Commentary by blog and social media consultant Josh Hallett on the use of blogs for public relations, media, marketing, communication & branding and from time-to-time the unsolicited opinion.
Mindy McAdams highlights the skills required in the future journalist. Go check it out.
Journalists who can flourish in both the Web newsroom and the print newsroom today:
- Can package the news online.
- Can create original multimedia.
- Have solid journalism credentials.
- Have strong technical skills.
Mindy McAdams from the University of Florida blogs about some new classes she is teaching. They focus on new tools available to journalists.
The idea behind this class (and the follow-up, Journalists’ Toolkit 2) is that students will learn to use some of the common tools of today’s cross-platform reporting through assignments based in regular reporting practice. The primary tools in the first class are audio, audio slideshows and blogs. In the second class, the focus will be on video and other motion visuals.She has the syllabus online.
The second session today at WordCamp featured John Dvorak and Om Malik, it was the eternal blog/journalism debate:
Here are a few choice tidbits from their conversation:
- Why not link? Why waste time/space describing something when you can link?
- Many traditional journalists don't like blogs because they're so annoying, they're always sniping at traditional media.
- Papers that don't allow their reporters to link almost say, "We don't want people to go somewhere else and realize how bad we are by comparison.
- There is this assumption that countries like India and other areas that don't get blogs, Om said the majority of his Indian readers are using mobile devices.
- Om says to be a successful blogger, you need to engage the people that comment.
- People who comment are often smart people that say smart things.
At BlogPhiladelphia, Emily King, editor on the Intelligent Travel blog for National Geographic Traveler Magazine said that each post on that blog is looked at by at least two researchers and a copy editor before it goes live.
Not really an 'immediate' publishing tool. I wonder how they deal with comments?
As a contrast, I'm sitting next to Benet Wilson who blogs for Aviation Week at Towers and Tarmacs. She says that no editor reviews her posts before they go online.
Update: During the Q&A, Emily said that the posting process normally takes a week.
As a companion piece to my 'Jaded View of PR and the Blogosphere' here is something about journalists. Once again the caveat that I've been working with traditional media for a number of years on how they can adapt to the world of social media. Also, the vast number of journalists I work for are great people doing great work. It's just a few that spoil it for everybody else.
Generally when you get a group of journalists together on a panel the topic of blogs will come up. One of the often used responses about the blogosphere is, "Blogs are often inaccurate." Each time a journalist says that I will usually respond, "Really, can you give me a specific recent example." Guess what their response is?
Some journalists say that blogs don't check facts or are mostly opinion and as such not real news. It's ironic that when they make those statements it's often based upon generalities and opinion. In a sense, when some journalists speak about blogs they're committing the same sins they say bloggers commit.
Recently, Social Media Club Atlanta held a panel discussion featuring a number of traditional media folk. To say there were some tensions would be an understatement.
Amber Rhea a local Atlanta blogger e-mailed me after the session and conveyed a story similar to one I've experienced. A traditional journalist on a panel will say, "What you do is more......" Just insert your own ending there: 'entertainment', 'fun', 'opinion', 'of a dairy'. In Amber's case her response was, "What 'I' do? Have you ever read my blog? Do you even know what 'I' do?" Hmm, a journalist making a statement without looking at the original source material.
I write a hyperlocal blog and it's a mixture of news, links and opinion. In the year and a half I have run the blog I've only posted incorrect information once and it was more of a writing slip-up than a huge gaffe. I quickly updated the post and pointed out the correction. When a journalist says that blogs are often inaccurate I say, "Really have you looked at my blog or other hyperlocal blogs?"
Making general statements about blogs being this or that infuriates me. Likewise, most newspaper folks will bristle when somebody makes a similar blanket statement such as, "All newspapers have a liberal bias."
The newspaper in my area published an article today about how local blogs are impacting a CSX development project.
Readers of this blog may find the story familiar. I wrote a post on how the CSX story developed in cooperation between bloggers and traditional journalists.
I've posted my thoughts on the article over at my hyperlocal blog: Empirical Polk.
Of course the story does feature a picture of me 'blogging'. That's what's always funny about stories like this. The photographer shows up and says, "I'm supposed to get some shots of you blogging......so blog."
Last week I was conducting a training session for a group of journalists from across the U.S. During the course of the session we talked about how blogs allow journalists to create their own brand and build loyalty among their readership.
