How new technology creates "conversational journalism"

A discussion into how much the average journalist’s working day has changed has been highlighted by the Freelance Unbound blog.

It has provided excerpts and a video of Reed Business Information editorial development director Karl Schneider’s (pictured) talk to journalism students at UCA Farnham where he compares the daily work of a “cutting edge, web-aware” journalist to one of five years ago.

Taking a typical type of story, for example a crime, he talked about how, back then, most of the work involved - calling contacts, news conferences, web browsing - was never seen by the audience, likening it to an iceberg – you only see the tip.

Now, not only are journalists working in a different way, the audience is able to read and respond to news items much more quickly. Schneider points out how journalists communicate more, particularly through the use of Twitter.

The website quotes Schneider as saying: “As [journalists] come across pieces of information, if they think it would be useful for the audience to hear it, it’s trivially easy – you can do it in seconds. If they’ve got a bit of information, why hold on to it – why wait until they’ve got five more bits and constructed it into a complete story? Why not publish the bit of information now?”

He uses the case study of Farmers Weekly which used its user forum to confirm a story of a recent outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease, providing further information and gaining feedback from the readers, creating what he calls a “conversational journalism”.

The journalist’s day, the report says, is now a continuous conversation with the audience – with some lumps of more structured forms. What looks like a lot of extra work, is actually less because of the speed of social media.

The journalistic work you would do anyway, says the blog, is now exposed to public view allowing feedback and interaction.

Says Schneider: “Imagine you’ve got your reader on your shoulder – think about what they want to know. With the web you virtually have. You can ask them what they want to know; they can tell you what information they need.”

Paywalls and Social Media at the Society of Editors 2009 conference

Could regional news sites charge too?

One theme that dominated the recent Society of Editors conference was how to make paid content work. Whilst national newspapers look at possible dates for setting up paywalls on their news sites, regional papers were also considering getting in on the act.

Holdthefrontpage has reported how Worcester News editor Kevin Ward asked the question as to whether regionals could ever charge for their content, at a seminar on the future of the industry.

In a discussion that featured both national and regional editors as well as head of Google UK Matt Brittin, Mr Ward put forward that regional news was a sufficiently “niche” product to make the charging model work successfully.

According to the website, Mr Ward told the conference: "What we produce is niche. Nobody else sits in our courts every day. Nobody else scrutinises our public bodies.”

Mr Ward continued by asking whether, as a result, regional papers had "more opportunity to charge for the web" than their national counterparts.

Mr Brittin responded by saying: "Looking for local news is one of the biggest activities online. There are big opportunities there."

The Times: Not "if" but "when"

The Guardian states how James Harding, the editor of the Times, gave the clearest indication yet of how News International is going to start charging for its journalism online.

Confirming that The Times will indeed start charging for content, he told the conference: "From spring of next year we will start charging for the digital edition of the Times. We're working on the exact pricing model, but we'd charge for a day's paper, for a 24-hour sign-up to the Times. We'll also establish a subscription price as well."

According to the Guardian he also warned against the idea of micro-payments for individual articles.

He said: "You have to be very careful with article-only economics," he said. "You will find yourself writing a lot more about Britney Spears and a lot less about Tamils in northern Sri Lanka."

6,200 comments following transfer day coverage

Social media was another key area of discussion at the conference, according to reports on Holdthefrontpage. One editor who championed its use was Hull Daily Mail boss John Meehan, who described how their use of it to cover transfer deadline day for the local football team Hull City, led to an “avalance of interactivity.”

He stated how the paper’s use of live blogging functionality and social media, as part of their coverage, led to 6,200 comments from readers – one every five seconds.

"The immediacy of the web has made timed newspaper editions obsolete," Mr Meehan told the conference.

Holdthefront page reports how fellow panellist Martin Wright, associate editor of NWN Media which publishes the Leader in North Wales, said Twitter was now the tenth biggest referrer to its main website, leaderlive.co.uk.

Trinity Mirror head of multimedia David Higgerson said the Liverpool Echo had used Twitter to break the news of the result of the trial of the killers of Rhys Jones.

Are you tweeting for the right reasons?

Twitter and other social media sites have previously demonstrated value in terms of breaking news and raising public awareness of certain stories.

