You need real people to put the social in social media, so finds out the New York Times. That’s not surprising.
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Tag Archives: Journalism
Journalism Lives just Launched
In case you missed it, please welcome a new voice to the digital journalism community – http://bit.ly/dAweR4
@DavidAKennedy
David A. Kennedy
You may have noticed a recent update I sent out via Twitter.
Steve Earley and I just launched a new blog focused on how interactivity is helping and can help the news industry. Both Steve and I love blogging, have a deep passion for the future of the news and wanted to join the larger debate surrounding journalism’s ongoing evolution, so starting this blog just made sense. We were lucky to have quite a few supporters already.
If you enjoy reading what I write here, I encourage you to check out Journalism Lives. Steve and I worked together really well during grad school at Elon, and have big plans and hopes for the site.
I’ll also say this: even though Journalism Lives will focus on the news industry, I won’t stop writing about it in this space. I plan to continue exploring multimedia journalism and other types of storytelling with technology here. Journalism isn’t the only field facing a massive evolution, so the more we entertain problems and questions from anywhere and everywhere, the sooner we be able to craft innovative solutions and answers.
That’s why I believe a blog like Journalism Lives can hold value for anyone interested in how people access online information. Our blog, like this one, is likely to draw inspiration from many different sources.
I hope you check it out and thanks for reading.
The Newspaper of the Future
I must admit this app for Apollo News looks neat, despite my hesitance to jump on the iPad bandwagon just yet.
The app learns what kind of content you like and recommends similar content you might find interesting. Sounds like a search engine in a way, only more personal. Worth taking a look and pondering whether or not this could be the newspaper of the future.
How Does an Engagement Editor Engage?
Legacy media and other news organizations have begun to take social media more seriously, creating positions that focus on the medium.
However, few have set out to create a position as unique as the the Voice of San Diego.
Its new Engagement Editor, yet to be hired, has people talking. It’s part ombudsman, part new media guru.
Journalists Erik Gable and Steve Buttry wrote recent blog posts about the position and what it means. Mark Luckie over at 10,000 Words created a nice list of what journalists with similar and current positions do with social media.
In his blog post, Gable asked what you would add to his list.
Here’s what I would want to do that are similar to his ideas:
- Manage the organization’s flagship social media accounts, reader comments and other reader-submitted content.
- Monitor new technology and teach staff workshops on social media and other new tools that may improve engagement. Help staff determine the best tools to use for different projects.
- Hold regular workshops for readers and community organizations to encourage new and continued reader-submitted material. Identify the potential regular and occasional correspondents for the Web site.
- Serve as the point of contact for readers and be the steward for conversations about the voiceofsandiego.org and its stories.
And I’d also like to:
- Organize and lead discussion forums and live online chats on the site about important events and stories. These could also take the form of a broadcast on UStream or similar site. Bring together community leaders to participate in these discussions in order to promote debate about topics.
- Create a portal on the site that would help readers better follow the bigger, more complicated stories. Think of it like a giant blog with easily accessed backstory.
- Establish a more social portal for comments and discussion, through a tool like Ning or BuddyPress.
Like Erik asks, what else would you add?
Image by Clix.
Three Awesome Examples of Interactive Media Stories
When it comes to creating interactive media experiences and websites, finding inspiration is paramount.
Personally, I’m working on several big projects as I approach graduation from my graduate program, so I’m scouring the web, searching for stuff that causes pause, makes me think and want to explore.
Here’s three examples I discovered recently and why they’ve inspired me.
100 Tweets by 9Elements
This site uses HTML5 and Javascript to display 100 tweets about HTML5 in a particle-like way. It has audio and plenty of animation, which make it pretty immersive and something you just want to click on.
To learn more about the project, check out the blog post on it.
In Retrospect: 40 Years Since the Race to the Moon
A Flash-based site created by the Associated Press to highlight the 40th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing. My favorite part here is the timeline. It’s created in a way that visually shows how much failure the space program had to endure to reach its goal. I also like the Apollo 11 animation because it shows how incredibly complex the craft was.
