links for 2009-10-29

• Editor & Publisher: “Report: Many Newspaper Journos Want a Faster Transition to Digital”
  (tags: journalism newspapers online digital)
• MediaShift: “The Right Way For Media Companies to Create Social Media Policies”
  (tags: onlinejournalism socialmedia socialnetworking policies)
• MediaShift Idea Lab: “The New Era of Media Development, Part II”
  (tags: onlinejournalism media MediaShift development)
• Multimedia Shooter: “10 Projects you MUST see, NOW!”
  (tags: multimedia onlinejournalism video storytelling)
• Advancing the Story: “12 Things I’ve Learned about Online News”
  (tags: onlinejournalism newspapers)

links for 2009-10-21

• Betatales: “5 simple ways to engage users on a small news site”
  (tags: websites onlinejournalism interactive)
• Poynter: “News Orgs Make Gradual Progress in Site Navigation, Use of Social Networks”
  (tags: onlinejournalism websites socialmedia socialnetworking)
• Save the Media: “A journalist’s guide to the ethics of social media”
  (tags: ethics socialmedia journalism)
• CJR: “The Reconstruction of American Journalism”: About This Report”
  (tags: journalism)
• Romenesko: “New York Times to cut 100 newsroom jobs”
  (tags: nytimes stateofmedia)
• E-media Tidbits: “High Cost, Low Quality Plague Newspaper Video Efforts”
  (tags: journalism onlinejournalism video)
• Nieman Journalism Lab: “New York Times, still uncertain on charging, sets seven digital priorities”
  (tags: journalism nytimes onlinejournalism)
• Romenesko: “Seattle Crosscut completes its migration to a new, nonprofit model”
  (tags: nonprofit businessmodels journalism)

Online Journalism Links: 6/16/2009

Here are some links to recent articles and posts about online journalism I found interesting:

-Journalism 2.0: “How to bring a startup culture into the newsroom”: Mark Briggs applies a post by Scott Porad of FailBlog.org and I Can Has Cheezburger? to newsrooms. This post looks at the difference between corporate culture and the culture at a startup organization. Briggs gives three ways to bring a startup culture into the newsroom.

-Save the Media: “The ‘hyperinterest’ approach to online news”: Gina writes about the idea of a portal Web site that provides access to what people are interested in as well as hyperlocal content. She proposes that this is what news Web sites should do. She later created a follow up post answering questions she received from the initial post.

-MediaShift Idea Lab: “How Video Volunteers Improved Women’s Rights, Sanitation in India”: Jessica Mayberry highlights some of the impacts of Video Volunteers‘ work training community producers in disadvantaged areas. This post includes the stories of two people’s experiences.

-AP Press Release: “New edition of AP Stylebook adds entries and helpful features”: The new edition of the stylebook includes entries about Twitter and texting.

-MediaShift: “10 Steps to Saving Newspapers”: Mark Glaser rehashes the 10 tweets he sent from his hospital bed about saving newspapers and local news. Two of my favorites: (4) “Find out what the community wants in real face-to-face meetings, not focus groups. Then do what they want” and (10) “Create a bottom-up organization where innovation is encouraged and rewarded at the edges. Use good ideas from anyone.”

Conversations on funding journalism

In the past few weeks the business models used to fund journalism have again been popular topics of discussion. Within that,  ideas about how to profit from online journalism are at the forefront of the conversation.

This week, newspaper executives met and discussed charging for online content.

Need to brush up on the subject or find out more about the conversations going on? Check out the set of links I have compiled in my delicious links under businessmodels.

Applying what I learned: ‘The Women’

While those of you who have been following this blog may know that this fall I took on an independent study to look at how the internet has influenced journalists’ roles, many of you may not know what I’ve been up to this spring.

In the final semester of my undergraduate education, I sought to apply the lessons I learned this fall. I learned that journalists need to be multi-skilled and multi-platform, so I developed a project in which I could demonstrate that.

Over the course of two and a half months, I worked on an in-depth project examining gender at Whitworth University. Nearly 60 people were interviewed. I wrote more than 50 articles of varying lengths both news and features, took and edited video clips, created databases, posted documents, created a graphic element, did the coding for the Web page, added links and did some of the photo work for the project.

Today it is finally complete, with only a few finishing touches needed. Check it out: The Women

In an upcoming post, I will debrief and talk about what I learned through this experience.

Online Journalism Links: 3/27/2009

E-Media Tidbits: “How to Start a Web Site in Six Easy Steps”: Maurreen Skowran gives tips on how to start your own Web site ranging from buying your domain name to hosting.

Teaching Online Journalism: “RGMP 11: Tell a good story with images and sound”: This is the latest installment in Mindy McAdams’ series Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency explaining the basics of online journalism. This post looks at storytelling as well as the technical aspects of producing a feature story as an audio slideshow.

10,000 Words: “Essential multimedia tutorials and resources for do-it-yourself training”: Mark S. Luckie provides descriptions and links to 10 tutorial sites for a journalist to find training on how to do effective multimedia.