But the BristolEditor blog has raised a different argument, questioning whether people are jumping onto social media because they have something of genuine contribution to make or because they feel they should.

“When was the last time you contributed something useful, valid and valued to the stream of social media editorial?” asks the blog. “Is it all second-hand news, no real voice, nothing authentic or genuine?”

It also draws on Sarah Hartley’s experiences, detailed in her own blog, of a possible North-South divide in the uptake of social media based on Hartley’s interactions with bloggers, tweeters and other media users.

In London at the #1pound40 "unconference", Hartley writes how she found everyone was saying the same thing: “speaking the social media speak. The digerati in full flow – agreeing with one another.”

This left Hartley feeling that she had contributed and learnt nothing new to the debate on social media.

However, at the Leeds Social Media Surgery, where NGOs and charities had the chance to see how they could use Social Media sites, they engaged with the ideas, questioned why they would take part in social media and considering them as what they were intended to be – tools to be used as part of a wider aim.

The BristolEditor says how it’s seen lots of media and marketing types observing, re-tweeting, idea-stealing and copying the work of others online and across various social media platforms.

“Yes, the old ‘nothing is original’ argument is true to a point,” it says “but the copiers and plagiarisers still appear on social media spaces too.”

Social media, it reminds us, is about what you put in, not take out.

A Look Ahead from `Oasis of Optimism'

Last week's Online News Association convention in San Francisco (see post below) was "an oasis of optimism," reports Jacqui Banaszynski, a long-time journalist and currently the Knight Chair in Editing at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

The crowd gazing at the relatively near horizon identified a variety of "Web 3.0" tools and trends that seem to hold enormous promise for journalists. Banaszynski summarizes a few of them:

* GoogleWave, which observers think could be the next ... well, Google. ChicagoTalks.org publisher Barbara Iverson says Google’s soon-to-be-released real-time sharing tool is "the latest blockbuster in the communications journey that has taken us from phone to Napster to Facebook to Twitter," Banaszynski reports. "It will apparently make the hiccup of time spent waiting on Twitter or IMs seem limiting."

* Facebook Connect is seen as a powerful tool for building online communities around a product or message. It will let people log in to a website directly through their Facebook accounts. Those users will then have real identities, which the optimists say should boost transparency, accountability and even civility.

* Twitter, "already the stud of the online world, is taking steroids," Banaszynski says. Co-founder Evan Williams mentioned three specifics: Twitter lists to let you more easily aggregate and organize the Twitterverse, as well as send group messages; location information embedded into every tweet; and a still-in-the-works “reputation system” designed to make tweets more transparent and verifiable.

Other predictions include more video, less podcasting -- and a surge in online initiatives by and for women.

All A-Twitter Over Post Policy

The Washington Post has been the target of considerable squawking recently over its guidelines for journalists' use of Twitter and other social media. This week, Post media writer Howard Kurtz offers his own tongue-in-cheek guidelines.

They include:

* Don't say something that makes you look like a blithering idiot.

* Don't appear to be in the pocket of [insert your favourite political party or cause here].

* Stick to subjects on which you actually have a clue.

* Refrain from boring people with the minutiae of your daily life.

* Don't say anything you couldn't defend as fair analysis in print or on the air.

OK, that last one was actually a serious point. Although his column includes an interesting array of views from around the media blogosphere, Kurtz says he actually finds his paper's contested policies to be quite reasonable.

"There's plenty of running room to be insightful and entertaining -- within the confines of 140 characters -- and engage in dialogue with people who care about politics and journalism," he says. "It all comes down to using a bit of common sense."

NY Times Explores Twitter Search Tool

The New York Times is experimenting with search tools to sift through Twitter feeds and pull together commentary on thousands of specific topics, Mediaweek's Mike Shields reports.

The company already has built one such product, for its popular fashion-themed blog The Moment. The Moment, which has more than 1.2 million followers on Twitter, aggregates commentary about the high-end fashion industry from editors and readers, Times Senior VP for Digital Operations Martin Nisenholtz said.

Nisenholtz says the Times has a unique opportunity to play a prominent intermediary role on Twitter, as part guide and part editor.

“If you go out and search Twitter, it doesn’t work very well,” he said. “It’s very literal.” But if the newspaper can build multiple search products for Twitter that better understand context, there “is a lot of power in organizing and curating this world.”

