Tag Archives: journalism

It’s official! I’m moving to the Twin Cities

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MPR logo

After a long and difficult decision between two great opportunities, I finally had to choose. I am now an Associate Editor for Online News at Minnesota Public Radio, part of the American Public Media Group. The next few weeks will be spent handling the logistics of moving 1,600 miles, getting acclimated to the Twin Cities and learning my new role as part of the MPR team.

Once I get settled this blog will come alive again, especially once I’m playing a large role in the online development of such a creative and diverse news organization. I’m looking forward to having a more direct perspective of the online journalism world as we enter this age of broad and sweeping change in our beloved industry.

To say I am excited about this opportunity would be putting it mildly. Yay for the future!

Quotable

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Dean Nicholas Lemann, Columbia School of Journalism

Our job was to improve on the old model. Your job is to create a new model. You shouldn’t be daunted by this: newspapers in particular, and news in general, have been changing in non-incremental ways for three centuries. Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World (the profits from which endowed this school) had almost nothing in common except that they were printed on cheap paper and distributed in cities, and neither had much in common with a big-city newspaper today. On your watch, newspapers will be primarily digital, but the primary task for you is not to switch delivery media, it’s to invent a new social compact with a community around the gathering and presentation of information.

Read full transcript.

Quote of the Day*

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From Ryan Sholin’s post on ’10 obvious things about the future of newspapers you need to get through your head’:

J-schools can either play a critical role in training the next generation of journalists, or they can fade into irrelevancy. Teach multimedia, interactivity and data, or watch your students become frustrated and puzzled as they try to get jobs with five clips and a smile.

That’s what I’ve been trying to iterate to so many of my fellow students (well, former students, I take the big walk on Friday). These same students laugh and smirk at my “blogging” yet don’t understand why their applications end up in the slush pile when all they have is “…clips and a smile.”

They’ll either learn or be left behind and without even Kirk Cameron to keep them company.

*I know his post is old, but it is still highly relevant and deserves a QOTD nod.

‘Suck on this’ Thomas Friedman

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You may have heard that NYT columnist Thomas Friedman was recently hit with a pie at a speech he was giving. Yes, above is the video. The proof is in the pudding, or meringue perhaps.

Friedman has been under fire since an appearance on Charlie Rose where he summed up the War in Iraq by saying: “Suck on this!”

What does this have to do with online journalism? Nothing, it’s just rather hilarious. Carry on.

‘New Media Bytes’ is ridiculously informative

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All right, that’s it, I’m packing it up. No need for me to be yammering away about online journalism stuff when people like Shawn Smith have everything covered over at New Media Bytes. Smith is a senior news producer at MLive.com, the online arm of Booth Newspapers in Michigan.

Honestly, his blog is the most comprehensive site I’ve seen covering topics such as, but are not limited to, Twitter and journalists, new media metrics and how to coerce your newsroom into accepting the online world. Some notable posts:

I’m kidding of course about packing it up, but good grief, Shawn has done a terrific job. Kudos to you sir!

Scarborough Newspaper Audience Ratings Report 2008

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Orlando Sentinel

Consumer shopping research firm Scarborough Research, a Nielsen Media affiliate, has released its 2008 Newspaper Audience Ratings Report. The SNARR, besides just being a fun word to say, can be a useful and quick measure for newspapers, but it is not a perfect measure.

CLICK HERE to read the report. (PDF)

What does all of this mean?

The numbers are basically a measure of your organization’s market penetration, meaning what percentage of the audience in a specific ‘Designated Market Area’ you have. In this case, the DMA is a specific grouping of counties that is in the newspaper’s coverage area.

This is an OK measure, but I take issue with their methodology. This is how they describe how they came up with these numbers:

The Scarborough study is based on a random sample of adults (ages 18+). Scarborough Research employs a two-phase methodology to collect data: a randomly dialed telephone interview followed by a written, self-administered consumer questionnaire and television diary. The newspaper audience information and websites visited are captured during the telephone interview. A Media Rating Council (MRC) accredited media and marketing service, our newspaper data meets the highest data quality standards.

Now, knowing what I know about polling and human behavior, I think these numbers might be slightly inaccurate. Even if it is random and even if people are given anonymity, they will lie. People are afraid to admit they don’t read the paper so they fudge the results. This happens in politics with voter turnout surveys and the like. The numbers never measure up to the reality because people lie. They don’t want to appear to be Luddites or a philistine, even if no one is actually watching.