One of the blogs we looked at as an example was Pop Candy by Whitney Matheson from USAToday. Whitney's blog is a great mixture of her personality and reporting.
I threw the question out there to the audience, "Do you think that Whitney needs USAToday anymore?" Most of the journalists in the audience didn't think so.
What do you think?
The Orlando Sentinel has created a Twitter account and their first test/use will be for the scheduled launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis tomorrow night.
You can check out their Twitter account here: http://twitter.com/orlandosentinel
CNN.com is teasing a redesign link on their home page. Currently it directs you to http://beta.cnn.com/. It's a big change, and I like it.
The primary navigation has moved from the side to the top (it was at the top before, I just remember the side for some reason) and the entire content area is now centered (rather than left-aligned). The entire look is cleaner and does reduce the amount of content on the home page.
Joe Thornley is doing his usual bang-up job of conference coverage from MESH in Canada. Here is the choice quote from Mike Arrington's opening session:
The best thing that traditional journalists can do is to start wrting their own blogs and to build their own brands. This will protect them against downsizing in traditional media.Amen, I tell this to reporters all the time. When I deal with reporter that 'hate' blogs I usually ask, "Do you know the names of your readers?" It's that relationship that will determine who is successful in a few years.
"This is a cool way to do the news"
That's what Billy Townsend, a reporter with the Tampa Tribune told me a few weeks ago on a Friday afternoon. We were in the middle of piecing together an interesting local story that would lead to bigger things. The news story would eventually unfold on the newspaper's web site and a number of local blogs. It was also an interesting exercise in how news is transforming, specifically the relationship between newspapers and local bloggers.
Here's the backstory.
CSX, a major rail/transport company is considering building a intermodal facility in Winter Haven, Florida. CSX and the City of Winter Haven are promoting the project as an economic boom for the area that will create jobs and increased tax revenue. With any development of this nature there are concerns over: growth, traffic, environment, etc. For the record, I believe the project will be a benefit to the area, but the proper steps need to be taken.
From CSX's standpoint the project/permitting process was moving along nicely. The surrounding communities in Polk County paid little attention to the project, it was perceived as being a 'Winter Haven' thing. At first, the local newspapers did very little reporting, mostly discussing some of the economic benefits.
I run a hyperlocal blog in our community called Empirical Polk. The first post about the CSX project appeared on EP on February 1, 2006. For the most part, with EP I can only comment on issues or share insights I've found from other news sources. In the case of CSX project, my blog along with other local blogs have all contributed to the ongoing story.
The first newspaper to do any sort of digging into the story was not really a local paper. The Tampa Tribune does not distribute their paper in the area and just recently hired Billy Townsend to cover the region. While Billy does file stories about Polk County for the print edition, his primary publishing tool is the Polk County News Blog. Billy is a reporter that has truly embraced blogging. He posts often, links to the competition and interacts with bloggers in the community.
On his blog, Billy began to look into the CSX numbers and how the development would impact the rest of the county. One of the issues was the increase in rail traffic. In Florida, CSX operates two main freight lines, a North/South and East/West. As part of the Central Florida commuter rail deal CSX will be shifting much of their traffic off of the E/W line to the N/S line. This can also be combined with a general increase in freight traffic related to the intermodal. How much of an increase is still up for debate. Freight traffic on the N/S line will mostly likely double, and might even triple.
On March 28th Billy blogged about Polk County's central location within the CSX freight system. The N/S and E/W lines cross in Polk County. The question was where? At first CSX didn't even know where. For any geek/blogger, of course Google Maps can help with a question like that. The problem was that we were looking for a natural crossing, as in X marks the spot.
On a Friday afternoon, I think I had figured it out. The lines didn't cross in a perfect X, instead they joined and ran along the same corridor for a few miles. In other words, all the N/S traffic would run on the E/W line for a short stretch. The problem though, was that the short, joint stretch runs through downtown Lakeland, FL. Like many towns in the south, the main rail line bisects the downtown Lakeland region. This causes traffic and noises issues downtown. With this discovery, it seems that those problems will double or triple as a result of the increased freight traffic from the Winter Haven intermodal facility.
Billy and I exchanged e-mails discussing my find and we eventually met up at a local coffee shop in Lakeland to go over things. The evolving story was spelled out on Empirical Polk and the Polk County News Blog. Being the reporter that he is, Billy followed-up with CSX to confirm the crossing and then he began talking to Lakeland civic leaders. While they had heard about the CSX project, the increase in rail traffic in downtown Lakeland was news to them.