Overall, the Times’ core Web site is enjoying a Twitter-driven traffic boost, adding roughly 15,000 followers each week, Nisenholtz reported.

Facebook also is a solid source of social media traffic; the Times has accumulated half a million followers since extending its presence on the site in 2007. Unlike NYTimes.com, the newspaper's Facebook followers are predominantly female, and 80 percent are under age 35.

Is Transparency the New Objectivity?

The impact of social media on breaking news is overestimated in the short term -- and underestimated in the long term, according to BBC Global News Division Direction Richard Sambrook.

Sambrook said at last week's Oxford Social Media Convention that mainstream media are adopting social media such as Twitter but failing to discuss its long-term effects, Mercedes Bunz reports for the Guardian.

He suggest a new objectivity may be evolving. Objectivity, he said, was designed to deliver journalism that people can trust. But today, it is transparency that creates trust. News still has to be accurate and fair, but it is as important for the public to see how the news is produced and where the information comes from, he said.

Information is not journalism, Sambrook added. Journalism needs discipline, analysis, explanation and context; its "added value" comes from judgement, analysis and explanation. Journalism, therefore, has a future, he promised.

Facebook Makes Friends -- and Money

Facebook, the social networking phenomenon, announced this week that it now has more than 300 million users worldwide -- having added 50 million just since July -- and has become "free cash flow positive," the Guardian reports on its Technology blog.

That means it is finally making money after five and a half years and an estimated $716 million of investment.

Facebook now has as many users as the entire internet population of China -- or of Europe's 10 largest countries combined. It is still growing in Britain and the United States, and its recently launched Facebook Lite is designed to appeal to users with slower internet connections in countries such as Brazil and India.

The news prompted speculation that the company could prepare for a stock market launch as early as next year, a rumour that senior executives have tried to squash in the past.

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, 25, seem to have settled on several key ways to bring in the money, the Guardian reports in a sidebar post:

* Self-serve advertising allows marketers to buy ads to put in front of users who precisely fit a desired profile. This has proved appealing for some big brands.

* In addition, almost anyone can walk up and buy space on the site if they have the cash -- including other Facebook users, who try to direct people to their profiles, fan pages or elsewhere in order to promote a cause or pitch a product.

* Users also can buy gifts and other virtual property to give to each other. This still seems like a crazy idea to some people, but it can be profitable. Think of ringtones, for instance.

* In addition, the company is working on a micropayments system that likely will allow it to take a slice of any transaction conducted through the site.

Echo Readers Create Unique Gallery

Life in Dorset is captured by the impressive collection of photos posted in response to an appeal from the Daily Echo.

The Bournemouth newspaper is encouraging readers to contribute to its Flickr group - A Dorset Year - as part of its aim to create a gallery showing a year in the life of the county and its residents.

All the photos are also published on the Daily Echo website and selected pictures feature in the newspaper.



Digital project co-ordinator Sam Shepherd told HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk that the gallery represents the newspaper’s efforts to interact with people in the area.

“There are so many people out there on the patch using Flickr so it was a way of getting them to engage with us,” said Shepherd.

So far, the group has attracted over 1,000 photos to its photostream and has more than 150 members.

MEN – Raids Reported In Real-Time

The Manchester Evening News has used social media to keep its website readers up to date with the progress of a series of police raids.

HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reports that the MEN had a reporter stationed in the control room, where he used Twitter to post updates about the massive police operation.

The tweets were collected under a gmpraids hashtag on Twitter and appeared in a live blog on the web pages of the MEN.



And the newspaper had one of its journalists following police officers as they carried out arrests across Greater Manchester so reports ‘from the field’ were also fed back to the CoverItLive blog.



“CoverItLive was useful for this because it allows our readers who are not on Twitter to follow the reports and also add their own comments,” said Paul Gallagher, head of online content at the MEN.

He added: “I think this has been a good example of our journalists using new online reporting tools to bring a fresh approach to the MEN’s coverage of a live news story.”

See HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk for the full story and visit the MEN website to view the coverage and to replay the live blog.

News Media & Facebook Strategy

News sites must consider their Facebook strategy as the social networking site goes from strength to strength.

That’s the view of Dorian Benkoil, who has written on Poynter Online about the necessities of having a Facebook strategy.

