyone is held responsible for rumors, misinformation or outright libel.

That uncertainty is working in newspapers’ favor. People are turning to newspaper websites as a trusted source.

I’m not sure where Pruitt got his facts, which the paper reiterated without any backing up, because they’re quite flawed. I guess those online types aren’t the only ones who don’t back up what they hear from biased sources with real reporting. (Zing)

Thankfully, the Herald’s coverage area has blogger Matt McGee to set the record straight – with links to back up his claims. As my boss, Steve Buttry, asks in his post on this back-and-forth, “Which is the stronger example of journalism?”

This standoffish game has to stop if newspapers want to stick around. As these guys are out there turning away online readers and dismissing potential partners, news startups like TBD are out there ready to pick them up. And we aren’t alone.

Scoff if you want, but readers do, in fact, trust bloggers and news via social media more than you think. As the online medium continues to grow – and today’s young people continue to grow as news consumers – this New Frontier will become News as We Know It. Don’t newspapers want to be a part of that?

Data mining information from Twitter

By Mandy

On June 21, 2010

In Twitter

It’s downright amazing what you can find out from Twitter’s formidable search engine. Here’s just some of what you can do with Twitter’s publicly available feeds:

• See what’s happening on your beat: Basic, but no less awesome. Follow the Twitter feeds of any agencies, officials and other contacts on your beat.

• Find people on the scene or read reactions to events: Twitter has an excellent built-in search engine that allows you to search by keywords, location, date and more. It’s a gold mine to the journo who takes the time to search correctly.

More: Even if you aren’t searching for a particular topic, a Twitter search is a great way to do a fishing expedition for events (try searching for crash, fire, hurt, etc.). Also be sure to try common misspellings in the keyword search.

• Search for someone at a particular place: Use the Twitter search with Foursquare or Gowalla to find an eyewitness in a particular location at the time news occurred. Search for the name of the location or keyword with added operators for 4sq or gowal.la. Like this.

• See what topics are trending nationally and locally: Your home page on Twitter will show you what’s trending right now either network wide or by your location. Also check out Trendsmap (using data from another great site, What The Trend). For instance, check out this local trendsmap data to see what topics keep coming to the top of Twitter in the DC area right now.

• See tweets on a map: Check out Bing’s Twitter and Foursquare maps to see searchable tweets and check-ins on a map. For a new map, go to bing.com/maps/explore and select the map app you want.

• Watch real-time reaction: Twitterfall is a great site for watching developing reactions and trends. Watch one of the trending topics or search for keywords to see them “fall” in as they’re tweeted.

• Get a photo from the scene: There are lots of sites that allow you to search Twitter photos, but plugging twitpic OR yfrog OR flickr OR tweetphoto (plus a location or keyword) into Twitter Search will also turn up a lot of pictures. See one you’d like to use? Be sure to ask.

The sites here are just the tip of the iceberg – there are thousands more apps out there using this network to display useful trends and info.

Excellent recommended post on the subject from Web Up The Newsroom.

Need-to-Know Twitter Tips for Journalists

By Mandy

On June 4, 2010

In Recommended Links, Twitter

As we’re hiring new staff members for every position from web producers to listings editors and transit reporters, a lot of my job at TBD will be devoted to bringing all those new hires – plus some of our existing staff from News Channel 8 and WJLA – up to speed on social media tools and practices.

I don’t think it’ll spoil anything to say we plan to use social media quite a bit in every aspect of TBD, so that training will be very important both before launch and as we go into the future and technology changes. Some of our staff, I imagine, will already have a rich background in social media use, while others may not be as comfortable just yet – so many levels of training will be vital.

I’m in the process of officially updating all of my documentation, so I’m in full resource re-evaluation mode. As I post on training plans, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on what you think is missing and offer your good examples of social media use you think we should take to heart.

Today – Twitter!

So most of us know now that Twitter is a rich way for reporters to connect with sources and readers as well as build their own brands. In addition to the basics of Twitter use, new users need to know how to find the right journalists, sources and locals to follow, using/understanding hashtags and how they can use Twitter for better reporting. I usually point newb reporters to the work of tweeting reporters on Muckrack and use the live presser tweets from @theHyperFix as a good example of live-tweeting.