Autism: Breaking Down the Barriers – A Weighty Diagnosis
This multimedia project by the Roanoke Times dives into the subject of children and autism. Focused on a family with twins, one who has autism and one that doesn’t, the project raises issues about autism, and why it’s difficult to deal with.
The video does an excellent job of setting up the story and drawing the viewer in. As soon as I watched it I wanted to explore the rest of the media. The reporters combine powerful quotes, words and images extremely well.
I found these links by browsing Favorite Website Awards and Interactive Narratives.
Why the iPad could Cripple the Internet and Newspapers
Steve Jobs has been quoted as saying he believes in old media companies, and that democracy depends on a free and professional press.
That has put some hope in newspaper executives. After all, Jobs is the guy who reinvented the revenue model for the music industry.
And with the iPad, it’s clear Jobs and company at Apple are up to something.
Hi, we’re closed
However, if the iPad takes off, and other competitors step forward, how many different platforms will newspapers, magazines and book publishers have to create content for? What the iPad and other tools like it could create is a system of closed systems.
Scholar Jonanthan Zittrain speaks to this in his book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. The iPad is an example of a tethered device. “It’s the kind of device that requires special programming knowledge and approval of the device’s creator (Apple).
He and I have nothing against things like the iPad, iPhone, Kindle and Tivo. They are great and have led to some exciting things.
However, they could also lead to a more controlled computing system and less innovation, as he argues.
Balance, please
What’s the answer? Balance – something Zittrain also calls for in his book and in an interview with Charlie Rose.
The Internet has existed as a system that anyone can jump into and play with, so to speak. If you want to create a website for your business, you can do that without knowing everything about how the Internet or computers work.
An Internet dominated by iPad-like devices could wreck that. Developers would have to have more specialized programming knowledge, approval from device creators and other restrictions.
So what should newspapers, magazines and other online storytellers do?
- Explore all possibilities, but maintain some distance and freedom. Don’t rely on just one solution for distributing content.
- Embrace both closed systems, like the iPad and open source platforms, like WordPress.
- Advocate for standards when it comes to devices like the iPad, iPhone and Kindle.
There’s no perfect solution here, but doing these three things will help maintain that balance that Zittrain so smartly calls for as a solution.
What else could newspaper, magazine and book publishers do to help their cause here?
Note: This post is a short assignment for my class in Contemporary Media Issues about the future of the Internet.
The Print vs. New Media Debate
Newspapers have dominated the news’ lately.
And not for reporting the news, but for being the news. The industry continues to struggle amid declining ad revenues and dwindling audiences.
Last week Tech Crunch’s Erick Schonfeld posted an article about a conversation he had Marc Andreessen, the man who invented Mosaic, the first widely used web browser. In the post, Andreessen advises media companies to “burn the boats,” so to speak and abandon their print products.
Embrace the web. Fully. Before it’s too late and other information competitors have the media industry beat.
Today, Schonfeld wrote a follow-up post to his “Burn the Boats” article. In it, he compared media companies and some journalists to dinosaurs happily munching on plants (advertising) instead of evolving.
The two posts have generated a lot of conversation. And for good reason. The debate here is a lively one, and worth reading for anyone interested in how technology will continue to shape newspapers, and the type of storytelling they practice.
One commenter on the latest post said this:
“I looked around at the people I was sharing the train with.
To a person- everyone that looked to be 40+ was either reading a book, talking on their cell or reading a newspaper/magazine (or sleeping).
The under 40 crowd? Just like me – people were on their cells doing, I am assuming, exactly what I was doing: browsing the web, using facebook, whatever. The point is they WEREN’T reading newspapers.”
And there lies the real issue.
Yes, this is a money issue, but also an audience issue.
I would love to see old media take more chances. Burning the boat sounds so romantic. Fun, even. I’d bet it would spur innovation.