According to Benkoil, the popular website has made a number of advances recently that make it a must-use social media tool for online newspapers.

He writes: “As Facebook ramps up its offerings and takes on both Twitter and Google, you may need a hefty presence there to capture an audience you might not easily reach other ways.”

These changes are Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed, the trial of Facebook Lite and the launch of a real-time search facility.

Benkoil notes: “The basic idea is that once you’re in Facebook, you’ll stay there - to communicate with people, get information, post photos and videos, play games, maybe even consume music and videos, or shop.

“So, if you, as an editor or publisher, want to reach the audience that’s in Facebook you may have to make sure your content is there, as well.”

The Strategy

But what is the best way for news sites to get their content in front of Facebook users – and is there any way to make money from it?

Benkoil suggests creating a fan page – see New York Times fan page – and a profile page via which a newspaper can push its stories as news feeds.

As for making money, Benkoil spoke to a viral marketing spokesperson who pointed out that news sites can put ads on their fan page and will soon be able to sell merchandise to Facebook users without them having to leave the site.

See Poynter Online for the full story.

Debating Journalism’s Big Questions

An online resource now holds over 90 interviews and op-eds discussing the future of news in the digital age.

The Future of Journalism project is featured on the OurBlook website, which proclaims to be a cross between a blog and a book.

It is a collaborative resource which has dozens of interviews with industry experts sharing their thoughts on some of the biggest challenges facing journalism.

The site also has opinion pieces from journalists and academics pondering subjects such as citizen journalism and business models of the future.

Writing on the Online Journalism Review, OurBlook staffer Sandra Ordonez says: “The website is a collaborative, Web 2.0 platform created for the exchange of research, information and dialogue on national and global issues.”

She adds that the interviews and pieces have been compiled into an online book and can be viewed on OurBlook’s Future of Journalism pages.

Social Media Revolution

Social media represent "a revolution in communication that no journalist or news organization can afford to ignore," says journalist and self-described change advocate Michele McLellan.

She offers three lessons in social media for news executives and entrepreneurs: Understand how it works. Understand how people (not journalists) use it. Use it strategically.

Specifically, she has three suggestions for how to proceed:

1. Try it. Start with Facebook. Set up an account, link up with friends and family members, and locate groups that reflect your interests. Start posting once a day. Share links to interesting articles. Ask friends to comment. Comment on others' posts. Devote 10 minutes a day to this for several weeks.

Next, she advises, start a Twitter account and repeat these steps. If you want to drive traffic for a certain subject on your site, Twitter will be a better tool than Facebook, she adds -- advice supported by JP Digital Digest posts earlier this week on the rapid growth of Twitter as a content-sharing tool.

"Resist the urge to create a litany of reasons you don’t like Facebook or Twitter or any other network you join," McLellan cautions. "You are not the point. Understanding how social media works is Job 1. Just talking about it or dissing it won’t get you there."

2. Watch how other people use social networks. What are people sharing and how do they share it? Don’t look at social media through the eyes of the journalist, she says; instead, focus on how people communicate with each other. Check out people who have a lot of followers on Twitter. How do they write, and what do they offer that appeals to you? Learn as much as you can about how people in your community use social media. Use search and check out sites such as PlaceBlogger to identify and connect with social media leaders. Ask the people around you how they use social media, too. Start thinking about how the news you produce might improve their experience -- which, she adds, "is different from trying to get them to read your news."

3. Be strategic. There’s no point in being on all the networks all the time, McLellan says. "Figure out a strategy, try it out and stick with it long enough to figure out whether it works, and learn from your mistakes if it doesn’t."

She says news organizations should not expect to get immediate revenue from social media. The applications are about community and conversation; they are valuable for journalists who want to increase their community connections. "It is those connections that may eventually yield revenue, from advertisers who want to speak to those communities, from services the news organization discovers those communities want, and from loyalty that will help keep the users coming back," McLellan concludes.

Facebook Is King of Content Sharing

Facebook is the primary content-sharing method for internet users, though e-mail remains popular and, as reported here on Wednesday, Twitter is rapidly gaining ground.

Recent findings by AddToAny, provided as a Business Insider "Chart of the Day", broke down the various ways that people share content on the Web, finding that nearly a quarter of them use Facebook.

Applications such as Digg, Delicious, Reddit and StumbleUpon are among other options, but each accounts for less than 6% of the content-sharing usage, according to the chart.