Suddenly, the 'Winter Haven' project was having a major impact on Lakeland. Lakeland community/business leaders requested a meeting with CSX and the local media finally woke up. Lakeland-specific blogger Chuck Welch began following the story at LakelandLocal.com and has even created a content archive of all things CSX.
To this point the CSX project had avoided a DRI or Development of Regional Impact classification. A DRI brings with it a process to study and approve any development. That process takes time and money. With the increased media attention, the county and surrounding cities began requesting DRI status for the project.
What will happen next remains to be seen.
It was during our coffee break on that Friday afternoon that Billy said, "This is a cool way to do the news." I imagine it was like any group of reporters working on a story, except that I wasn't on the paid staff of the paper.
I have said before that what I do on my hyperlocal blog is in some sense lazy journalism. I don't have the resources to investigate or the contacts to get the interviews I want, but Billy (and the traditional media) does. I can pose a question on my blog and a reporter can follow-up on it. One local news-pro once joked that Empirical Polk was a great tip-sheet for their newspaper staff. The funny thing is that he was only joking halfway.
What can be learned from this?
Obviously we know that the business and reporting of news is changing, and fast. The tracking and reaction to news is just as fast, if not faster. From a PR standpoint the traditionalists might not like this, but there is a some benefit. All of this is happening out in the open. As more reporters blog (and blog more frequently), and hyperlocal blogs become more prevalent, the stories are now out in the open for all to see.
Reporters and bloggers are asking questions first on their blogs and the writing the stories later. Savvy PR practitioners can answer those questions if they're following along. Imagine knowing the question before the reporter calls, of better yet calling them first. Can't get to the reporter? Contact the local blogger, or leave a blog comment. The good local reporters are reading the local blogs.
The media and blog coverage of the CSX project will only increase and leave a detailed digital-paper trail for anybody to read.
So what is a PR person to do? Later this week in Part 2 I'll talk about what CSX and the Winter Haven Chamber of Commerce have been doing with blogs.
This is an interesting twist on old-meda/new-media. Former Tampa Tribune film critic Bob Ross (he was laid off in the recent downsizing at the Tribune) is now blogging at Sticks of Fire, the Tampa Blog.
After nearly 22 years of loyal (and, if I do say so myself, superior) service, I’ve been downsized. Laid off. Shown the door.Sure, it hurts. The only reason the Tampa Tribune gives is that my position had to be eliminated. Something about being more “local.” Movie reviews are available all over the world for free. The fact that I did a lot more than just review movies apparently was not a factor. A consistent, local critic is a luxury the struggling paper can no longer afford.
Has anybody else noticed that the new USAToday.com is very slow to load and sluggish on Safari on the Mac? I've tried on a few machines and have noticed the same thing.
Orlando Sentinel Columnist Mike Thomas now has a blog. On the surface, nothing shocking there. What is interesting is his column announcing his new blog. This is the choice quote:
I am a citizen journalist. Once I made fun of bloggers, and now I am one. Funny what a paycheck will do to your outlook on life.Mike then goes on to describe how the click is the new measure in journalism.It's all about the Web now.
When we produce expensive, looooong stories on issues vital to Central Florida and humanity in general, here is what happens at Click Command: clickclickclick.Welcome to our world Mike, however the overwhelming majority of us don't do it for a paycheck. You can complain about the 'Click Command' or you can use your journalistic skills to produce quality, informative content that will make us click. After all that's what you're getting paid for :-)When Mike Bianchi writes that the Gators should pay Billy Donovan $1.3 billion to keep him from going to Kentucky, here is what happens: CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK!
Disclosure: The Orlando Sentinel and Tribune Media are clients
Tish Grier blogs about her new job with Assignment Zero.
Last Monday, I started my first day as Deputy Director of Participation for Assignment ZeroI first met Tish at the WOMMA event in DC last December. We shared some cringe moments during the standard Are Bloggers Journalists? panel. In other words Tish and I see eye-to-eye on many journalism/blogging issues. I ran into her again at the WeMedia conference in Miami. Once again, many of the same experiences/observations from the panels.In case you don't know/haven't heard what Assignment Zero is, it's Jay Rosen's project that hopes to find a good working model for how to combine citizens and journalists to create a new paradigm for investigative journalism.
