Here is an interesting article on how the recent changes in Facebook will affect journalists (mostly positive). This is justhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif the first several paragraphs--to read the entire article,
Facebook has released several updates in the last month that will affect how journalists use the platform for reporting and storytelling. Many of these new features will make it easier for journalists to distribute their content and keep up with sources of information.
Some of the relevant changes for journalists include Subscribe, which enables readers to subscribe to journalists’ public updates, and a redesigned News Feed — complete with a newly introduced Ticker for real-time updates that makes it easier to keep up with the news that’s most important to you. The new lists also make it easier for you to target updates to a specific group of people, and to see a customized stream of news from them.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Monday, September 26, 2011
New Pew Study on Where People Get News
Note the paragraphs on the newspaper:
‘Word of mouth,’ as news source, gains on local TV broadcasts, Pew says
By Paul Farhi, Published: September 25
It’s hardly news that local TV newscasts are the most popular source of community information. Surveys and Nielsen ratings have shown that for years.
But the second most widely followed source of local news isn’t the newspaper, radio or the Internet. It’s the oldest and most basic form of human communication: word of mouth.
The importance of neighbors, friends and co-workers as information transmitters is highlighted in a new study that suggests that the dinner table, the back fence and the water cooler make up the ultimate social network, over which some of the most important and relevant news is transmitted.
Word of mouth outranked every new and traditional form of news media except local TV news as the most frequently consulted news source in the study, released Monday by the Pew Research Center and the Knight Foundation. Their report suggests people get news about their communities through a complex “information ecology” that involves multiple sources and media, some mass and some interpersonal.
The role of human-to-human communication in news is both obvious — people have always told stories to one another — and revelatory, primarily because data and studies have long focused on the news media, not on all of the ways news actually gets around.
Local TV news still sits atop the information pyramid, according to the study, but its role is narrow and even fading. In a nationwide survey of 2,251 people, 74 percent said they turned to local TV news at least once a week to get information about their community, more than any other source.
Word of mouth ranked second (55 percent), followed by radio (51), newspapers (50) and the Internet (47). The latter category includes search engines, social networks such as Facebook, and blogs and Web sites not associated with a traditional media source such as a TV station or newspaper.
Marketers have always known that word-of-mouth advertising, or buzz, is critical to selling a product, but its role in news hasn’t been well studied.
The quality of word-of-mouth information, of course, varies considerably from the kind one gets via professional reporters (as the wildly inaccurate character who reports “Second-Hand News” on “Saturday Night Live” demonstrates).
On the other hand, interpersonal news usually comes from a known and trusted source, and helps people “triangulate” or vet information that may have been reported by the mass media, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, one of two Pew-funded organizations behind the research. It also may be far more specific and personal than anything the media can provide, he said, such as who’s the best fourth-grade teacher at the local school.
Local TV news ranked as the leading information source in the study primarily because it’s the go-to medium for the handful of subjects people said they followed most: weather, breaking news, politics and crime. Weather was, by far, the most widely followed among the 16 topics researchers asked about, with 89 percent of adults saying they keep up with weather news.
But TV ranks low as a source on many other topics, such as news about businesses, schools, government and cultural events. And its appeal is primarily to people over 40; younger people say they are increasingly getting their news from other sources, such as the Internet and mobile phones.
Newspapers, meanwhile, were the most widely cited source for a wide variety of topics, though the topics were generally of lesser interest. Newspapers (print and online) ranked first or tied for first in 11 of the 16 news categories that researchers asked about, such as government, cultural events, schools and housing (sports was not on the list because researchers determined the term implied too many variables, including professional, college, high school, youth and participant sports).
Despite this, the news for newspapers seems ominous. Some 69 percent of the people surveyed said that if their local paper no longer existed, it wouldn’t have a major impact on their ability to learn about news in their community.
Word-of-mouth information tends to fill in gaps in the media infrastructure. Its importance rises the less a subject is covered. A Brookings Institution study this year, for example, found that “family and friends” were the most popular and highly regarded providers of education news.
“People rely on people they know because there’s no other source for a lot of this information,” said Russ Whitehurst, a co-author of the Brookings report. The track record of a local school or teacher “isn’t in the newspaper or online.”
The poll in Pew’s study, “How People Learn About Their Local Community,” has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
‘Word of mouth,’ as news source, gains on local TV broadcasts, Pew says
By Paul Farhi, Published: September 25
It’s hardly news that local TV newscasts are the most popular source of community information. Surveys and Nielsen ratings have shown that for years.
