Wednesday, May 29, 2013

DFM chat on new crowdsourcing techniques and tools

Journalists, members of Digital First Media and pretty much everyone else who wants to - are going to be taking part on the weekly Twitter chat at noon, Eastern Time. 

Today we're talking about new crowdsourcing techniques and tools in the pursuit of better journalism.

The live feed is posted below. But you can also follow the chat here or here or also here. And you can also check out past chats over here.

If you want to chime in, post a comment in the container or a tweet with the hashtag "#dfmchat" so it can automatically appear below.

Friday, May 24, 2013

Build something


Small news organizations are now able to showcase their good work online. So let’s do it.

If you work in a small newsroom, devoid of coders, developers and sometimes even photographers, building good online storytelling is probably the last thing on your mind.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Newspaper writers want their stories to be told. They also want their stories to look good. To catch the eye of the reader. To say, ‘Hey! Look here! You want to experience this!’

For many years, legacy journalists have been bound by the constraints of their capricious and outdated content management systems, digital and analog. And while the journalistic intelligentsia rolls its eyes whenever there’s another slideshow on a news site, some smaller news operations still wonder how to even make one to work in their sites (you think I’m kidding. I’m not).

I’m here to tell you, small news operation journalist, it’s time to think outside your site.

You post on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram, Google Plus and the rest. Your news organization’s combined tweets are very likely much larger than the New York Times’ ‘Snow Fall.’ All that work - your work - is posted somewhere else and you benefit from it because of the exposure and engagement you generate. You don’t question this. You know its value and your metrics justify it.


So let me posit a somewhat radical idea.

What if you grab that story you have that you’d like to showcase and take it out of your site and post it - much improved - somewhere else?

You can visit NewHive, Scrollkit or Jux and build your vision of what your stories should look like.

I've experimented building some stories with those tools, and they've greatly improved the way users - and journalists - have been impacted by them.

In my little corner of news-land, I was able to build print pages how I wanted them, but I was always forced to see the work reduced to a simple archaic format online (thankfully in my company, that’s about to change big time).

I’m not advocating for subversively driving away traffic from your news site. I’m advocating for adding value to it, and your work. You can link and embed. You can show that you’re not afraid to link elsewhere, even when it’s your own content
.

Think about it. The technical challenges of publishing a good-looking story are no longer an issue. So all you need is a good story to do this.

And you can do this. Because you’re a storyteller. You've always been one and you’ve rightfully prided yourself as one. So let’s give your work its due.

Full disclosure: My efforts haven’t produced the results I’ve expected in terms of hits, though we’re slowly starting to build some engagement. And you shouldn't just build something pretty just because you can. But I’m not discouraged by the current metrics because this is new to us and our users and I’ve just started the experiment. I do believe that the right story with the right tool will eventually produce desired results, and having experimented with them, I feel I’m ready to showcase a good story when it needs to be and that results will follow (and I’m about to test this very soon).

My question to you, is this:

When the right story comes, are you ready to do it justice?

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

DFM chat on adding value to social media


Context is your friend.
Journalists, members of Digital First Media and pretty much everyone else who wants to - are going to be taking part on the weekly Twitter chat at noon, Eastern Time. 

Today we're talking about moving beyond social media reaction stories: How to add value to social media reporting, and why.
The live feed is posted below. But you can also follow the chat here or here or also here. And you can also check out past chats over here.

If you want to chime in, post a comment in the container or a tweet with the hashtag "#dfmchat" so it can automatically appear below.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

DFM chat on mobile journalism

Monitoring your live videos is kind-of important.
Journalists, members of Digital First Media and pretty much everyone else who wants to - are going to be taking part on the weekly Twitter chat at noon, Eastern Time. 

Today we're talking what steps (and equipment, apps, etc) are needed to change the journalist's workflow into a mobile-first one. And why.

The live feed is posted below. But you can also follow the chat here or here or also here. And you can also check out past chats over here.

If you want to chime in, post a comment in the container or a tweet with the hashtag "#dfmchat" so it can automatically appear below.

Friday, May 3, 2013

The Mayor's apology, annotated

Feel free to add a comment if you think I should add a note to a different section or if the current notes should be annotated with additional details.

Correction: Town of Ulster Supervisor James Quigley informs me he is very much the Town of Ulster supervisor. A previous version of one of the annotations had it as a former supervisor.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

DFM chat on the lessons of the Oakland Tribune's 'Hotspot' project

Journalists, members of Digital First Media and pretty much everyone else who wants to - are going to be taking part on the weekly Twitter chat at 1 p.m., Eastern Time., 10 a.m. Pacific Time.

Today we have a special chat. It will feature Oakland Tribune Violence Reporting Fellow Scott Johnson and will be moderated by Martin J. Reynoldssenior editor of the Community Engagement Bay Area News Group.

http://oaklandhotspot.tumblr.com/
Explains Reynolds, "The discussion will focus on the month-long Hotspot project, that has Johnson living in one of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods of East Oakland, Calif. 

"Johnson is chronicling his experience via tumblr on a blog that is also embedded in an article page on Bay Area News Group websites. In this crime hotspot, he's discovering a community far more nuanced and dynamic than what our own headlines portray. 

"The chat will focus on Scott's work and some interesting revelations about the approach to crime coverage." (emphasis mine)

Among the topics to be covered:


1) How does prolific crime coverage impact a community's perception of itself?
2)  How does the decrease of non-crime neighborhood coverage impact how we are seen by the community?
3) Are journalists really in-tune with how jilted certain communities are with how they're portrayed in the media?

The live feed is posted below. But you can also follow the chat here or here or also here. And you can also check out past chats over here.

If you want to chime in, post a comment in the container or a tweet with the hashtag "#dfmchat" so it can automatically appear below.