If anything, this study should have some margin of error but I could find none listed. Still, these numbers could serve to give the advertising department more leverage to bargain with advertisers and give an indication to the newsroom of where they may need to focus their attention.

What does this mean for online?

I also feel that this holds a little less weight for online. Despite the low percentage of market penetration for most news Web sites, I think that is indicative of global reach and more ‘World is Flat’ mentality of news Web sites.

Sure a lot of traffic comes from the local market but more often Web traffic comes from outside links and search engine results. These readers, drive-by surfers, have little brand loyalty. The questions is: How can newspaper Web sites take advantage of this and quantify it to advertisers and also appropriate the behavior to how they run their sites?

Paul Gillin of Newspaper Death Watch recently wrote about what he called the ‘Content-driven Reader‘ and how it is changing the landscape of journalism and online journalism. A good read. Be sure to also follow the links to both Jarvis’ post and Alan D. Mutter’s post on the same topic.

The key word here: Content.

Let’s Tweet it out fellas (and ladies of course)!

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Ari Gold, twitter

Tara Hunt over at HorsePigCow has a great post called Tweeting for Companies 101. Her thoughts:

Twitter can be an amazingly powerful platform for connecting to your community as well as driving traffic to the various properties you want people to go. Having an event? Tweet it out! Launched a new bag? Tweet it out!

The key to Twitter is the level of listening you do as well as talking. It is definitely supposed to be an interactive program. And, in fact, this is where you build the majority of your Whuffie (aka social capital). The more you interact on Twitter, the more people will interact with you, which attracts others to you as well.

Though meant to be directed toward marketing companies and similar institutions, there’s no reason some of her tips can’t be appropriated for use by the journalism business. Considering the forced marriage between the two it seems more than appropriate actually. Hunt lists some corporate examples from JetBlue and Zappos and then gives a laundry list of potential uses for the microblogging platform. She also offers the advice in a handy PDF, so maybe you can print it out and unplug for a little while instead of just staying at the computer during your lunch break.

Check it out.

Oh, and be sure to also read colleague and Orlando Sentinel business/tech journalist Etan Horowitz’s post on why journalists should use Twitter.

MSNBC launches Election 2008 MySpace site

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MSNBC MySpace page

In an effort to tap into that ever volatile youth demographic, MSNBC has launched a MySpace page called Decision 08. Showing their age and how behind the times they are, doesn’t MSNBC know that MySpace is sooo yesterday’s news. Everyone knows that Facebook is the where it’s at with kids today.

Though I do have to hand it to them for being able to mask as much as possible that it is, in fact, a MySpace page. It almost looks like a standalone Web site, save for the always brilliant, exclamation point-laden comments at the bottom that are typical of MySpace groupies.

I wonder if MSNBC realizes that MySpace is owned by rival media conglomerate News Corp. Kind of sleeping with the enemy aren’t they?

Randi Rhodes resigns from Air America; the Internet strikes again!

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Randi Rhodes, progressive radio talk show host for Air America, has resigned due to comments she made about presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. She apparently called Hillary a f**king whore and it was all caught on tape and put up on the great equalizer, YouTube (Warning! Some foul language).

Mark Green, president of Air America Media, told FOXNews.com that Rhodes terminated her contract Wednesday after she refused to apologize on air for her remarks.

“We sought an apology, because of what she had said…like Imus, like David Shuster,” Green said. “She refused and instead last night informed us she was terminating her contract with Air America, which she has the option to do.”

He said she was not forced out — “She exercised her option.”

The Internet takes down yet another radio personality. The reason this is somewhat justifiable is that the radio station was sponsoring the event, so Rhodes was held accountable for her comments. Again, though I am all about the First Amendment, we are representatives of our media organizations and must be conscious of our words.

This raises that questions though, when a radio station hires a polarizing figure for a public position, should they be punished for being offensive and/or polarizing? (i.e. Howard Stern, Will Kristol, Imus, Limbaugh).

Tuesday morning reading

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Yeah, yeah, more readings.

What is ‘Passive-Aggressive Newsgathering’?

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Paul Bradshaw over at the Online Journalism Blog has written an excruciatingly long, yet incredibly informative, post about RSS, social media and what he calls ‘Passive-Agressive Newsgathering.’ In it, he breaks down RSS (syndicated content) and compares and contrasts it to its social networking equivalent. He even broke it down into a diagram:

He breaks down each element and what they mean for a journalist. The post is full of links, both outside OJB and within, and is a good primer for those not yet familiar with how all of these new tools can help a journalist. It is also a good read for the seasoned online journo as a refresher course.