But the second most widely followed source of local news isn’t the newspaper, radio or the Internet. It’s the oldest and most basic form of human communication: word of mouth.
The importance of neighbors, friends and co-workers as information transmitters is highlighted in a new study that suggests that the dinner table, the back fence and the water cooler make up the ultimate social network, over which some of the most important and relevant news is transmitted.
Word of mouth outranked every new and traditional form of news media except local TV news as the most frequently consulted news source in the study, released Monday by the Pew Research Center and the Knight Foundation. Their report suggests people get news about their communities through a complex “information ecology” that involves multiple sources and media, some mass and some interpersonal.
The role of human-to-human communication in news is both obvious — people have always told stories to one another — and revelatory, primarily because data and studies have long focused on the news media, not on all of the ways news actually gets around.
Local TV news still sits atop the information pyramid, according to the study, but its role is narrow and even fading. In a nationwide survey of 2,251 people, 74 percent said they turned to local TV news at least once a week to get information about their community, more than any other source.
Word of mouth ranked second (55 percent), followed by radio (51), newspapers (50) and the Internet (47). The latter category includes search engines, social networks such as Facebook, and blogs and Web sites not associated with a traditional media source such as a TV station or newspaper.
Marketers have always known that word-of-mouth advertising, or buzz, is critical to selling a product, but its role in news hasn’t been well studied.
The quality of word-of-mouth information, of course, varies considerably from the kind one gets via professional reporters (as the wildly inaccurate character who reports “Second-Hand News” on “Saturday Night Live” demonstrates).
On the other hand, interpersonal news usually comes from a known and trusted source, and helps people “triangulate” or vet information that may have been reported by the mass media, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, one of two Pew-funded organizations behind the research. It also may be far more specific and personal than anything the media can provide, he said, such as who’s the best fourth-grade teacher at the local school.
Local TV news ranked as the leading information source in the study primarily because it’s the go-to medium for the handful of subjects people said they followed most: weather, breaking news, politics and crime. Weather was, by far, the most widely followed among the 16 topics researchers asked about, with 89 percent of adults saying they keep up with weather news.
But TV ranks low as a source on many other topics, such as news about businesses, schools, government and cultural events. And its appeal is primarily to people over 40; younger people say they are increasingly getting their news from other sources, such as the Internet and mobile phones.
Newspapers, meanwhile, were the most widely cited source for a wide variety of topics, though the topics were generally of lesser interest. Newspapers (print and online) ranked first or tied for first in 11 of the 16 news categories that researchers asked about, such as government, cultural events, schools and housing (sports was not on the list because researchers determined the term implied too many variables, including professional, college, high school, youth and participant sports).
Despite this, the news for newspapers seems ominous. Some 69 percent of the people surveyed said that if their local paper no longer existed, it wouldn’t have a major impact on their ability to learn about news in their community.
Word-of-mouth information tends to fill in gaps in the media infrastructure. Its importance rises the less a subject is covered. A Brookings Institution study this year, for example, found that “family and friends” were the most popular and highly regarded providers of education news.
“People rely on people they know because there’s no other source for a lot of this information,” said Russ Whitehurst, a co-author of the Brookings report. The track record of a local school or teacher “isn’t in the newspaper or online.”
The poll in Pew’s study, “How People Learn About Their Local Community,” has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Working Hard and Owning the Business
Here's a very interesting post from a seasoned journalist who has some very accurate observations about the issue of startupshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif, working for a hyperlocal news site, and having your own business. See the original by clicking here.
You should only work this hard if you own the business
Posted on September 24, 2011 by Howard Owens
The list of duties for Patch editors in this Romenesko post is pretty much the job description for every local news site owner I know, at least the ones making a living at it.
When I’ve written about the number of hours I put into my business critics have said I don’t have a business model, my business isn’t “sustainable,” and so on.
Of course, this is coming from people who probably don’t want to work that hard, preferring the good old corporatism days of journalism with secure 9-5 jobs, two weeks paid vacation and dental coverage. Those days are disappearing, but the knock against hyperlocal start ups is that they’re not staffed as bodaciously as the newsrooms they may or may not replace.
To the second point, my response remains: Newspapers started small, cheap and with different standards. No newspaper started with staffs of dozens and a raft of Pulitzers. To hold an online-only start up to those standards is just plain daft.
