Zombie Journalism

Dispatches from the living amongst journalism's walking dead

Tag: legal

Four who influenced my approach to social media

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On October 4, 2010

In Industry News & Notes, Social Media

As part of their 35th anniversary, Poynter is crowdsourcing a list of the 35 most influential people in social media. They ask people to write Facebook notes or tweets recommending people for the list, with votes to come via re-tweets and likes.

This kind of voting system makes it very likely that we’ll see the 35 usual suspects on the list when it’s all said and done: Vadim Lavrusik, Robert Quigley, Andy Carvin, Craig Kanalley and my boss, Steve Buttry, I’m sure, will be shoo-ins. It’s with this in mind I want to recognize people many voters in this group probably won’t know, but who’ve influenced my approach to social media more than just about anyone else.

#1 & #2 (tie): Kevin Dugan & Daniel Lally

I put these two guys together because their influence is interconnected in so many ways. I got into social media as we know it in mid-to-late 2007. In January of 2008, I joined the budding Cincinnati chapter of the Social Media Breakfast, founded by Kevin Dugan & Dan Lally – it expanded my world.

It’s a rare occasion for a journalist to admit to learning from the world of marketing and PR, but at that time, that’s who dominated Twitter and Facebook – and these two were pros. Not only did they personally teach me so much about how to engage audiences with measurable (and immeasurable) results thanks to their experiences in brand marketing, but through Cincy SMB, they introduced me to many others who were experimenting with social media as well. I know for a fact I would have never grown past tweeting about my lunch if not for these two and the learning experiences I had through Cincinnati Social Media.

#3 Paul Bradshaw

Paul’s Online Journalism Blog is probably linked more than any other from this site – and for good reason. He’s always talking about issues in new media that reflect not only his experiences as a journalist in the UK (which is fascinating in and of itself), but also what’s affecting new media across the world. OJB’s explanatory posts on social media projects, tool how-tos, new policies and those who seek to shut such things down have been a constant source of ideas and inspiration for me. Also, in 2009, Paul founded Help Me Investigate, a platform for crowdsourcing investigative journalism. Hard to top that.

#4: Jack Greiner

Jack’s not a journalist, a marketer or even a social media acolyte – he’s a media lawyer for Graydon Head & Ritchey in Cincinnati, OH. He’d frequently hold sessions for the Cincinnati Enquirer staff on potential legal issues in regards to social media. Unlike other presentations I’d seen on the subject, he didn’t seek to scare journos away from social media altogether (no matter how much they would have rather he did). He made us think about what we were doing as being no different than any other facet of journalism – and in doing so, he inspired me to pursue more research in the area. He gets a bonus vote for always being kind enough to take my incessant questions on points of case law.

—

Also, I have to give a shout out to Sarah Fidelibus, who named ME, of all people, as one of her picks for most influential people in social media. She said some nice things about ZJ, which is great to hear. I hope it’s been a helpful/interesting/funny read for the rest of you, too.

Making Twitter Work for Reporting

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On June 22, 2010

In Twitter

Despite its reputation, Twitter is not just to tell people what you had for breakfast. Journalists willing to learn the tool well can also use Twitter to:

  • Monitor the activities and interactions of people you cover
  • Crowdsource stories by asking your followers for ideas or info
  • Quickly find people who witnessed or experienced an event
  • See what people are talking about right now
  • Live report from the scene of a news event
  • Drive traffic to your content

So, how do you do that? Tweets you might send:

  • If you want info, say so. Simply tweet: “Trying to find someone who…” or “Anyone out there know…” Ask for re-tweets.
  • Tweet out links to your work or links to other content you find funny, interesting or relevant to your beat that you’d like to pass on.
  • Keep readers abreast of what you’re working on.
  • Share what you are doing or where you are only if you think the people reading will find it interesting. Maybe you’re on location for a notable meeting or event or meeting with someone interesting.
  • If you are at a location or event where news is developing, tweet out the details. Notable quotes, questions asked, who’s there, what’s happening. Note: If you are going to “live tweet” a planned event, it’s a good idea to warn your followers ahead of time.
  • Reply to the people who talk to you on Twitter – and respond to their tweets if they say something interesting on their account. You don’t have to reply to everyone if you get a lot of incoming tweets, but if they ask a question, be sure to answer it.
  • Publicly ask questions of specific sources or readers if you know their Twitter names.
  • Share notable tweets from those you follow by re-tweeting.
  • Tweet as if you were talking to a friend (and not like a TV promo or a robot). People want to follow you on Twitter not only for info, but also to “get” you as a person, so some degree of breeziness is encouraged.

Sharing Links

Twitter is an ideal place not only to share links to your work, but also what you’re reading, info related to your beat and work you admire from others.

  • Always shorten your links using a link shortening service like that at tinyurl.com or bit.ly.
  • Preface shared links with a headline or some introduction. Ex: Interesting take on net neutrality: http://bit.ly/khkhfdkkh
  • If you see a tweet or link you liked, re-tweet rather than rewrite. It’s nice.