However, until the majority of the audience on that train starts using digital tools to consume news, the media will continue to have to walk the line between burning the boat and just bailing out the water in the sinking ship.
Do People Really Care About Journalism’s Struggles?
Are they really seeing what has happened?
“In a big news year, most media continued to see audiences shrink.”
This according to The State of the News Media 2009 report by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. Nothing new there.
Wait. That can’t be right.
Think about that statement. In 2009, the media covered some of the biggest stories in recent times. These include the near second coming of The Great Depression, two American-led wars overseas and the election of the first black president in history.
What gives? People should be flocking the news. Their world has changed, is changing and continues to morph into something completely different and new.
Do people really care about journalism’s struggles?
Nope. That isn’t to say that they couldn’t or don’t want to care.
But why don’t they?
There are three major reasons:
1. The structure of the media. Media critic and scholar Robert McChesney states in his book, The Political Economy of Media, three major reasons for a lack of debate over media structure. One of them is the fact that corporate media have successfully promoted the idea that the status quo is the “only rational media structure for a democratic and freedom-loving society. This holds true to some extent. People may think that with huge corporations controlling media organizations, there’s no chance for change.
2. People like free. Much of the debate about journalism centers on monetary issues. Yes, the industry has shed countless jobs, but according to a recent study by the Inland Press Association, some newspapers have increased their operating profit over the last five years.
According to an article about the report:
Outgoing Inland Executive Director Ray Carlsen said the report compares the gains and losses at daily papers across the country. “It’s encouraging to note that newspaper profitability can still achieve a double-digit percentage of gross revenue,” Carlsen said. “It means that newspapers are still a good business when compared to the results of other industries.”
Many newspapers have seen huge declines in profit, but continue to see profits of 12 percent to 15 percent. Perhaps free news isn’t that bad? People like free, so if the news industry starts charging for everything, the prevailing attitude among people seems to be that the content can be found somewhere for free.
3. The choice for news grows everyday. People no longer need to rely on broadcast news or their major metro daily newspaper for news. They have Facebook, Twitter, blogs, independent Web sites and each other. Anyone can create content today, so the top-down function of old media has become extinct.
How do we make them care?
- Provide unique content that isn’t watered down or found anywhere else. Make sure it tells a story.
- Give that content context. Why is it important to the audience? What does it mean?
- Segment the content into digestible bits that hit home for different members of the audience.
- Use multiple creative ways to distribute the content. Print. Online. Social media. Mobile media. Email lists. Employ them all.
- Engage in conversation with the audience. They matter more than anything else.
- When in doubt: The bottom line matters. The story matters more. What the audience thinks matters even more.
Image by Ayla87.
Note: This post is a short assignment for my class in Contemporary Media Issues about journalism’s recent struggles.
Can Multimedia Save Journalism?
In the late 1990s, when the Internet started catching on, many believed that traditional media, like print and broadcast media would make a transition to the online world.
However, that has yet to fully happen. Newspapers continue to struggle with layoffs and closings. Media leaders have tried and failed at monetizing the news in several different ways.
Despite this, multimedia content has grown on news sites. More publishers, editors and news directors have started hiring web-related positions. Even if we could flip a switch, and make the transition to predominantly online news content, could more multimedia stories save journalism?
Yes. Multimedia is part of the answer.
But only part of it.
The other two factors are money and varied approaches to both the content and the monetization of it.
Segmenting the Content
Robert McChesney, a well-known media critic and scholar whose book I’m reading in one of my graduate classes, asserts that corporations have far too much influence over the media. The hunger for money, he says, effects journalism negatively.
The players haven’t changed in the online world.
The same companies that own newspaper and television stations own many of the most-visited sites. If one of these online companies lacks a foothold in traditional media, it still trends toward being huge.
The need for money, no matter whether a organization is non-profit or for-profit will never go away. News needs funding too.
So how can multimedia attract funds?