To the issue of hard work, yes it’s hard work to start your own business, and I figure the critics of the online start ups have never dealt much with small business owners.
I deal with them every day, and for any of them that started their own businesses, they will readily tell you of the 100-hour work weeks, the weeks of just barely getting by and the impossibly long to-do lists. The hardships and sacrifices just go with the territory of starting your own business.
But here’s the thing about the work load for Patch editors: They’re not owners. They are expected to do all of the things they would have to do if they owned their own web sites, but merely in service of building wealth for AOL shareholders. Sure, work hard and keep your job is a nice benefit, and as a former corporate employee I think employees have an ethical obligation to help build shareholder value. That’s what they’re paid to do.
I’ve also been critical of corporate employees who aren’t willing to put in a little extra effort to help a project succeed.
However, if what we’re hearing is true about the Patch workload, I can only ask: Why are you doing it?
Patch editors should know that what they’re being asked to do on salary they could do for themselves far more successfully and with some chance of building a valuable business for themselves and their families.
I’m not writing this to wish Patch ill. I am not one to hope for anyone’s failure. I’m writing this for the sake of the seemingly overburdened Patch editors, and asking, “Why not just start your own local news site?”
Jump on in, the water’s fine.
You should only work this hard if you own the business
Posted on September 24, 2011 by Howard Owens
The list of duties for Patch editors in this Romenesko post is pretty much the job description for every local news site owner I know, at least the ones making a living at it.
When I’ve written about the number of hours I put into my business critics have said I don’t have a business model, my business isn’t “sustainable,” and so on.
Of course, this is coming from people who probably don’t want to work that hard, preferring the good old corporatism days of journalism with secure 9-5 jobs, two weeks paid vacation and dental coverage. Those days are disappearing, but the knock against hyperlocal start ups is that they’re not staffed as bodaciously as the newsrooms they may or may not replace.
To the second point, my response remains: Newspapers started small, cheap and with different standards. No newspaper started with staffs of dozens and a raft of Pulitzers. To hold an online-only start up to those standards is just plain daft.
To the issue of hard work, yes it’s hard work to start your own business, and I figure the critics of the online start ups have never dealt much with small business owners.
I deal with them every day, and for any of them that started their own businesses, they will readily tell you of the 100-hour work weeks, the weeks of just barely getting by and the impossibly long to-do lists. The hardships and sacrifices just go with the territory of starting your own business.
But here’s the thing about the work load for Patch editors: They’re not owners. They are expected to do all of the things they would have to do if they owned their own web sites, but merely in service of building wealth for AOL shareholders. Sure, work hard and keep your job is a nice benefit, and as a former corporate employee I think employees have an ethical obligation to help build shareholder value. That’s what they’re paid to do.
I’ve also been critical of corporate employees who aren’t willing to put in a little extra effort to help a project succeed.
However, if what we’re hearing is true about the Patch workload, I can only ask: Why are you doing it?
Patch editors should know that what they’re being asked to do on salary they could do for themselves far more successfully and with some chance of building a valuable business for themselves and their families.
I’m not writing this to wish Patch ill. I am not one to hope for anyone’s failure. I’m writing this for the sake of the seemingly overburdened Patch editors, and asking, “Why not just start your own local news site?”
Jump on in, the water’s fine.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
On This Day . . . 1690 and 1789
From Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac for Sunday, September 25:
On this day in 1690, the colonies' first multipaged newspaper was printed in Boston, named Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick.
It was also its last printing; gossip about the immoralities of the King of France and a denouncement of the mistreatment of French captives in the French and Indian War angered the local government. Four days after the paper's distribution, the governor and council issued a statement that the paper be "Suppressed and called in," and decreed that any future publications must be first authorized. America's first paper was also its first to be censored.
On this day in 1789, the First Federal Congress of the United States proposed 12 amendments to the recently ratified Constitution. Ten of them were ultimately adopted to become what's known as the Bill of Rights.
The amendments were the result of a major compromise between opposing factions, the Federalists — who thought the Constitution was a sound and sufficient document — and the Anti-Federalists, who worried that it gave far too much power to the central government and didn't protect individual freedoms. The two sides were at an impasse, and the Constitution was at risk of being rejected, until an agreement was reached that, if the Constitution was ratified, Congress would add on a bill of rights.