At the past few events I have been to that involve the traditional media I have become somewhat jaded. Basically there are those that talk about the problems and those that are working to fix them. Tish is part of the people wanting to try new things...good for her. New Assigment is something different. Will it work? Time will tell, but at least they are doing something.
One of the comments to come out of the WeMedia Conference earlier this year was, "There is still this notion that we speak, then they converse." We, being media, they being the readers. It was said by Mike Orren of Pegasus News. For a great example of this, look at a recent post by Jim Johnson on Sticks of Fire.
Jim discusses how the Tampa Tribune is removing comments from their stories and blogs and 'directing' people to the forums of their site for discussion. The change represents a major disconnect from the notion of news as a conversation, back to more of news as a lecture. One of the major issues is general usability:
It’s about giving the readers as many options to communicate as possible. It’s far easier to comment at the bottom of the post than to find a link to the forum, register for the forum (or log in), find the thread on which they want to share their thoughts (or start a new post), and then comment. One step is replaced by four.
Yes we all know that things are changing in the newspaper world, but taking away a feature that readers want/use is not a smart business move.
Rogers Cadenhead has an interesting post about a Florida paper trying to track down a local anonymous blogger.
I've been reading the Record for a decade. I can't recall a single time where it conducted an effort to catch a rapist, robber or murderer anywhere near the scope of this manhunt for a blogger.
There are a bunch of posts related to the re-org of the Atlanta Journal Constitution this morning. I'm leading a series of training sessions all day today so I'll post my thoughts later today. For now here are a few links:
- Will Sullivan
- Mindy McAdams
- Leonard Witt
- Grayson has some choice words as well
In a great post, Mike Manuel provides the chronology of the 90-second news cycle we now live in:
+1 second to hit publish+2 seconds for a blog to refresh
+3 seconds for feed readers to update
+4 seconds to email, link, tag, rank, or rate a blog post
+5 seconds for readers to form an opinion and/or leave a comment
+1 minute for Technorati to register a server ping, crawl and index a blog post
+8 seconds for alerts, watchlists and saved searches to propagate
+4 seconds for a blog post to plateau, amplify or disappear
+2 seconds for this cycle to repeat from the beginning
+1 second to realize the world's changing...
In a 24-hour news cycle there are total of 960 unique, 90-second news cycles.
Mitch Glaser posts on the final day of WeMedia. Go read the entire post, but here is the choice quote for me:
Outside in the hall after the panel, NYU professor and PressThink blogger Jay Rosen told me that Lasica and I had not gotten through to them. Rosen had raised his hand but wasn’t called upon, but had a great analogy of what was wrong with MSM’s approach to citizen media.“They are trying to change the vocabulary without changing the grammar,” he said. “They use the new vocabulary [of new media] but they are not changing their mindset, and accepting a loss of control.”
In other words, they might start blogs or podcasts or accept comments on stories, but they still believe their work is coming down from on high atop the mountain of Eternal Truth. The new truth of we media — lowercased — is that the media elite have lost the lock on media control, the old style of getting into a room and deciding what is news for the rest of us.
What I have always said is that many newspapers adopt the tools of social media, but not the community or methodology.
I wrote a few things about the WeMedia conference yesterday. Pondering them a bit more during my drive from Miami I wanted to post a follow-up. During the opening session on community there was a bit of soul-searching on the part of the traditional media. They know that the future for them is 'local' and 'community' and 'conversation' but do they really know how to do that?
When I deal with any media client that wants to 'embrace' social media and become more community oriented I always ask the same thing, "Do you know the names of your readers?" I know the answer to this before I ask it, but it's more of an exercise. Compare this to many individuals that run hyperlocal blogs, they know the names of their readers. They have a community.
One aspect of community is cooperation. During the community panel Jan Schaffer from J-Lab said she wanted to see more cooperation between traditional media on citizen's media. To paraphrase what she said, 'why is it that when a local paper looks at a new hyperlocal blog they say, "we need to do that to" and starts to compete, why not work together?'
Many times 'competition' in media is based upon ad sales. However many hyperlocal blogs don't accept advertising. The hyperlocal blogger isn't in it for money, they're just trying to provide the community information and discussion.
Somebody sent me the URL for a new photo aggregator from the Atlanta Journal Constitution: http://i2i.ajc.com
More thoughts soon.....
Well I was going to say a bit more, but Rex wrapped things up nicely in his comment. Like he says, why create your own, when there are other solutions out there that the majority of people use.