Poynter Online's Will Sullivan points out that knowing how people use the Web to share information is important for news organizations, but accurately tracking the extent to which content-sharing sites drive people to their websites can be difficult. Analytics programmes may significantly under-report the number of referrals from sites such as Twitter, for instance.

Indy Unveils Politics Twitter App

A new Twitter application devoted to British politics has been launched by The Independent and Tweetminster.

Livewire enables Twitterers to follow and interact with the tweets of politicians, political journalists and parliamentary commentators.



Users can search by party, person or source to track feeds and will have Twitterers recommended to them by Livewire.

The service also features analytical tools which enable visitors to compile stats on topic trends and the most popular links in real-time.

“This is a great step forward in aggregating the latest whispers from the corridors of power and influence,” said Jimmy Leach, editorial director for digital at The Independent.

Alberto Nardelli, a co-founder of Tweetminster, added that his company was honoured to be launching a partnership project with the daily title.

In a press statement, he said: “Together, we’re pushing the boundaries of what newspapers do, and more importantly we are bringing people closer to politicians and to the heart of political debate, helping politicians and politics to become more approachable, open, and social.”

Top Of The News Tweets

A blogger has compiled a list of the most popular Twitter feeds provided by national newspapers in the UK.

Malcolm Coles found that just three newspapers account for the ten most followed feeds – the Guardian, the Financial Times and the Times.

The Guardian’s Tech Twitter account is the number one in the chart, with 831,935 followers at the time of compilation (risen to 911,143 when this post was written).

It’s then a big drop to second with the Guardian News feed, with over 25,000 followers on Twitter.

Also making up the top ten are FT finance news, Guardian Music, Times Travel and Times Money.

The full table showing the 131 official feeds and their followers is available here.

Follow Globe Video Via Facebook

Fans of a news site’s sports video can now follow it from their Facebook pages.

The new application enables Boston.com to make its daily Globe 10.0 more of an interactive feature as users can submit comments and contribute ideas for the next sporting debates.

Facebook users can also win prizes for the most promoted comments and invite their friends to join in with the burning issues.



See Editor & Publisher for more on this story.

Twittering Reporter Earns Exclusive

A journalist has stumbled upon an exclusive story thanks to a bunch of tweets exchanged with a contact.

Journalism.co.uk reports that the Edinburgh Evening News reporter had initially approached a fellow Twitterer to find out more about their involvement in the forthcoming festival.

However, causal mention of a body discovered in their block of flats led Victoria Raimes to follow up the lead and write a front-page exclusive on the incident.

Raimes revealed that the microblogging service has become a valuable story-finding tool since she joined the newspaper.

“Each week I pick up a page lead from Twitter ... I would encourage every regional journalist to use it,” she said.

Raimes, who has made contacts via her own account and the Twitter feed of the Evening News, also noted that the website enables journalists to get feedback on their work.

Attracting Users With Social Media

How news sites attract audiences via social media is the subject of a presentation from net consultant Martin Belam.

Belam, who is information architect for the Guardian’s web development team, presented his findings at last month’s International Social Media Summit.

Among the social media tools and sites discussed were social bookmarking and recommendation sites, blogs and Twitter.

Belam has made his presentation available on Slideshare (see below) and as a six-part series of posts on his currybetdotnet blog.

How major publishers are using social media to drive traffic

View more documents from Martin Belam.

Interactive Coverage For Jacko Tribute

Social media sites joined with mainstream news groups on Tuesday to offer interactive coverage of the Michael Jackson memorial concert.

Live video was accompanied by real-time comments from fans on the websites of many broadcasters – including CNN, ABC News and msnbc.

Twitter was the social media tool of choice for msnbc.com, which aggregated tweets (powered by Tinker) alongside streamed video footage from the Staples Center in Los Angeles.



New product development director Cory Bergman said that the online coverage represented “a first for both Twitter and msnbc.com on a large-scale news event”.

Meanwhile, both CNN and ABC News opted for Facebook Connect to draw fans to their live video stream.



According to Mashable, the interactive coverage on CNN.com attracted a total audience of almost ten million and thousands of updates from Facebook users.

In an interview for CNN, Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg talks about her company’s involvement in the broadcaster's coverage of the event.