The Federalists believed the addition was unnecessary, and the anti-Federalists believed it wasn't enough ... but both sides conceded for the sake of the common good.
The first two amendments, concerning the number of constituents and the payment for Congressmen, were rejected.
The other 10, each a single sentence, provided for such rights as the freedom of speech and religion, the right to bear arms, the right to a speedy trial by jury without cruel or unusual punishment, and the right of states to govern themselves in any way not expressly prohibited by the Constitution.
An additional 17 amendments have been added to the Constitution since then. The most recent one, passed in 1992, was that second article proposed and rejected back in 1789, delaying any change to Congress's pay until the following session. The very first article proposed is still pending before state legislatures.
As the anonymous saying goes, "Democracy is cumbersome, slow and inefficient, but in due time, the voice of the people will be heard and their latent wisdom will prevail."
On this day in 1690, the colonies' first multipaged newspaper was printed in Boston, named Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick.
It was also its last printing; gossip about the immoralities of the King of France and a denouncement of the mistreatment of French captives in the French and Indian War angered the local government. Four days after the paper's distribution, the governor and council issued a statement that the paper be "Suppressed and called in," and decreed that any future publications must be first authorized. America's first paper was also its first to be censored.
On this day in 1789, the First Federal Congress of the United States proposed 12 amendments to the recently ratified Constitution. Ten of them were ultimately adopted to become what's known as the Bill of Rights.
The amendments were the result of a major compromise between opposing factions, the Federalists — who thought the Constitution was a sound and sufficient document — and the Anti-Federalists, who worried that it gave far too much power to the central government and didn't protect individual freedoms. The two sides were at an impasse, and the Constitution was at risk of being rejected, until an agreement was reached that, if the Constitution was ratified, Congress would add on a bill of rights.
The Federalists believed the addition was unnecessary, and the anti-Federalists believed it wasn't enough ... but both sides conceded for the sake of the common good.
The first two amendments, concerning the number of constituents and the payment for Congressmen, were rejected.
The other 10, each a single sentence, provided for such rights as the freedom of speech and religion, the right to bear arms, the right to a speedy trial by jury without cruel or unusual punishment, and the right of states to govern themselves in any way not expressly prohibited by the Constitution.
An additional 17 amendments have been added to the Constitution since then. The most recent one, passed in 1992, was that second article proposed and rejected back in 1789, delaying any change to Congress's pay until the following session. The very first article proposed is still pending before state legislatures.
As the anonymous saying goes, "Democracy is cumbersome, slow and inefficient, but in due time, the voice of the people will be heard and their latent wisdom will prevail."
Friday, September 23, 2011
Could Reporters Be Replaced by Computers?
Here's a really fascinating new technology which may help you a great deal in future reporting of board and council meetings, etc.
Narrative Science – Closer to a True Robot Reporter?
by Alex Salkever
The New York Times recently published an in-depth article about Narrative Science, a fascinating startup founded by two computer scientists who are also journalism professors at Northwestern University, and a veteran executive from DoubleClick. Their product is a software engine that can, given a box score, a crime log, or a real estate transaction, generate a brief , well-written news article in the classic who-what-when-where-why canon. While not works of art, these articles are credible and often beat what human scribes have to offer.
I wrote about Narrative Science a back in June for Street Fight, contemplating whether its application would fuel a truly 100% automated hyperlocal paper. In the Times piece, we got some more tantalizing detail. A Y Combinator backed startup called Market Brief is now using Narrative Science to turn thousands of daily Securities and Exchange Commission filings into moderately readable, albeit grindingly bland briefs. (In all fairness to Narrative Science, consider the original source of the information.)This is very interesting. but also highlights a major weakness of Narrative Science as a hyperlocal news generator. The SEC articles are primarily about transactions. The Narrative Science news engine cannot make inferences or logical leaps—yet.
The articles don’t note that the executive who sold 100,000 shares of stock in his brother’s company did the same thing two months before the company reported bad earnings last year. Okay, I’m making that part up—but you get the idea. The computer could also write up transcripts of city council meetings, but could it pick out the news nuggets, the bombs hidden in the footnotes of the agenda that a human reporter might know to highlight?
Not yet, but it can allow reporters to focus on those nuggets rather than on the drudgery of turns-of-the-screw reporting that is important to put the public record in a more accessible and searchable formate. And I have confidence that the Narrative Science guys have a tricks up their sleeves still. So stay tuned.