A great example of this is GoGatorNation.com. When the site launched they used a proprietary photo upload tool. As Rex references, you'd have to upload your photos to Flickr then to their site. Duplicating work is something that not many people want to do. Now the site directs user to use Flickr.
Somebody just brought up the point that the majority of the people in the room at WeMedia are from 'Big Media' and the big issue is the new wave of media from the people. So where are the people? Are they part of this discussion, this conference? Nope. That's what makes events like BlogHer so great...the attendees are the people.
Another attendee, Mike Orren with Pegasus News just stated, "There is still this notion that we speak, then they converse." We, being media, they being the readers.
A friend pointed out it's somewhat arrogant for a room full of 'big' media folks to talk about how citizen's media will work. I wonder what J.D. is thinking...he's in the front row.
Mitch Glaser - The reality is that the majority of 'local' papers aren't owned by local people, they're part of a large corporation. That's why many of these hyperlocal sites are successful. They're run by somebody that is truly local.
Update: Mitch has more to say over at MediaShift.
Thanks to the audience taking control of their media experience and creating their own media in blogs, podcasts, video and social networks, the people who are losing control have decided to meet — and meet, and meet again — until they figure out how they can take back some control of this uncontrollable situation.
This was one of my first dunk into a conference focused on the intersection of “traditional press/media” and “social media”.There was quite a bit of confusion from this group, which was primarily journalists and folks from media. They don’t know how to fit, they don’t know what to do.
I'm sitting in the first session at WeMedia at the University of Miami, FL. Here are some quick notes:
Lisa Stone, BlogHer - What we're seeing with women bloggers is that they are no longer waiting to receive the news they are actively seeking the news, they're discussing.
Eduardo Hause, Daily Me - 123 Million newspaper delivered each day, 150 million over the weekend, compare that to only 50 million internet users reading news sites in a week
Shel Israel - Shel immediately questions the stats that Eduardo stated.....how many of those 123 million papers are read, what percentage of the paper is read by that smaller portion?
Ian Rowe, MTV - What we're also seeing is the change in the editorial process. Before it was a group of men sitting in a room deciding what stories would be reported and what show would be aired at 9pm on a particular night. That's changing.
Lisa Stone - Did we all really love Lucy or did we all watch it because it was the only thing on? In court reporting there are a number of lawyers that now cover trials via blogs, previously most court reporting was handled by traditional journalists that were not lawyers. There is a new level of expertise out there.
Question from the audience, what is community or is it communities? Many media folks thing community is their local geographic region.
To follow-up on this, just because I live in Central Florida, is that my community? No, I belong to many communities. Some real, some virtual.
The Guardian Unlimited has some coverage of this session as well.
Michael Eisenberg wonders if/why the AP would edit a quote by Tony Dungy? If you remember Tony mentioned the Lord quite a few times during his trophy presentation speech. In an AP recap of the Super Bowl, this is the quote attributed to Tony.
"I'm so proud of our guys," Dungy said. "We took the hit early with Devin Hester. We talked about it; it's going to be a storm. Sometimes you have to work for it. Our guys played so hard and I can't tell you how proud I am of our group, our organization and our city."Michael is asking that if you have a copy of the interview/quote on Tivo or another DVR that you check it out. However, to give AP some benefit of the doubt, perhaps Tony talked again about the Hester run-back in a later interview and used the quote listed above. Reading the AP article it's not clear when Tony gave that quote.
Just last week I had a conversation with a newspaper client about this subject, SEO in headlines. From the cnet article:
In November, Nielsen/NetRatings ranked Boston.com, the sister Web site of The Boston Globe, as the fourth-most trafficked newspaper Web site in the country, even though its print circulation is ranked 15th by one audit bureau. "We're regularly beating the bigger boys, like the Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal...and part of the reason is SEO," said David Beard, editor of Boston.com and former assistant managing editor of its print sibling, The Boston Globe.Obviously there is one type of headline writing for print, but too many newspaper content management systems just copy over the same headline for the web edition. Scrap those 'attention grabbing' headlines and put in some relevant keywords. Trust me it will pay off in a few days/weeks/months.
Of course if you're burying your content behind a pay wall then don't bother.
The newspaper industry is spending $75 million to argue that it’s not screwed. How much better it would be to spend $75 million on innovation so, indeed, it won’t be screwed.Well said. I recently talked with somebody who was spending a few hundred thousand a year on advertising, even though their research had shown that two-thirds of their new customers came from word-of-mouth/referral. Like above, how about spending that money to improve your product/service. Just a thought.