Check it out, get comfortable and be ready to feel like you haven’t been using all of the pieces of your toolbox. Nice work Paul.

E & P: Top 30 Newspaper Sites for March

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From Editor & Publisher:

NYTimes.com — 18,869 –30%
USATODAY.com — 10,709 — (-2%)
washingtonpost.com — 8,929 — 13%
Wall Street Journal Online — 6,850 — 99%
LA Times — 5,729 — 22%

New York Post — 4,677 — 31%
Boston.com — 4,184 — (-1%)
Chicago Tribune — 3,825 — 31%
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle — 3,793 — (-10%)
Daily News Online Edition — 3,314 — 54%

Newsday — 3,240 — 44%
Village Voice Media — 2,814 — 139%
DallasNews.com – The Dallas Morning News — 2,727 — 96%
The Houston Chronicle — 2,690 — (-26%)
International Herald Tribune — 2,587 — 33%

Atlanta Journal-Constitution — 2,384 — 28%
Chicago Sun-Times — 2,206 — 8%
The Politico — 2,095 — 58%
Azcentral.com — 2,016 — (-4%)
Seattle Post-Intelligencer — 1,967 — (-8%)

tampabay.com — 1,908 — 6%
Star Tribune — 1,763 — 18%
MercuryNews.com — 1,662 — 36%
Orlando Sentinel — 1,642 — (-31%)
Philly.com — 1,554 — (-12%)

Sun-Sentinel — 1,524 — (-9%)
Detroit Free Press — 1,484 — 38%
Cleveland.com — 1,460 — 89%
MiamiHerald.com — 1,451 — (-17%)
The San Diego Union-Tribune — 1,432 — (-19%)

W00t!

Today’s Interactive Feature: ‘How the Pentagon Spread Its Message’ (NYT)

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New York Times

The New York Times has a pretty hard-hitting article today by David Barstow about how the Pentagon and the Bush administration used military analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.

Politics aside, the interactive feature included with the story really brings what could be a confusing and convoluted story and turns it into a coherent narrative. Using a combination of stock video from media outlets, animated graphics and an audio narrative, the story is told in a short, three-act structure. They almost follow a movie’s three-act structure, an impressive feat in just 12 minutes of content. Though it does bog down in the middle (they needed a love interest or something), it does keep you engaged and you want to watch all three pieces.

Also of note is the ‘Document Archive’ item at the bottom. It’s self-explanatory but it is a nice addition to the story, especially the copies of the memos and transcripts the article references. All are viewable in the Flash window or you can download them as PDFs.

An impressive package all around.

Now, a bit of a disclaimer. I’m going to try and stray away from the big three (or four) papers when looking at these interactive features from now on. It’s no surprise that the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and LA Times can churn out great interactive packages when they have a lot more resources than most. So, in the future, I’m going to try and be a little more intrepid and seek out features that smaller and lesser known news organizations are doing. Sometimes the best stuff comes out of where you would least expect it.

CREDITS: David Barstow, Gabriel Dance, Michele Monteleone, Amy O’Leary/The New York Times

Twitter + ChaCha = the new Magic 8-Ball

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Twitter/ChaCha

It seems that Twitter has coupled with mobile answer service ChaCha to bring your…TwitterChas! OK, maybe not.

But, Twitter users can now follow ChaCha and, when they send a question @ChaCha, a few minutes later you get an answer back. Interesting, to say the least. I tested it out with these gems.

ME: Who is the governor of Florida?

ChaCha (about 20 seconds later): Florida’s 44th Governor is Republican Charlie Crist.

ME: What is the capital of Wisconsin?

ChaCha (it took a while longer, no one cares about Wisconsin): The capital of Wisconsin is Madison pop. 208054 (2000 US census). — And it pointed me here, which gives additional info and their source site.

Then I tried to get a little tricky on the Mr. ChaCha and his Latin-dancing ways with this question.

ME: Who won the best actor oscar in 1988?

ChaCha (processing…processing…processing…): Dustin Hoffman won the Best Actor Oscar for Rain Man (1988). — It returned this about a minute later.

So, what use would this have to the intrepid mobile journalist? Well, if you set your cellphone up to send and receive Twitter updates, you could easily check simple facts or get an answer to simple questions while out in the field, even if you are sans laptop and/or Wi-Fi connection. Seems pretty useful as long as you can sift through ChaCha’s possibly ambiguous answers.

Or, you could just use it to cheat at Trivial Pursuit, it’s your choice. I think it’s pretty cool though, so check it out.