Zombie Journalism

Dispatches from the living amongst journalism's walking dead

Month: January 2011

Link roundup: Twitter news, tech tools and a shameless plug

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On January 20, 2011

In Industry News & Notes, Recommended Links

On the Twitters

  • In their “The science of the hashtag” post, Twitter charts the lifecycle of a hashtag and spells out just what and who propelled it to popularity. In short – celebrities > media, as if you didn’t already know.
  • An alleged Twitter expert says research shows that to increase your chances of being retweeted, you should Tweet your links in afternoons, evenings and on weekends.
  • I don’t know if Jay Rosen is a Twitter expert, but he’s been known to craft a good 140 characters. He explains his process and what makes a tweet “beautiful”.
  • Nieman Storyboard makes the case that Twitter is a great community for building and telling a narrative story, using TBD’s Storify as an example.

Tips & Tricks

Random industry news

  • The Huffington Post may have created what many of us have dreamed of for years – a news recommendation engine based on collected data. Tie in advertising and we might as well all go home and let them take over the world.
  • Not everyone’s a fan of it, though, and with good reason.
  • Former TBD GM (and my former boss) Jim Brady chats with Jason Policastro about his work with Philly.com’s new collaborative journalism initiative, online advertising, funding hyperlocal sites and more.
  • Ken Doctor outlines the metrics and numbers journalism outlets should be keeping an eye on in 2011. This goes way beyond web traffic and Twitter analytics. Great read.
  • The NY Times reports Steven Brill’s Journalism Online experiment, which developed a system to charge newspaper sites’ most frequent online visitors for content access, has good news. They analyzed preliminary data from the project’ initial sites and found that “advertising revenue and overall traffic did not decline significantly despite predictions otherwise”. The Times, of course, really really wants this to succeed.

Shameless plugs

Accuracy and accountability checklist for social media

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On January 18, 2011

In Social Media

Way back in the early fall, when the Online News Association conference was going on here in D.C., Craig Silverman of Regret the Error did a great accuracy workshop in conjunction with TBD. He created an accuracy checklist aimed at helping reporters avoid common errors. My boss, Steve Buttry, expanded on Silverman’s list at his own blog a couple of weeks ago. This checklist approach inspired me to think of ways to avoid accuracy and reporting errors in my own little corner of the journalism world.

In the rapid-fire world of social media, it’s easy for a journalist or news organization to make mistakes. Sometimes, these things happen in the heat of the moment, but more often than not the errors seem to stem from a widespread belief amongst journalists that Twitter carries less need for accuracy and accountability than the full-story medium. Recent events have told us otherwise.

I believe there is an ever-increasing need for accuracy and accountability in how we as journalists use social media. This inspired me to start my own accuracy checklist for the TBD staff, but I thought it may be better to share with a larger audience. Feel free to add your notes and additions in the comments. I consider this a work in progress.

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Link roundup: Demographics, Quora, Instagram and news from old media

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On January 10, 2011

In New Technology, Recommended Links

File under “Good to Know”

  • In not-at-all-shocking news, a Pew study shows the Internet Gains on Television as Public’s Main News Source . Since 2007, the number of 18 to 29 year olds citing the internet as their main source has nearly doubled, from 34% to 65%. Not surprising numbers, but notable nonetheless. This should have TV stations that rely on their newscasts as the sole breaking news source shaking in their boots.
  • Twitter Media gets into what makes good hashtags work. As someone who frequently struggles with the issue of deciding when and how to use hashtags, this post on the well-known hashtag work of 106 & Park really underscores why theirs work so well. For one, they aren’t forced news tags.

New-ish Tools for News

  • Last week, online media watchers wet their collective pants over Instagram, an iPhone photo-sharing application with a built-in social network, when Mashable highlighted how NPR is using it to connect with its audience. NPR, as usual, is out connecting on another app before everyone else – but whether this experiment will pay off is another story. As of right now, the app is only on iPhone, but it’s user base is growing by leaps and bounds. Judging from the comments on the Mashable post, those using it aren’t pleased at the prospect of influx of media.
  • On a related note, The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal gives a good and personal explanation of Instagram’s appeal.
  • I didn’t wet my pants, but I fell in love with Instagram too. I’ve started using its nice filters on my personal Tumblr project, 365 Snapshots.
  • I’m not sure where it started, but there was also a new media gold rush last week to Quora, an online question-and-answer oriented discussion site. Everyone wants to know how it could be used for journalism, especially since it is such a tame, smart (on the surface at least) community that is curating information. My colleague Daniel Victor blogged about some potential uses and started a topic on Quora looking for ideas (very meta) and. We’ll see where it goes. I know my coworkers at TBD are hard at work on this one.

Paywalls, paywalls!

  • The Dallas Morning News is taking a lot of content behind a paywall, with the old argument “because we have to” and “other newspapers do it”. The comments do not belie a supportive readership. The monthly digital-only price seems quite high to me.
  • The Daily O’Collegian, the campus newspaper for Oklahoma State, is also going behind a paywall for non-local readers. This may be the one instance in which I think a paywall makes perfect sense for a newspaper. It does make me feel for the student journalists who will try to use their links there for clips, however. Maybe they can give out a special coded version or something?

Real names are the answer – again

Fun Project

  • NY Times project Mapping America: Every City, Every Block allows users to browse local data from the Census, based on samples from 2005 to 2009 on an easily understood map. I’m in love with it and wish TBD had the budget to build something similar.

Ruling or no, always ask permission before re-using images on the social web

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On January 7, 2011

In Industry News & Notes, Social Media

If you’re to believe Agence France-Press – and many journalists who I’ve personally met – “regular people” don’t have the same copyright protections on the web as journalists. This isn’t true and hasn’t been true – and I’m glad a court said so.

AFP tried to argue in court that by uploading his photos to Twitter/Twitpic, a professional photographer was giving them permission to use and repurpose them. Last week, a court in New York’s Southern District declared what many of us already knew – putting photos on TwitPic doesn’t just make it up for grabs.

When I tweeted about this, I had a couple of journalists tell me it didn’t protect Twitter users’ photos, just those of journalists. This is a pretty common assumption I hear around the web and in the newsrooms I’ve worked in, so I don’t feel too out of line pointing out Virginia journalist Jordan Fifer for this tweet:

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He said the ruling only protected professional photographers and that the Fair Use Doctrine protects news outlets who want to use Twitpics without permission. Not true on both counts, though the latter isn’t as cut-and-dried.

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Talking online storytelling in tonight’s SPJ chat

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On January 6, 2011

In Presentations, Work Stuff & Projects

If you’ll be online tonight, join me on the Society of Professional Journalist’s monthly Twitter chat at 8 p.m. ET.

The topic this month is Online Storytelling, featuring Mark Luckie of the Washington Post and 10,000 Words (also author of The Digital Journalist’s Handbook) and Mark Briggs, author of Journalism Next and Journalism 2.0. Oh, and me, repping TBD.

I have no idea why I was invited, as I have not written a book and am not famous – but I’ll be chatting and hopefully saying smart things.

If you’d like to participate, follow the hashtag. More info from the official sources.

What sort of storytelling methods, tools and examples would you like to talk about? Leave a comment or drop me a tweet.

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