Narrative Science – Closer to a True Robot Reporter?
by Alex Salkever
The New York Times recently published an in-depth article about Narrative Science, a fascinating startup founded by two computer scientists who are also journalism professors at Northwestern University, and a veteran executive from DoubleClick. Their product is a software engine that can, given a box score, a crime log, or a real estate transaction, generate a brief , well-written news article in the classic who-what-when-where-why canon. While not works of art, these articles are credible and often beat what human scribes have to offer.
I wrote about Narrative Science a back in June for Street Fight, contemplating whether its application would fuel a truly 100% automated hyperlocal paper. In the Times piece, we got some more tantalizing detail. A Y Combinator backed startup called Market Brief is now using Narrative Science to turn thousands of daily Securities and Exchange Commission filings into moderately readable, albeit grindingly bland briefs. (In all fairness to Narrative Science, consider the original source of the information.)This is very interesting. but also highlights a major weakness of Narrative Science as a hyperlocal news generator. The SEC articles are primarily about transactions. The Narrative Science news engine cannot make inferences or logical leaps—yet.
The articles don’t note that the executive who sold 100,000 shares of stock in his brother’s company did the same thing two months before the company reported bad earnings last year. Okay, I’m making that part up—but you get the idea. The computer could also write up transcripts of city council meetings, but could it pick out the news nuggets, the bombs hidden in the footnotes of the agenda that a human reporter might know to highlight?
Not yet, but it can allow reporters to focus on those nuggets rather than on the drudgery of turns-of-the-screw reporting that is important to put the public record in a more accessible and searchable formate. And I have confidence that the Narrative Science guys have a tricks up their sleeves still. So stay tuned.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Journalistic 'Oopsies'
This is great! See the video at http://www.cnn.com/2011/IREPORT/09/21/journalism.fails.irpt/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
(CNN) -- Journalism can be an unforgiving profession. Mistakes are easy to make, and they're usually made publicly, which means red faces and awkward apologies all around. The only comfort is that everybody -- EVERYBODY -- makes them at some point.
We'll prove it to you. Here are nine CNN journalists -- including anchor Brooke Baldwin, in the video above -- sharing their most embarrassing professional moments and what they learned from them.
Actually record
It doesn't matter how awesome your interview is if you don't have a record of it. Steve Goldberg, a CNN senior producer, learned that one the hard way.
"I was covering UGA for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and had a big interview lined up with the university president," he says. "I went in with my tape recorder, took only brief notes, only to get back to the office and discovered that the batteries had died and I didn't have a recording."
So Goldberg had to swallow his pride and go back to the university. "I asked sheepishly if I could redo the interview and, much to my surprise, he said yes. Lesson learned: Make sure I put in fresh batteries before the big interview!"
It's critical to make sure you're intimately familiar with your equipment before you go out in the field to avoid such mistakes.(Mistakes, by the way, that many a CNNer have admitted to making.) And along those lines, make sure you actually, you know, hit record. (Yup, we've done that, too.)
Check your facts -- and your geography
CNN.com designer Ken Uzquiano single-handedly ceded Wales to England. True story.
He created a map of the UK to go along with a crime story on CNN.com. The only problem was, he left off Wales, instead marking the country as part of England.
"Within two minutes, it was all over the blogs," Uzquiano remembers.
And indeed it was. The UK-based tech blog The Register wrote:
"We have some bad news for those of you who woke up this morning thinking you were Welsh: As of right now, you're English, and you'd just better get used to the idea. ... Although the offending map has now been removed, when we rang the Welsh Assembly this morning a very glum spokesperson admitted, 'If CNN says we're English then it must be true.' "
Always have someone -- preferably someone with knowledge of the subject -- look over your stories before you make them public. And double-check your locators, because there's a Decatur in almost every state, and you want to make sure you're talking about the right one.
Name (the right) names
CNN video producer Jo Parker had painstakingly checked her facts. She'd gotten both sides of the story. She'd included fantastic, descriptive quotes. Only one problem: She was writing about the wrong guy.
"As a fairly new reporter, I was covering my first town council meeting. I was really proud of the way I'd balanced the story and included terrific quotes," Parker remembers. "I was trying hard to gain credibility, since the previous reporter had irritated local officials by being careless with balance and fairness issues."
"The next day, the story came out. Before I could finish patting myself on the back, I realized that I'd written about a town council member -- but used the local district attorney's name." Oops.