Other Posts on Twitter

Twitter Signup and Account Setup

Intro to Twitter for Journalists (6/2010)

Data Mining Twitter for reporting (6/2010)

Need-to-Know Twitter Tips for Journalists (6/2010)

My own collection of suggested links about Twitter and social media for journalists is on Delicious.

Recommended reading this week

By

On August 14, 2009

In Industry News & Notes, Recommended Links, Social Media, Twitter

The Big Must-Reads
  • You have to read Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing from Bill Wyman at Splice Today. It’s an excellent analysis of How We Got Here from someone with perspective both inside and outside the news business. A lot of it we newspaper types know already – but a lot of it we don’t want to acknowledge is part of the problem.
  • Part Two: On how the monopolistic mindset, terrible web design and a rejection of new technology contributed to the fall.
  • Newspaper war raises a question: Who keeps the tweeps? – Once a reporter builds a base in social media – who owns that base? If a newspaper gets claim to/responsibility for a reporters’ tweets (which seems to be the case), do they also own those followers? In this case, at least, I say yes. but not always. Likely not the last we’ll see from this debate.

How-Tos and Ideas:

More Social Media News

WaPo v. Gawker: Battle in the Blogs

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On August 7, 2009

In Industry News & Notes

This week, for some reason, Gawker is suddenly Public Enemy #1 to the online media world. It seems to be because they’re doing pretty well when it comes to online revenue and they do it largely by blogging about the news researched by other sources.

The reason it’s suddenly a big deal is that a writer at the Washington Post, Ian Shapira, finally decided to throw a (well-written) snit about Gawker blogging about one of their pieces. Shapira charges that Gawker infringed on the copyright of his work because so much of their post was derived from his story.

Gawker’s post quoted heavily from the source’s quotes in the Post story  in fact, slightly more than half of their very short post was from the WaPo story. The Nieman Journalism Lab took a look at what was used and asked it’s readers if they thought Gawker violated Fair Use or fell well within its guidelines.  The comments are well worth a full read, as they really put the heart of the debate right out there:

1. The Gawker post clearly qualifies as Fair Use. Commenter Justin reminds us that the code states that content use “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.” Comment and criticism – what else is Gawker if not that?

2. Despite Shapira’s claims to the contrary, the Post did get credit. Sure, Gawker could have said it came from the post before the end – but they gave them something far more valuable. They linked to the original story – several times in fact. As commenter (and excellent young blogger) Cody Brown says, in the online world, that’s the best credit you can get.

3. Was the Post damaged by it? Hardly. Shapira noted that Gawker was the #2 referrer on the web to his story and likely contributed quite a few new readers to an otherwise mundane story that may not have had a lot of legs online otherwise.

4. Who owns the quotes from the source anyway? If Gawker should cut the post a check for quoting their piece and selling ads around it (which the WaPo writer suggests in jest), what does the Post owe their original source for selling ads around her quotes? (And furthermore, does reporting count as aggregation, too?)

5. Would the Post be complaining if it wasn’t Gawker? That’s debatable. As the commenter notes (and I say all of the time) other newspapers, broadcast and wire services do this quite a bit too – why isn’t there any more outrage about that?

I really question why Shapira’s editor even let him write that follow-up charging that Gawker stole from his work. Does Shapira really have a background that makes him knowledgeable enough about these sticky issues of fair use and media law that he can make claims that even experienced media lawyers aren’t altogether clear on? Also, how many of the Post’s online readers even care about this issue? You know who cares to hear about how much work Shapira put into this everyday story only to have it “ripped off” by big, bad blogs? Journalists. That’s about it.

How much of this whole debate – not just the WaPo v. Gawker, but the whole blogs/aggregators vs. old media – is based in old-fashioned jealousy? Chris Krewson, editor of the Philadelphia Enquirer, said this to me on Twitter: “Aren’t we at least a little annoyed that Gawker and the aggies are faring well, ad-wise?”

Yes, I think we are. Gawker’s media sales have shot up this year. Ad revenues are up 45% year-over-year for the first six months of 2009 – and their production costs fall way below that of a newspaper. But isn’t that just good competition?

Maybe we just need to be better.

Here are more related posts about the whole Gawker debate you may find interesting:

  • Journalism’s Problem Isn’t Gawker. It’s Advertising. – The Atlantic Politics Channel – Atlantic’s followup analysis to the Nieman Lab post. Gawker isn’t the issue here, they insist, online advertising is the real issue – so maybe all of these people wringing their hands about Gawker and the like should focus on the task at hand. (amen)
  • Gawker’s Link Etiquette (or Lack Thereof) : CJR – An interesting look at Gawker’s linking habits. As the CJR notes, what they do falls within existing Fair Use guidelines and they DO link to the original piece – just way, way down in the story. I don’t agree with the practice, but I also don’t think we need a law that makes Gawker link to the original higher in the story.

The myth of the “free ride”

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On August 6, 2009

In Industry News & Notes, Online Revenue Models

David Marburger took his show on the road this week with a much-emailed guest editorial in the LA Times titled “The free ride that’s killing the news business” (again with the hostile wording). Of course, I got this emailed to be from no less than 20 fellow journalists, all of whom seemed to not understand the online news business at large. He’s preaching to the choir of the same “stay the course” news people who got us here in the first place – and they love it.