There are a million great resources on using Twitter. I’ve collected quite a few I like to use.

The next logical step in Twitter training is using it’s vast amount of data to find information, track trends and find sources for stories. Sites like BackTweets, TweetGrid and Twitter’s own pretty formidable search engine can really help a journalist looking for people tweeting about [insert subject here] in their area and beyond.

Web Up The Newsroom recently had a great post about using Twitter search tools in reporting and sourcing that I think may be the best description of I’ve seen geared toward reporters.

Aside from the data search, Twitter’s geolocation data makes it easy to watch trends and tweets as they happen on a map – which is great if, say, news just broke in a certain area and you want to see what’s happening there from afar. I particularly like Bing’s Twitter maps (which can turn into quite a timesuck if you let it). SocialGreat is also nice if you just want to see what places seem to be trending across all the geolocation platforms.

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If you’d rather see a list than a map of trending local topics, you could check your Twitter home page – or, better yet – check out Trendsmap (using data from another great site, What The Trend). A lot of the time, these are silly chain letter hashtags or obvious news (like how Gulf and Oil are trending here right now), but sometimes you can see reaction to real-time events pop up in these trend searches (check it out right after a celebrity death or during a big sporting event to see what I mean). Trendsmap also has a great visualizer.

If you know what keyword you’d like to track over a course of time, Trendistic has a decent trend graphing application.

Aside from Twitter, there’s obviously a lot of other social media we’ll want to use in our day-to-day operations…but that’s for another post, my friends.

In the meantime, what are your favorite tips and tricks, apps or uses for Twitter I should be sure to pass on as we start training?

What measures success in journalism these days?

By Mandy

On May 25, 2010

In Rants, TBD

As part of our effort to be open about the ongoing development of TBD.com, the Community Engagement staff has been writing a series of posts as to why and how we ended up here. It’s always the first question I get asked when I meet someone here in DC (can you tell by the accent?), so it’s a good assignment for getting to know us.

The story of how I ended up here is relatively well known (thanks to this and this), so I wrote about why I made the move.

In putting it together, I was thinking back to when I first announced (in mid-April) that I was leaving the Enquirer to come to TBD. A young journalist I know asked me, “Why in the world are you doing this? You have a good job. You’ve made it.”

I guess, in some ways, she was right. I had a voice at the table at a decent sized newspaper (and had made it through several layoffs). That used to be a major milestone in my planned career goal – but a few months ago, I had an epiphany: My goals are outdated – and they really weren’t mine to begin with.

From Day 1 of journalism school, we were taught that to work at a Known Media Source is the biggest of big deals. Our ultimate goal would be to work at the New York Times’, Washington Posts and CNNs of the world – because that’s what many generations of eager journalists before us wanted. We were led to believe if we, like them, were to do good work at several smaller newspapers, we’d someday get brought up to the Majors of journalism to do the important kind of news that matters.

It’s kind of laughable in hindsight.

The big newspaper as the end-all-be-all is a throwback to a state of journalism that doesn’t really exist anymore. The culture of today’s big newsrooms are more “Stepford Wives” than “His Girl Friday”, employing journalists from a certain kind of background from a certain group of universities to tell a certain kind of story in the same way they’ve always told stories. Some are willing to stretch out of that box, but most haven’t. As an individual, you have to be quiet and fit in or you leave.

You don’t have to be in the Majors of newspapering to do important news that matters to people anymore. You don’t even have to be at a mainstream media source or have gone to journalism school. You don’t even have to call yourself a journalist at all. Getting recognition from big newspapers or major awards, while still nice, isn’t really the bar we have to measure ourselves by anymore. Exposure, originality and branding is the key – and you can do that on your own blog.

And that’s where TBD came in for me. I wanted the chance to do something new – and it was becoming obvious that I’d have to leave that Stepford Journalist career path to do it. Who knows? It might have been too large a risk – time will tell – but I bet I learn more from my time at TBD than I would have at a newspaper.

Am I saying I might not go back sometime or that I wouldn’t still want to work at one of those bastions of journalism someday? Of course not. I’m just saying I don’t think the old measures of success apply anymore. My success, for now, is TBD (har har).