Parker says the mistake taught her to immediately admit the error, take responsibility and apologize as soon as possible. But, perhaps most importantly, "triple-check the things you 'know,' " she says.
Listen up
If you work in TV, you know that live segments have incredible potential for embarrassing screw-ups. CNN iReport producer Rachel Rodriguez was getting ready to present a somber story when she heard the anchor give her an unexpectedly lighthearted intro.
"It was Memorial Day, and I was doing a piece about soldiers we'd lost, so it was a really sad, serious story," she says. "I don't know how the anchor got the wrong information, but she gave me an intro along the lines of 'It's a beautiful Memorial Day outside, and everyone's picnicking and enjoying the lovely weather! CNN iReport's Rachel Rodriguez has more on how people are taking advantage of this gorgeous day! Rachel!' "
Rodriguez remembers the pit in her stomach growing as she heard the intro on her earpiece.
"There was no graceful way out of it," she says. "I just had to take control and turn the conversation around as best I could without making it sound like we were making light of the deaths of soldiers."
The key to recouping? Listen. Whether you're conducting an interview or narrating a segment, make sure you're paying attention to the other person and not just mindlessly reading your notes (or the teleprompter). Chances are, you'll need to react to something they say.
Put everything in context
CNN iReport producer David Williams found a creative -- if entirely unintentional -- way to combine two hot entertainment topics in 2006: Madonna and "Snakes on a Plane."
He was filling in for the entertainment producer, and it was "at the height of the 'Snakes on a Plane' hysteria," Williams remembers. "We ran a story about snake handlers having to deal with large amounts of snake poop during production. I gave it the brilliant but juvenile headline 'Poop on a Plane' and went on with my day."
His fatal flaw? "I didn't really think about how this would look on the CNN.com homepage," he says.
"The headline above it was about Madonna causing a stir in Germany," says Williams. "It looked sort of like this: German authorities watching Madonna poop on a plane. The fine folks at Gawker had a good time with it."
Amusing, but whether you're writing headlines or choosing quotes to go in a story, the lesson is the same: Take the time to think about the context for your words. Often, that will shape how you use them.
The devil is in the details
"When CNN first started going to a system of running videos off of computer codes, it was easy to get the eight-digit numbers mixed up," says CNN senior producer Tricia Escobedo. I think you can tell where this story is going.
"One day, when I was a TV writer for CNN International, two of the top stories were the annual 'running of the bulls' in Pamplona, Spain, and some sort of violence in the Middle East," Escobedo recalls. "I wrote the story for the anchor to read on CNNI over the video of the deadly violence, but inadvertently put in the number for the running of the bulls. I was horrified when I heard the anchor read about mayhem in the Middle East -- and saw the video of a bunch of crazed bulls chasing after some nutty tourists!"
"So the lesson is: Check those minor details and logistics," she says. "They can lead to major mess-ups."
Relax
Ah, internships. Time and scene of so many mistakes. Well, let's call them "learning experiences."
Toward the beginning of his career, CNN video copy editor James Dinan interned with the news department of a radio station in Newton, New Jersey.
"After a couple of days learning the ropes and staying out of trouble, I was offered the chance to cover one of the World Cup soccer games from Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey," Dinan recalls. "It was a simple task -- do a live spot about the game itself, as well as record one or two features about the sights and sounds surrounding the game."
Remember what we said earlier about live segments having excellent potential for mess-ups? Yeah.
"It was time for my live shot, and I was prepared. Or so I thought," Dinan says. "The first words out of my mouth...
"Italy rebounded from its opening match defeat by upending Norwegia, 1-0.
"Norwegia? Wasn't that a fictitious country featured in 'Duck Soup' or a Three Stooges short?" he jokes. "I was supposed to say Norway, but I had Norwegian on the brain and, somehow, the two managed to fuse together into a made-up word."
Luckily, Dinan's boss let him cover another game, Ireland vs. Norway, and he pronounced the country's name perfectly the second time around. His slip-up is a reminder not to psych yourself out before going on camera -- and not to worry too much about the little things.
Read it out loud
Here at CNN, we get our fair share of prank phone calls with super-fun fake names. But even if it's not a prank name, it helps to stop and think about -- and pronounce out loud -- any name you come across.
"In my first job in journalism, among the many things I had to do at a teeny-tiny paper was edit an advice column written by the newsroom staff," says CNN senior editor Jan Winburn. "People called in questions, and the newsroom secretary transcribed them and handed them around to staffers to track down answers."