Journalistopia: “Handouts for today’s FSNE multimedia workshops”: Danny Sanchez posted handouts he used this week at multimedia workshops mostly toolkits dealing with how to blog.

CNET News: “Nielsen: Twitter’s growing really, really, really, really fast”: A survey form Nielsen found Twitter at the top of the list of fastest growing “member community destinations” in the U.S.. The site had a 1,382 percent growth rate from February 2008 to February 2009.

NYC & DC: A media experience

I just returned from New York City and Washington, D.C., after meeting with media figures for a month trip as part of a class studying media impact in the United States.

Here’s some snapshots of our meetings from posts on our class blog that I’ve produced with fellow traveler Derek Casanovas:

Saatchi & Saatchi: Erin Lyons: Lyons said advertisers need to create interaction with Web users in order to get them to act on their interest in an advertisement with a behavior in the marketplace. Lyons said her company also does advertising on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter.

Associated Press: Michael Oreskes and Robert Naylor: The challenge is determining what is essential to journalism and what is just form, Oreskes said. For example, the inverted pyramid was the result of technological revolutions to the point that competition among newspapers necessitated finding ways to draw readers in. Traits like honesty, credibility and accuracy are those that need to be preserved, Oreskes said.

Columbia University: Sree Sreenivasan: Today, every journalists should have a new media skill set, but more importantly, a new media mindset, Sreenivasan said. Sreenivasan said journalists need to develop four mindsets in thinking about new media:

1. Acknowledge that the audiences knows a lot, often more than you, and harness that energy.
2. Realize you can learn about what’s going on from anywhere, not just traditional media outlets.
3. Recognized that there are more effective ways of doing what we do.
4. Realize you only have the start of a story and think about different formats

Rules to help newspapers unlock the Internet

Want some keys to unlocking the Internet for newspapers? Alan Jacobson, president and CEO of Brass Tacks Design, outlined nine new, digestible rules for newspapers back in October 2006 to help tackle the online dilemma.

Here are a few highlights:

Rule #1: Get real about the Internet

Jacobson compares the Internet revolution with the invention of Gutenberg‘s movable type providing everyone with publishing technology. This is even more the case with the Internet, which allows a “democratization” of publishing. Note that Gutenberg’s technology put the profession of scribes out of business unless they were willing to renegotiate what they did.

Rule #2: Tie journalists’ pay to circulation

This, Jacobson writes, is the way to really put readers first. He suggests doing it for everyone in the company and it will be a motivating factor driving content.

Rule #4: Stop running news stories

At least stop running them in print. Jacobson writes that there needs to be a reassessment of content. The Internet is for breaking news, print is for context and meaning.

Rule #7: Solve the online revenue riddle

People enterprise-wide need to focus on how to make money online. Don’t follow the mold and squeeze advertising in where it fits. Start with a blank slate and build, Jacobson writes.

Rule #8: Promote as if success depends on it

Just advertising your other media services in the newspaper isn’t going to cut it, Jacobson writes. That’s not going to bring in people who don’t read the print edition. You have to advertise and promote your services.

For more of Jacobson’s rules, read the article “New rules for newsrooms.”

Innovation needs to maintain ‘relentless’ reporting

Newspaper companies, like manufacturers of other products replaced by electronic tools, have to either “adapt or die,” Rachel Smolkin wrote in an article for the June/July 2006 American Journalism Review. 

The innovations are about a change in phrasing, saying the organization is not a newspaper but the leading local media company. Stories and readers have also transformed into content and audience, she writes. Smolkin observes the multiplatform media concept gaining popularity industry-wide and highlights some innovations: Studio 55 video reports and the AP Online Video Network.

These changes, she writes, also constitute serious changes for print journalists in terms of the demands on their time and learning new skills and new ways of thinking.

There are challenges to these changes which Smolkin poses as questions: “What will all these new obligations mean for the thorough, in-depth reporting that separates newspapers from their competitors? Will reporters’ responsibilities to write for the Web mean they simply don’t have time to make that extra call to the mayor, or the police chief, or the local gadfly — time-consuming reporting that adds nuance to stories and sometimes changes their direction entirely?”

Smolkin uses the example of the role of a journalist at the Washington Post. These reporters, she writes, feed washingtonpost.com with stories, blogs and online chats and in addition appear on TV news shows and on Washington Post Radio (before the plug was pulled on the radio project this past June).

One of the problems inherent in this restructuring of responsibilities is the matter of compensation. The Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in response to the increased workload without increased pay. The NLRB agreed that the Washington Post violated labor laws, but an administrative law judge rejected the claims based on contractual language. The judge did find, however, that employees’ work assignments were changed and that the changes were “material, substantial and significant.” This issue of pay for a perceived increase in workload with innovations is still being played out and explored.

Smolkin argues that newspapers need to be able to continue the type of relentless reporting that makes them unique in order to be worth preserving.

“They must not turn print journalists into spinning tops, whirling from podcasts to vodcasts to radio appearances to online chats to blogging, then clutching their video cameras as they rush to an assignment and, if they get a free second, trying to squeeze in a little reporting,” she writes.