Online news is always TBD

By Mandy

On April 22, 2010

In Industry News & Notes, TBD

So our new little metro site for Washington, D.C. is no longer nameless. It was announced today that the name of the site will be TBD – and I think it’s perfect.

As my future colleague Jeff Sonderman wrote, it really fits with the mission of what we’re trying to do here.

News at the start of the reporting process is “to be determined” – though in the traditional model, many readers don’t get to see it or be a part of it at that point. You get it later, as a finished product in print, online or on-air. If you’re lucky, we’ll let you comment on it or write a letter to the editor when its done.

I truly believe needs to be alive to be relevant. Our goal is to get news out there fast, yes, but we also need to make that news evolve in time with the release of information, the ebb and flow of public opinion and the constant input of those affected by it.

There can and will be several avenues for the public to share in cultivating and developing the news at TBD – and I hope the people of metro DC will be as excited to be a part of it as I am. So far, the reaction seems positive. What do you think?

Furloughs – and the one year anniversary of Zombie Journalism

By Mandy

On March 15, 2010

In About This Site, Rants

The furlough – a company cost-cutting measure previously associated with the manufacturing sector – now embraced by those of us working in paragraph factories around the nation.

In the last year, my husband and I have had three separate weeklong furloughs (perhaps it wasn’t so wise to marry a journalist after all). These furloughs are, we’re told, what’s keeping us employed. According to my 2009 W-2, they are also making me earn the same salary as a manager working 50+ hour weeks as I did as an hourly employee two years out of college. Sadface.

(Aside: These are the times where I think back to freshman year at journalism school. I wonder what it would have been like to pick the PR or advertising tracts instead of news. Luckily, none of us went into this business to get rich.)

Furloughs have been something of a hidden blessing for some journalists. They’ve used the uninterrupted time away from work to learn new skills, take on freelancing work or send out resumes for new and better positions. Others have relished in the fact we can’t be contacted on furlough (as opposed to vacation), taking this precious time to spend with family and friends. I’ve used my time to do a bit of both.

A year ago, I had a furlough this same week. It was then that I launched Zombie Journalism to be a place for me to experiment with WordPress, share some of the insights I learn on the job and get my name out there for future career opportunities. I hadn’t planned on it becoming a “real” blog – I don’t really have time to be a “real blogger” – but we’ve had our moments in the last year where it approached something kind of real.

I hope some readers have had an opportunity to learn something here in the last year. In the next year, I’ll try to write more and better posts that you’ll find interesting – and maybe even comment on every now and again. It started with a new URL – as I recently purchased ZombieJournalism.com (which has only become available since March 2009). I also plan a redesign very soon – so stay tuned.

If you have things you’d like to know as a fellow journalist, social media enthusiast, student, reader or stalker – let me know (it’ll certainly help with the writer’s block). Let’s make ZJ’s next year the One Where it Counts.

The “lost” generation of journalists may be my own

By Mandy

On December 14, 2009

In Rants, Surviving

In a recent post on Reflections of a Newsosaur, Alan Mutter lamented a lost generation of journalists among those coming out of college right now. He was right about the lost generation, but I think he has the wrong people in mind.

Instead, I think of my own age group – those too young to have ever experienced the heyday of newspapers and too old to live on hope alone.

Sure, there are a lot of journalists coming out of college right now (or in the last year) who will never be able to work in a newsroom as most of us know it, but I think they are better off than one might think. They’ve been trained in multimedia, they’re inexpensive, flexible and are far better prepared to become “new” journalists (mojos, start-up reporters, bloggers) because they never learned the bad habits of “old” journalists. Best of all, idealism is on their side.

No, I believe the truly lost generation of journalists may be my own.

A few days ago, Pat Thornton, an industry blogger and founder of Beatblogging.org posted that he left journalism. In the time I’ve read his work, Pat has always been full of ideas for the industry and he really believed it would change. For him to give up is really saying something.

As Thornton noted, “Maybe I would have been better able to withstand the upheaval in journalism if I had known the good times.”

