Archive for Journalism Next

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011

Ch. 11 ‘Building a digital audience for news’

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The traditional business model for journalism is in disarray.

That’s for damn sure true, with everyone having the ability to  write what they want on the Internet thanks to technology.

To increase an online audience, a journalist needs to:

  • Analyze what is published
  • Determine what readers like and don’t like
  • Do more of what readers like

Here are the fundamentals of building an online audience:

  • Tracking your content
  • Web analytics
  • Search engine optimization (SEO)
  • Effective headline writing for the Web
  • Distribution through social media

Track what you publish, such as blog posts, video stories per week, podcasts, Twitter and other social network posts and total stories per day.

Set benchmarks. Determine what you want to accomplish so you have something to measure against.

Track your audience. Use tools like Omniture and Google Analytics to measure who is viewing your stuff.

Determine what is going to be your key data. Typically it is going to be pageviews, visits vs. unique visitors, and engagement and referrers.

Understand SEO and use it to your benefit. Many news sites receive as much as one-third of their traffic from search engines, so it’s very important to get yourself near  or in the first 10 of results shown.

The best way to take advantage of SEO? Make sure your content is top-notch and link as much as possible as long as it’s relevant. Make good headlines better.

And above all else, use social media to push your stuff. Provide links of yourself on Twitter and Facebook. Contribute to blogs that deal with the same content as you. Put your name out there as much as possible.

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Tuesday, March 8th, 2011

Ch. 10 ‘Managing news as a conversation’

The socialization of news is clearly the right direction for journalism.

This statement holds particularly true with the increasing developments in technology day-by-day. The only problem is, how do journalists continue to do their job while remaining as objective as possible?

It’s a lot like what Jon DeNunzio spoke about when he visited our class. News organizations want and need to interact with their consumers. They want to interact to get feedback on what they’re doing right and what needs improvement. They need to interact because it keeps them honest to their consumers’ needs and it makes journalists’ jobs easier.

By making news more social, news organizations can crowdsource and collect tips from citizens through tools like Twitter, and work with bloggers to gather more information.

Interaction also allows journalists to become transparent to their needs. Readers can comment and provide feedback to what they perceive as biases or inaccuracies by the journalist. As Doug Feaver, former editor of washingtonpost.com, said, online comments are a “terrific addition to the conversation” and “journalists need to take them seriously.”

The best way to become better journalists? Collaborate with your community.

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Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

Ch. 7 ‘Making Audio Journalism Visible’

When you view a news story online, you typically expect to see either pictures or video accompanying the story. But you don’t typically find audio accompanying those stories.

“Somehow audio has been considered the ‘invisible’ medium,” said Karin Hogh, a podcast expert. “However, if done right, audio can be as powerful in journalism as written articles or even TV and video.”

NPR's Sound Reporting

I think the reason for this is that people are more willing to take time to watch a video or look at photos than listen to audio, because when you listen to audio you have the ability to do something else, and then your focus isn’t 100 percent on the audio.

Here’s why audio journalism is important, according to Hogh:

  • Presence: Being on the scene can bring readers to the story.
  • Emotions: Tone, expressions, etc can enhance the story.
  • Atmosphere: Natural sound helps pull the listener closer to the scene.

Most audio journalism has these basic ingredients:

  • Interviews and voice-overs
  • Natural or environmental sound
  • Imported sound clips, including music

Here’s NPR’s Guide to Audio Journalism and Production.

Here’s how audio can be used:

  • Recording interviews
  • Doing voice-overs

“Audio journalism is important because it is the dominant form of information distribution on The Next Big Thing in Journalism: mobile journalism,” said Jim Stovall, author of JPROF.

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Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

Ch. 5 ‘Going mobile’

Being prepared by having some kind of mobile technology with you at all times is key to being a successful journalist and capturing news right as it happens.

Because of the development in technology over the past few years, all a journalist needs at bare minimum is a cell phone. But that cell phone needs to have a good quality camera and access to the Internet. With those tools, a journalist can capture breaking news and at least flesh out their story while on the scene and then refine when they get back to their desk or computer.

Using mobile technology is critical to almost every kind of reporting:

  • Criminal and civil trials
  • Important speeches or announcements by public officials, celebrities, sports figures and business leaders
  • Breaking news events, including fires, shootings, natural disasters, plane crash crashes and car accidents that back up traffic
  • Public gatherings like protests and political rallies
  • Sporting events
  • Grand openings

If you want to be a hardcore, mobile journalist, Briggs recommends a combination of these tools:

  • A laptop (preferably a netbook)
  • A camera
  • A video camera
  • A tripod
  • An audio recorder
  • Headphones
  • A microphone
  • A cell phone

When I cover high school sports, I carry my digital camera to take plenty of pictures, my voice recorder to gather quotes and my cell phone to post updates on Twitter.