Marburger tells and retells the story of the Little Red Hen in all of his appearances. Have you read it yet?

Remember the Little Red Hen? She’s the one in the folk tale who asks the other barnyard animals if they will help her cut the wheat, grind it into flour and bake the bread. They refuse. But when the warm bread emerges from the oven, they are eager to help the hen eat it.

Now let’s suppose the story continues, with the Little Red Hen opening a roadside stand to sell her bread. Instead of merely eating it themselves, the cow, the pig and the dog each take some of her loaves and open competing roadside stands. Vying for sales, they undercut her price and each others’. Because the Little Red Hen bore all the costs to produce the bread, and the other animals bore none, she can’t afford to match their prices, and they drive her out of business.

Newspaper sites are supposed to be the hen. He likens aggregator sites like Newser.com to the other animals.

To anyone that isn’t in the news business, this sounds pretty acceptable. After all, isn’t the point of competition in a free market supposed to mean that you try to undersell your competition by having a lower overhead? It’s called good business. Too bad for the Little Red Hen – maybe she should become a manufacturer or wholesaler instead of a shop owner.

To whose that aren’t familiar, Newser.com is a worldwide wholesaler of other people’s news, in a sense. They summarize stories from many news sources in a paragraph or so and link back to the original story. As you can see here, they state on each summary where the source is and link to it. Sure, it could stand to be more prominent, but it’s better than what TV does every day. (It should also be pointed out that site looks dreadful and isn’t very user-friendly)

Marburger claims that sites like Newser are “free riding” on newspapers and it should be illegal. From the poll on the editorial, which asks “Should websites be allowed to use excerpts from daily news sites?” the populace doesn’t agree (it’s 68% against the Marburger plan, 32% for it as I write).

The basis for the Marburger argument is that sites like Newser are driving down online advertising rates because they aggregate content and surround it with low-priced ads. He calls them “competitors”. He says they are “direct substitutes for newspapers”.

First of all, if your story can be summarized in a paragraph and that’s honestly enough for a casual reader to know about it – it probably isn’t worth fighting about. Secondly, Newser isn’t a competitor with the newspaper websites it links to. A quick look at Alexa shows how their traffic compares to the likes of the two Times, Tribune and Guardian:

Newser ranks way, way below the big news sites in terms of the golden stat of pageviews.

Newser ranks way, way below the big news sites in terms of page views.

While I agree that advertising is the issue – it isn’t the fault of aggregators. It’s that the entire business model for online advertising is broken. As Bill Grueskin said last month in an excellent paidContent analysis, “Aggregators are more a distraction from the real crisis than the cause of it” because even if they are siphoning off users (of course, they also refer users), it isn’t really hurting the bottom line.

Online ad rates have been artificially low for years. We’re partly to blame – after all, most newspaper have been online since the 90s and we never charged for online ads what they are worth. Furthermore, the online audience doesn’t like and doesn’t see value in online ads. They block them, they don’t click on them, they HATE them.

CPMs are so low that thousands upon thousands of views to our site today won’t even buy lunch for our newsroom, let alone sustain the industry. Grueskin says what a lot of us in online news have been whispering for years – why are we measuring our worth in page views anyway? We should be using metrics like page views per user or time on site rather than by the  number of people visiting the site, “many of whom may not assign any value to the journalists who generated the content”.

In other words, better understand the audience, seek out what it wants, determine what we can provide – possibly in terms of a premium service – and find a way to monetize that outside of online ads. That’s something an operation like Newser could never do and it actually provides a sustainable plan for future growth. Crazy, I know.

So why do we have to keep giving face time to David Marburger and his ilk of “stay the course” followers who want to legislate their way out of an adaptation of the business model. Let’s get to the task at hand…

Stealing is wrong, so is a quest to own facts

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On August 6, 2009

In About This Site, Industry News & Notes, Online Revenue Models

Let’s get this out of the way: I don’t like it when anyone steals anyone else’s content. And by “stealing” I mean wholesale copying and pasting all of an original work or using any part of someone’s work without credit and a link back to the original content. Period.

Not that I’ve ever said otherwise. With all of my railing against the Marburger plan and the AP, a few detractors have jumped to the conclusion that I don’t support any kind of copyright protection – which is just absurd.

What I have been railing against for weeks now isn’t an opposition to tough copyright law, it’s big news media trying to legally change the online marketplace to benefit themselves (and not content providers as a whole).

Facts should not be owned, but one person’s word-for-word summation of those facts should be. If a reporter took the time to investigate and write an enterprise story – other content entities should give him or her credit and link to their piece prominently when they choose to write from the original work.

Could copyright law use an update to account for the digital sphere? Absolutely – but not at the expense of the free exchange of ideas and analysis online. We in the news business are supposed to be all about that, remember?

Recommended reading for June 16th – 17th

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On June 17, 2009

In Recommended Links

These are my recommended links for June 15th through June 17th:

A catch-up on recommended reading

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On May 21, 2009

In Recommended Links

These are my recommended links for the past couple of weeks (sorry, I’ve been busy!):

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