And he isn’t alone. In response to Thornton’s news, a former classmate of mine, Meranda Watling, tweeted, “I want to believe journalism can make a difference. I haven’t given up yet. But I’m not sure how long idealism sustains you.”

I know this feeling of near hopelessness isn’t confined to our “gap generation” of journalists – but we are victims of some seriously bad timing.

We got to work just as or just before the bust started. Many of us attended journalism school in the late 90s/early 2000s, just as those schools were starting to rethink their focus on the web. If we learned anything about it there, it was half-baked, at best. Some of us got further training on our own or on the job, but many just got laid off (if we got jobs at all).

Consider this: Of all the very talented journalists I knew in my days in Kent State student media – 18 of 25 right off the top of my head are no longer in the business due to layoffs. From my experience, most newspapers killed their young first.

Even those who have managed to stay employed don’t have it so great. We, like everyone else, wait around for the next shoe to drop. Every potential mentor and helpful editor has lost hope – or their job. If there are older journalists still working alongside us, we tend to catch a lot of the animosity over the widening technology gap.

Like Pat, we have been frustrated watching traditional media flail around looking for a business model, many ignoring much-needed changes in favor of doing what they’ve been doing for decades. Maybe we try to push change and just end up more isolated. Maybe we gave up a long time ago and are just going through the motions.

We can try to go on to other journalism jobs, but we’re up against experienced veterans put out of work by layoffs and kids right out of school who will work for (sometimes literally) nothing. Competition is a lot more fierce than it was even five years ago.

Eventually, my generation may have to leave journalism altogether. I know I’ve thought about it a lot, but I’m just not ready. News is too much a part of my life to take a backseat – at least, not until all the options run out. Part of me wants to stick around to see if it’ll ever be what I thought it’d be like – and another part admires Thornton for having the guts to give up that ghost while he still has time to make a long career doing something else.

While I think journalism in some format will still be around for the long haul, I have to wonder how many people my age will still be around to contribute. More importantly, will anyone care?

Don’t make promises about UGC you can’t keep

By Mandy

On November 18, 2009

In Industry News & Notes

It may be old news to media law nerds like me, but the ongoing case of Barnes v. Yahoo has revealed a potential minefield of legal trouble for media websites of all sizes in something as simple as a broken promise.

Don't make promises!

As most every media person knows, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 grants immunity from liability to service providers (including media sites) for user-generated content, even if it is defamatory. The Barnes case re-asserted that protection, but it also revealed a possible loophole in that immunity that can occur if you promise to remove content – and don’t follow through.

The case, in short:

It started with a bad breakup. Cecilia Barnes’ ex-boyfriend put personal info and lewd photos of her in a Yahoo profile soliciting for sex. She tried to contact Yahoo to get the defamatory profile removed and eventually got through to a person who said they’d take care of it. They didn’t.

And it was there that the loophole appeared. Aside from the issue of defamation in relation to the content of the profile, Barnes’ suit has a claim for breach of contract from Yahoo for not taking down the profile as promised.

While U.S. contract law typically requires evidence of a contract, there’s a judicial doctrine known as “promissory estoppel” that makes a promise like that at Yahoo a contract.

[promissory estoppel] allows courts to find an enforceable contract absent consideration where a claimant can prove the following: 1) a promise was made, 2) the promisor, as a reasonable person, should have foreseen that the promise would induce the conduct of the type which occurred, and 3) the claimant actually relied on the promise resulting in a substantial change in his or her position.

So, that broken promise, essentially, is the contract that was broken – and thus, a whole other Pandora’s box is opened.

The lesson for you? If you have comments or other kinds of user-submitted content on your website or blog and someone calls to complain about something in that content, whatever you do – don’t make any promises to remove it if you don’t want legal responsibility for it.

I know from experience on these kind of calls that you want to say you’ll take care of it right away, but don’t. Say you’ll look into it. Tell everyone in your newsroom to say the same.

And finally, for the love of God, don’t put up profiles of your ex-girlfriends on Yahoo – prank calls are far less problematic.

Your plan to save journalism is not at all helpful

By Mandy

On November 6, 2009

In Industry News & Notes, Online Revenue Models, Rants, Recommended Links

I need a t-shirt that says: I asked the editor of the WaPo for a plan to save journalism and all I got was this book report on stuff I already knew.