While chatting with a friend who works for a newspaper they said that the last paper they worked for wasn't that hip on that internet stuff. My friend suggested that they start to put breaking news online. The paper didn't think this was such a good idea since the stories would be in the print edition the next day.
I remarked, that's not breaking news, that's broken news.
Steve Rubel highlights some recent data on the rise in newspaper blog readership. Like Steve says this is a good thing from a blog adoption standpoint but I want to highlight another important thing related to newspaper blogs, cost.
Many major newspapers are using the traditional blog tools to publish their blogs. In Orlando the Sentinel uses TypePad, so does USAToday. Other papers are using WordPress or MovableType, or in CNN's case, Blogger. These are all very low cost solutions. Compare that to the content management systems that run the rest of the paper (both print and online).
What you have is a platform that accounts for 13% of readership and costs anywhere from free (Blogger/WP) to maybe $100/month (TypePad's business class). While I don't have the numbers on what the total costs of publishing the rest of the paper online are, it's considerably more than the blog tools and I guarantee that from a $/pageviews ratio it doesn't come close.
I should note that I'm not considering salaries of reporters or technical staff in here since they would be the same regardless of the publishing platform used.
Via Mindy McAdams I found this discussion about local newspapers and local search:
Newspapers have the best local content for local restaurants, movie reviews, local business, school sports, and should be the first search result for any local search. They are not. Greg Linden says Newspapers should own local. I think they don't because they don't think globally. They don't think about how to make their valuable content friendly to search engines.Much of this goes back to the lack of SEO within newspaper content, highlighted by Skrentablog.
One issue is that most papers remove their content or put it behind a pay wall. From a pay wall standpoint the papers are just looking to generate revenue by selling access to older articles. For many papers this is easy money. However are they trading this short term revenue for the long term search benefits?
Any blogger that has looked over their stats knows that the real traffic is in the old stuff. I have a few older posts that have thousands and thousands of visits, mostly generated from Google/Yahoo!/MSN.
Like the recent issues surrounding citizen journalism, the traditional papers are just realizing that they need to pay attention to this stuff. However, reworking existing content management systems and tasking over-worked technical producers is easier said than done.
Last week Robert Niles posted a story about the silliness of arguing about the merits of 'citizen' versus 'mainstream' journalism. Robert asks that we move towards a middle ground resulting in the best of both worlds. In his post Robert provides and example of how a recent LA Times article could benefit from a blend of 'mainstream' and 'citizen' journalism. He wonders why the LA Times reporter couldn't supplement/enhance the story with data from readers.
Collaboration between mainstream/citizen journalists and enhancing stories with user-content are great ideas, but working with newspapers over the past two years has shown me that we're still far away from this ideal. Why? Here are a few basic issues:
Thinking: The majority of reporters I've dealt with just don't think this way. It's not a bloggers-as-enemies thing, it's just that they are stuck in the traditional print publication mode, i.e. the print-edition comes first, the web second. As the next-generation of reporters fill newsrooms across the country this will slowly change. Schools today are doing a great job emphasizing that newspaper journalism is becoming a multi-media experience and involves the citizen/reader.
Bad Apples: Luckily this is only something I have seen on a few occasions, but as the common saying goes, a few bad apples ruin it for everyone. Some reporters don't respect their readers. This goes back to the 'who are these people and why should I care' mentality. Other reporters view anything beyond the basic assignment as more work than they're getting paid for. I remember a year ago many reporters would say, "You want me to write my normal column and a blog?" Don't treat them as different things or assignments, it's all content, it's all reporting.
Training: The majority of reporters don't have the training to 'enhance' their stories on the web. Asking a reporter to do some basic HTML mark-up is sometimes a big stretch. Asking them to add some sort of interactive functionality is an even bigger stretch. However, like the first issue, as newly trained reporters filter in this will change.
Workflow: Most of the time the reporters are merely content producers, i.e. they enter their story into the content management system and their job is done. It is usually the job of the technical producer or web monkey to enhance stories online. Often though, the technical folks are too busy just making everything work to take on a number of extra projects, especially those that don't mesh with the CMS (see next item)
CMS Inflexibility: All major newspaper are run on complex content management systems (CMS). While CMS's are great and allow for some amazing automation of publishing newspapers online they usually don't react well to "Can we do this?" queries. You usually can't go to the internal web team and say, "Hey, at the end of this story I want people to be able to submit data in tabular format along with a picture." More newspapers are adding comments and blogs, but many of those solutions are simple and out-of-the-box relatively speaking.