No longer is it OK to just carry a notepad and record notes. As journalists in this new era, we have to get accustomed to using new technology every day and progress with its new developments.

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Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

Ch. 6 ‘Visual Storytelling with Photographs’

Nikkor 50mm f /1.8 lens for the Nikon F-mount.

Image via Wikipedia

“A picture’s worth 1,000 words.”

That’s the cliché that you’ve probably heard plenty of times through your life, but at times a picture is more effective at telling a story than words. Or as Briggs puts it, “journalism without photographs is like writing without verbs.”

Briggs starts the chapter by outlining the technical side of digital photography:

  • A megapixel is 1 million pixels, which is the visual representation of data in a digital image or graphic
  • Pictures are stored as digital files on a memory card
  • Resolution is a measurement of pixels that are available to the human eye

The two types of cameras are point-and-shoot cameras and DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) cameras. Point-and-shoot are easier to use, cheaper and smaller, but the quality of picture isn’t going to be nearly as good. DSLR cameras are more expensive, larger and take more time to get used to, but the quality of pictures is much better and a DSLR can do so much more because of the customization that comes along with buying different lenses.

The most important thing when it comes to taking pictures is lighting. Having covered high school football games, I can definitely attest to this. I have a decent DSLR, but if the lighting on the field is poor, my pictures won’t turn out well. And the flash won’t help at all because the standard flash isn’t nearly strong enough to light up the field.

Some other tips within the chapter from Craig Sailor:

  • Hold the camera steady. Do anything to keep your body still while shooting.
  • Fill the frame. Don’t leave a lot of empty space in the photo.
  • Focus on one thing. Literally, when using the auto focus feature, make sure to focus one thing to make the picture sharper.
  • Get closer, change angles.
  • Go vertical, meaning turn the camera vertically if the subject is vertical.
  • Shoot action.

When shooting, the more pictures taken the better. It’s common sense really, the more pictures you take, the higher chance you have that you have some quality pictures. When I cover a basketball game, I usually take at least 100-150 pictures, in part because of the fact that the pictures are in motion but also so that I get better pictures. Of all those pictures, I usually only use about 14-20 that I think are worthy of publishing.

After learning the basics, taking pictures is just like writing. The more practice the better you’ll get at taking pictures, although you’ll also need better technology for better pictures.

That and being in the right place at the right time helps in capturing good pictures.

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Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

Ch. 4 ‘Microblogging: write small, think big’

Tweeting bird, derived from the initial 't' of...

Image via Wikipedia

Microblogging. Most of us know what it is, we just don’t know it.

Microblogging “allows users to publish brief text messages, usually no more than 140 characters, with links to other Web sites, photos or videos. Messages can be submitted in a variety of ways, including text messaging, instant messaging, e-mail, digital audio or simply posting to the Web. In other words, you can go to the microblog, or you can have it come to you.”

Recognize it? Sounds a lot like Twitter.

As Professor Klein and our guest speakers have talked about, Twitter is absolutely essential to being a journalist or reporter in today’s world. It may change eventually or re-invent itself, but Twitter isn’t going away.

And that’s a good thing, because Twitter is probably the most efficient way to receive news and definitely the fastest. When Twitter is used in the right manner, it can be the best tool for a journalist. You can break news. You can let people know what you’ve just had published. You can use it to get tips or feedback from citizens in the area you cover. You can gain a larger audience, which is always great. You can interact with your audience.

“One great thing about Twitter–and this is why it is so useful for student journalists–is that after a while it trains you to look for interesting things around you (and think how you can communicate that in 140 characters). Those who write off the minutiae of Twitter need to realize: it’s the writer who makes it interesting.” — Paul Bradshaw

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Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

Ch.3 ‘Crowd-powered collaboration’

“The hunter-gatherer model of journalism is no long sufficient. Citizens can do their own hunting and gathering on the Internet. What they need is somebody to add value to that information by processing it–digesting it, organizing it, making it usable.” — Phil Meyer, author of “Precision Journalism”

Briggs starts out the third chapter of “Journalism Next” by writing about how today’s journalists are embracing technology more than ever and using information gathered from citizens to help them assemble their news.