Segmented content.
Multimedia lends itself to short bursts of stories, whether it is a photo gallery, video clip, podcast, interactive map or a text article. These pieces can make for perfect bonus content, in addition to certain levels of free content.
The CBS news show 60 Minutes has leaned toward this approach, according to one of its senior producers.Producing quality content will attract viewers and visitors, and may lead them to want to pay for certain additional or premium content.
The next question becomes how to monetize that content.
Monetizing the Multimedia
When I worked for a community newspaper in Florida, I rarely heard from readers who said they read the paper, front to back. When they called to complain or offer praise, it was typically about one section they were passionate about.
This is why I believe segmenting content, and pricing it by the piece and by section might work. However, I also believe that trying different solutions and being nimble about it will work best.
For example, the New York Times will try a metered approach in the future, giving away some free content while charging for some after a certain level of views. This approach might gain traction, thanks to its flexibility and use of free content.
Whether a news organization is for-profit or non-profit, it will always need some type of revenue stream, and multiple revenue streams work even better. Multimedia can drive the transition to more online news and more revenue streams, making news orgs less dependent on solely advertising.
Image by Maxray06.
Note: This post is a short assignment for my class in Contemporary Media Issues about journalism’s recent struggles.
What if Newspaper Home Pages were like iGoogle?
This year I almost entered the Knight News Challenge. I developed a first draft for an idea, but just didn’t have to time to fully flesh it out.
I debated on whether I wanted to work on it more for next year, but decided it would be better to let it loose. And perhaps, someone will read it, and want to help grow it and develop it together.
The idea would put the design of newspaper and television Web site home pages into the hands of the readers and viewers – similar to iGoogle. It lets them shape the story the publication tells them in a way.
It has some strengths and weaknesses. Its strength is that it relies on user control. Its weaknesses are that I do not explain well enough its differences from tools like iGoogle. And, at least in the framework of the Knight News Challenge, it fails to provide enough benefit to a certain group of people.
Read the proposal, and contact me if you’re interested in developing it together.
2010 Knight News Challenge Almost-Entry
Project Title: NewsHome
Requested amount from Knight News Challenge: $200,000
Expected amount of time to complete project: 1 year
Total cost of project including all sources of funding: $200,000
Describe your project: This project will put the design of newspaper and television Web site home pages into the hands of the readers and viewers. Using open-source blog software, most likely Movable Type, we will create a platform and community for website users to create their own home page. Users will move around blocks of information, such as articles, photos, multimedia and advertisements, just like widgets on the back end of a blog. They could choose as many or as few widgets of information as they like. Content will most likely come in via RSS feed from different sections of the paper. Users will be able to customize their own Web site experience every day if they’d like.
Other elements of the software will be supported by a micro-community. Users will be able to see other home page designs other users have made, and vote for their favorite. Users will also be able to select from templates created by staff members and other users.
How will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities? Newspaper, television station and other media Web sites are known to be cluttered, confusing and overwhelming to visitors and potential visitors. Let the audience solve that problem. This application will allow users a portion of control in how they receive and view the news in their community. News organization staff will also be able to see what users like in a home page/news website design. This could potentially inform future site design and user experience decisions.
How is your idea innovative? This solution to cluttered design harnesses a lot of existing technologies. Chief among these technologies are open-source blogging software and RSS feeds. It’s a mashup that aims to put users in control of how they view the news. The most innovative part of this is users will have some say in the way they get the news. This beginning stage of collaboration among the news organization and its reader, it’s hoped, will promote open the conversation between the two parties, leading to a more successful future partnership – full of worthwhile news and new ideas.
What experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project? I have worked as a journalist at a community newspaper in Florida, and am currently pursuing my master’s degree in interactive media at Elon University. I have an understanding of how the news business works, thanks to my professional experience. My graduate studies have honed my skills in interactive design, usability and audience analytics. This combination is well suited for developing this kind of project.
Image by newspaper.