The larger paper groups have the biggest problems since they have invested millions into their current CMS solutions and if it doesn't do something they can't just scrap it. New functions have to be develop from scratch or they need to out someway to integrate it into the current system. Example: The search system of one major CMS couldn't index blog content on other servers. Corporate response? We'll look at that for next quarter. Smaller papers with a good development team can be more nimble in this respect.
The 1% Rule: The standard line: 100% of us are readers, while only 1% are contributors. The newspaper business is just that, a business, and when a newspaper spends time and money on a project they want to maximize the return on that investment. A user-generated-content project which draws input from that 1% doesn't always impress the bean counters. However, you need to think about the economics in terms of that 1% helping create content (at no cost) for that 100%.
So how can we fix all this?
As I have said, as the new breed of reporters begin to take over things will change, but that generational shift will take some time. Current reporters need to learn new tricks, so-to-speak. Reporters that do a better job of enhancing/supplementing their stories on the web should (in theory) be rewarded with higher traffic to their stories online. Give those reporters the best assignments.
Newspapers also need to beef up their web support staff, but they shouldn't just hire people to 'run' the paper web site. A great solution would be to assign a single technical producer to a small team of reporters. Let this producer follow stories as they are developing to provide suggestions on how citizen/reader input could benefit a story. Some papers do this now, but the ratio of technical producers to reporters is so low that very little can be done.
If papers can't integrate new tools within their current CMS's look for them to build/partner-with other platforms to handle specific types of content uses. I'm not talking micro-sites, but something like integrating Flickr-like tools for photos, etc.
Overall, we've come a long way in 2006 and it will be interesting to watch how newspapers continue to evolve in 2007. I welcome any thoughts/comments you might have.
After our 'fun' lunch it was back to work with the breakout sessions. As a PR/Hyperlocal blogger and a consultant to traditional media this session really interested me. Are bloggers journalists?
Yes the question has been asked and debated hundreds of times on panels around the world, but my interest is seeing the response/questions from the audience. Discussing the subject today was a great panel including:
David Armon, COO, PR Newswire
Julia Hood, Editor-in-Chief, PRWeek
Henry Copeland, CEO, Blogads.com
Peter Himler, Flatiron Communications
David served as moderator of the panel and opened with some brief intros from the panelists. During Henry's intro he said, "Outside is the new inside." and that he enjoys coming 'inside' to tell that story.
David surveyed the audience to get a perspective on who was in the room. It was a great mix in the room of agencies, corporations, bloggers, journalists and academia.
Q. Are bloggers journalists?
Julia: If she had to do it all over again she might not have gone back to journalism school, she'd be a blogger. She thinks the impetus for bloggers and journalists is to have a voice. Journalists will say they are different because they are objective and have editor...all of those things are debatable. Thomas Paine is the first blogger, Julia though she had that idea first, but no, plenty of other people have made that connection. If the impetus is the same than perhaps the responsibilities are the same.
Peter: I feel they are journalists, but of the citizen variety. The lines of traditional media are blurring, entertainment is mixing with hard news, etc. Media needs to take a look and take stock of where they are at. He feels that blogs are subjective to some degree. There is of course an echo chamber, but it works both ways. Many times it's a AP or Reuters story that is discussed in blogs, but what we're seeing now is bloggers post a story idea and it's picked up by the traditional media.
Henry: I'll be the outsider. He doesn't think it's an issue until substantive words get used. Some of the words used are originator and legitimacy. When we apply those words then we have a debate. The people reading blogs feel the information they're getting out of blogs is valuable. Sure there is spin, but it's obvious and the people reading them understand this.
David talked about how PRNewswire selects bloggers to be included in their programs. The blog must have original content, it must be influential (more than 1000 unique links via Technorati), it must fit the taxonomy of their business and the blog must not be obscene.
Peter: Do bloggers get credentials? What we're seeing now with bloggers, is that client still want to manage messages. The holy grail of the blogosphere is that we can select bloggers that target a specific topic or audience. However a Z-list blogger can still break news, but they may only have limited space at a particular event. If you're managing a news event, you don't have to let everybody in, this doesn't just apply to bloggers, this also applies to journalists.