What Briggs writes about reminds a lot about what Mandy Jenkins was talking about when she visited to speak about TBD. TBD uses tweets from people to learn about events and incidents that are happening around the area because TBD is limited to only 15 reporters who can be out on the streets. It also reminds me of Patch as they do the same thing where the editors allow people to e-mail them or tweet them with tips about what’s going on or what they would like to be covered.

The most interesting term I found from the chapter was pro-am journalism. This is the kind of journalism that allows people to publish directly to the same platform the journalists use to publish their news, which also reminds of what Patch does a little bit.

Briggs then goes into detail about crowdsourcing and why it is important for journalists. Crowdsourcing allows communities to focus on a specific project where they can outperform a small group of experienced journalists because they can employ more manpower.

Briggs then talks about invaluable links are to writing for online media. Just a few years ago, linking to the competition was pretty much forbidden, but now it is welcome and many online journalists use it to link to valuable information from other journalists. They do this in the hope that readers will come back to their website because they find that what they link to is credible.

Briggs’ final point is that these types of collaborative journalism aren’t going to go away. With the access to technology that we have now, people are more invested in what is going on right around the corner from them. With companies laying off journalists, media platforms are going to need contribution from ‘regular people’ now more than ever.

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Monday, February 14th, 2011

Ch. 2 ‘Advanced blogging’

“The great thing about a blog for an old-fashioned beat reporter like me is that it is journalism at its core–pounding the pavement looking for the next scoop and making sure that you stay two steps ahead of the competition. That drive was always in me as a beat reporter, but a blog elevates that to a much higher level.” — John Cook, co-founder of TechFlash

In Mark Briggs’ second chapter of “Journalism Next,” Briggs talks about the many advantages of having and maintaining a blog.

  • Blogging helps develop community with readers or viewers so they can test ideas, receive early and direct feedback and publish or broadcast in the timeliest manner.
  • Can help build an audience as a college journalist.
  • Helps establish deeper relationships with readers and can help broaden coverage.

One of the interesting things Briggs points out is that with blogging, their isn’t as much of a sense of competition because people are more willing to share information online. In some blog posts, people link to other people’s sites or blogs and compile info from other resources online to establish their content.

How popular and powerful are blogs now? According to a report done by Technorati, “blogs have more total unique visitors than either Facebook or MySpace.” Blogs help motivate journalists and organizations to be #1. As Joel Achenbach mentioned in his article from “The Washington Post,” journalists are motivated by page views; in this case being a highly viewed blog is a great feeling.

Briggs then outlines some of the jargon associated with blogging, some of the boring stuff.

Then he outlines some tips for how to build a successful blog:

  • Put the reader first
  • Organize your ideas
  • Be direct
  • Be the authority, with a personality
  • Wait 15 minutes after writing to edit yourself dispassionately.
  • Make your posts scanable
  • Link, summarize and analyze
  • Be specific with headlines
  • Have a good attitude
  • Use photos and screenshots
  • Post early, post often (at least once a day)
  • Participate in the community
  • Comment on and read other blogs
  • Link to other blogs
  • Use RSS feeds

As you can tell by these guidelines, a lot of these tips apply to traditional print journalism. That’s because blogging is similar to traditional print journalism, but it can be updated more often and it is more connectible to the audience than a newspaper is.

Related articles

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Sunday, February 13th, 2011

Ch. 1 ‘We are all web workers now’

Mark Briggs

Image by Lars K. Jensen via Flickr

In the first chapter of Mark Briggs‘ “Journalism Next,” Briggs starts off by stating that we as a society take the Internet and e-mail for granted.

He then goes on to define ‘digital information’ and how to create and save text files, audio files, picture files and video files. One of the tips that Briggs advises for Internet etiquette  is to never send a file larger than 1 MB through e-mail, because it can clog your server and the recipient’s server, particularly if it’s a company address you’re sending it to.

Briggs then explains how the Internet works and what the cache is and that it’s a good idea to clean it out regularly to help your system run faster and more efficient. Briggs advises uses RSS feeds (as we did for our blogs) because it’s the easiest way to consume massive amounts of information; it reminds me a lot of Twitter.

He then outlines how to quickly build an HTML page. As anyone who has perused the Internet, he recommends adding images and other visuals to make your Web page not so boring. After explaining HTML, Briggs details CSS which helps to further delve into a Web page to make it look better. He advises to have  at least a small amount of CSS knowledge so as to be able to tweak the sites you may potentially work with.

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