I’ve been emailed “The Reconstruction of American Journalism” about a dozen times over the past few weeks. It’s a report from Len Downie and Michael Schudson that reviews, in painstaking detail, everything that has happened to journalism in the last 20 years and allegedly offers a plan to fix things.

I’ll save you the trouble of reading this tome (if you want) and tell you it doesn’t offer much at all. These were obviously the wrong guys to ask to change the business. The best idea they have? Asking private foundations and the government for help in funding news. (Newsflash: That isn’t new.)

What you should do, though is check out this rebuttal from the OJR and this one from Alan Mutter.

Of course, Slate also takes a contrarian view and argues that newspapers aren’t doing as badly as you think. They take an excellent analysis of the recent circulation numbers with a forehead smack thrown in for good measure. It isn’t just newspapers underperforming, it’s the economy, stupid.

Google Wave has potential for journalism – but that’s all it is right now

By Mandy

On November 5, 2009

In New Technology

First of all, I’m not going to explain Google Wave, lots of others have already done that. But I’m here to say it’s worth a look as a potential new tool for journalists.

It’s a combination of the features associated with a Wiki, email, message board and chat room with options to add interactive features like maps, polls, videos and images. So what does that mean for journalists? Potentially a lot.

Depending on how Google Wave develops before it formally rolls out to the public, it could become a solution to many technology problems facing newsrooms (and tons of other businesses) today. It has the potential to become an invaluable tool for internal and external communication and collaboration.

But right now, that is just potential. I’m not going to be tell you there are no downsides – there are plenty.

1. Right now, Wave isn’t public. You have to have been invited to experience it as it is still in “preview” mode.

2. So far, Wave has a high learning curve. When you finally get in, it isn’t immediately obvious what it is used for, what the buttons do or how to even get started. And even though instructional videos and manuals exist, not many people are willing to jump through that many hopes just to use a new web program.

3. In preview, at least, Wave is buggy as all get out. The much-ballyhooed “playback” feature rarely works. It is incredibly slow to load and navigate. Because every character you type is public in a Wave, it seems to slow everything way down. For instance, I just watched a sentence I typed go in character by character, over a two-minute time span (yikes).

4. It isn’t easy to teach. If you, like me, have taught very basic web applications to reluctant digital immigrants with upsetting results, you dread the idea of teaching this to your newsroom. I have nightmares just thinking about it.

But all of these cons I noted are about Google Wave right now. They’re still working on it – and I have high hopes it’s going to improve dramatically before it goes fully public. If it doesn’t, it’s going to be chalked up as a failed experiment and forgotten.

I have a lot of ideas I’ve either dreamed up or found on the Interwebs about ways journalists can use Google Wave I’ll be posting soon. For now, here are some resources you might find helpful if you’re trying to figure out what Google Wave is.

Instructions and demos: You could watch the 80-minute demo from the Google guys, or, watch this Cliff Notes version.

Terminology: Wondering what the heck a wavelet is? Check out this great glossary of Google Wave terms to get in the know.

Breakdown: Blogger Daniel Tenner takes a critical look at exactly what Google Wave is meant to do, though it can do a lot more (in time). The Austin American-Statesman’s tech writer has a great explainer of Google Wave on his blog as well.

The manual: The Complete Guide to Google Wave is a wonderful, simple guide to the tool. If you don’t get all the ins and outs of the Wave (who does?) and you don’t want to sit through the whole video explainer, try this. Check out the Meet Google Wave section for some great suggested uses.

More: Where else would you got to learn more about Wave’s potential than Mashable? Scan over their coverage for good ideas.

And, if you’d like an invite to Google Wave and don’t have one, leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do.

Dispatches from the living amongst journalism's walking dead

Tag: journalism Page 2 of 4

New strategy: Berate bloggers, tell online readers to buzz off

Data mining information from Twitter

What measures success in journalism these days?

Online news is always TBD

Furloughs – and the one year anniversary of Zombie Journalism

The “lost” generation of journalists may be my own

Don’t make promises about UGC you can’t keep

Your plan to save journalism is not at all helpful

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