Henry: Some of the prolific bloggers are just being bombarded by PR flacks. Things are changing, 18 months ago many bloggers would feel flattered if somebody pitched them, now they're being overwhelmed.
Julia: Welcome to the world of being a journalist. You get what you ask for.
Peter: You don't pitch a blog, you build a conversation with a blog.
Q: Julia, you said earlier that bloggers and journalists have the same responsibility, can you elaborate on what those are?
Julia: I don't think they should have the same responsibilities, it's just a responsibility.
(getting behind.....the conversation is too good....)
A hyperlocal blog I run, Empirical Polk, is celebrating its first birthday today. It's been an interesting experience writing for a smaller/targeted audience and dare I say, reporting, on local issues.
I'm looking forward the the second year.
Over at Sticks of Fire, Tommy talks about David Banghart moving from one neighborhood to another within Tampa and how he's leaving one blog for another. David ran the popular and informative Seminole Heights blog, but now he'll be posting at the Word from Lutz.
Somehow I missed the St. Pete Times article that profiled David and the Seminole Heights blog. Tommy quotes a bit of it, but I just want to highlight this part:
Before his blog, residents of Old Seminole Heights, South Seminole Heights and Southeast Seminole Heights communicated through e-mail and phone chains mostly within their neighborhoods. Now, attendance is higher at events because everyone in the area sees the same fliers posted on the blog. “You post it on the blog, you’re going to get a turnout,” said Old Seminole Heights Neighborhood Association president Randy Baron. “I think it’s an excellent place for people to find out about things. It’s a one-stop shop.” And readers aren’t just residents. The media and city officials regularly check blogs for neighborhood news.Earlier this week I wrote why we'll always need journalists. In response, Chris Thilk pointed out the symbiotic nature of the blogger/media relationship that should exist.Shannon Edge, the city’s director of neighborhood and community relations, is a regular blog visitor. It’s a great gauge for what residents care about and alerts her to neighborhood issues, she said. She often verifies information posted anonymously on the blog with association presidents in order to pass it along to city officials.
But those professionals will need to know where to turn to fill in their own knowledge gaps as well. That's because the citizenry, the ones who live in the communities or who have a niche interest, are going to be powerful within that niche. Mainstream media outlets simply don't have the resources to get as minutely specific as blogging allows for. So not only is Josh smart for knowing what he doesn't know and reaching out for input, so to should reporters learn to know what they don't know and search for those who do....This is exactly the type of thing we see with blogs like Seminole Heights. Now if only every neighborhood had a Tommy, David or Joey we'd be all set.....But niche bloggers have the time and the passion to cover topics or angles that big news organizations just can't because the return on investment is too low or even non-existent.
Dan Greenfield has a thought provoking post talking about bloggers as journalists. The opening sentences set the stage:
We have all experienced it – a news story runs about your company, but the reporter never contacted your company for a comment. Makes us mad and clients mad. Journalists should know better we say.Go read the rest of of it and share your comments.But how about when bloggers post a comment about your company or pull comments from a company blog without contacting the PR department? Are we still as angry? My guess is probably not.
Over the past few months I have been at a few events where a speaker will say something and then quickly throw out a, "Is there anybody from the media here?" In other words, they just said something incredibly stupid and want to make sure it doesn't leave the room. In most cases there isn't a member of the media present, but as a blogger should I raise my hand?
For the most part I have no interest in exposing some local official's slight slip-up, but there are exceptions.
What officials and speakers need to realize is that we are all media. We might not all blog, but if something stupid/scandelous is said, it's going to get out.
This issue came up earlier this year when Sean Hannity spoke at a local university. The media was not allowed to attend the speech. My question back then was who is going to stop a student from blogging/writing about the speech on their MySpace page or Facebook account?
This isn't a 'blogger threat' it's just a reality. The ability for people to get away with (and say) stupid things is going away, which is a good thing.
The Society for News Design is holding their annual conference in Orlando over the next few days. Luckily, Ernesto is not making much of an impact here in Central Florida and the designers should be able to enjoy a few days of sunshine.
The reason I mention the conference is because the SND has a pretty good conference blog going over at: www.snd.org/orlandoblog/. With our recent conference blogging efforts for FPRA I've been paying particular attention to these types of blogs.
How did I find out about this event? One of the blogs I read is NewsDesigner and they're running their own conference blog at: snd.newsdesigner.com.