One day, someone called in the following question: "I would like to find out why Jack Hammers and his equipment are allowed to work at 4 a.m. on Clinkscales and Worley and disturb people's sleep." See where this is going?
"The reporter who got this question dutifully called the city public works department and wrote an answer something to the effect that no one at the department was aware of anyone working at that intersection," says Winburn. "The joke, of course, is that she transcribed the question off the phone as Jack Hammers instead of jackhammer ... and I didn't catch it!" Winburn has kept the clip for more than 10 years.
Pro tip: It always helps to read your stories out loud, even if you're writing for print. Not only does it help make the writing flow, it makes it easier to catch embarrassing errors. And always have a second person read over your story.
(CNN) -- Journalism can be an unforgiving profession. Mistakes are easy to make, and they're usually made publicly, which means red faces and awkward apologies all around. The only comfort is that everybody -- EVERYBODY -- makes them at some point.
We'll prove it to you. Here are nine CNN journalists -- including anchor Brooke Baldwin, in the video above -- sharing their most embarrassing professional moments and what they learned from them.
Actually record
It doesn't matter how awesome your interview is if you don't have a record of it. Steve Goldberg, a CNN senior producer, learned that one the hard way.
"I was covering UGA for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and had a big interview lined up with the university president," he says. "I went in with my tape recorder, took only brief notes, only to get back to the office and discovered that the batteries had died and I didn't have a recording."
So Goldberg had to swallow his pride and go back to the university. "I asked sheepishly if I could redo the interview and, much to my surprise, he said yes. Lesson learned: Make sure I put in fresh batteries before the big interview!"
It's critical to make sure you're intimately familiar with your equipment before you go out in the field to avoid such mistakes.(Mistakes, by the way, that many a CNNer have admitted to making.) And along those lines, make sure you actually, you know, hit record. (Yup, we've done that, too.)
Check your facts -- and your geography
CNN.com designer Ken Uzquiano single-handedly ceded Wales to England. True story.
He created a map of the UK to go along with a crime story on CNN.com. The only problem was, he left off Wales, instead marking the country as part of England.
"Within two minutes, it was all over the blogs," Uzquiano remembers.
And indeed it was. The UK-based tech blog The Register wrote:
"We have some bad news for those of you who woke up this morning thinking you were Welsh: As of right now, you're English, and you'd just better get used to the idea. ... Although the offending map has now been removed, when we rang the Welsh Assembly this morning a very glum spokesperson admitted, 'If CNN says we're English then it must be true.' "
Always have someone -- preferably someone with knowledge of the subject -- look over your stories before you make them public. And double-check your locators, because there's a Decatur in almost every state, and you want to make sure you're talking about the right one.
Name (the right) names
CNN video producer Jo Parker had painstakingly checked her facts. She'd gotten both sides of the story. She'd included fantastic, descriptive quotes. Only one problem: She was writing about the wrong guy.
"As a fairly new reporter, I was covering my first town council meeting. I was really proud of the way I'd balanced the story and included terrific quotes," Parker remembers. "I was trying hard to gain credibility, since the previous reporter had irritated local officials by being careless with balance and fairness issues."
"The next day, the story came out. Before I could finish patting myself on the back, I realized that I'd written about a town council member -- but used the local district attorney's name." Oops.
Parker says the mistake taught her to immediately admit the error, take responsibility and apologize as soon as possible. But, perhaps most importantly, "triple-check the things you 'know,' " she says.
Listen up
If you work in TV, you know that live segments have incredible potential for embarrassing screw-ups. CNN iReport producer Rachel Rodriguez was getting ready to present a somber story when she heard the anchor give her an unexpectedly lighthearted intro.
"It was Memorial Day, and I was doing a piece about soldiers we'd lost, so it was a really sad, serious story," she says. "I don't know how the anchor got the wrong information, but she gave me an intro along the lines of 'It's a beautiful Memorial Day outside, and everyone's picnicking and enjoying the lovely weather! CNN iReport's Rachel Rodriguez has more on how people are taking advantage of this gorgeous day! Rachel!' "
Rodriguez remembers the pit in her stomach growing as she heard the intro on her earpiece.
"There was no graceful way out of it," she says. "I just had to take control and turn the conversation around as best I could without making it sound like we were making light of the deaths of soldiers."
The key to recouping? Listen. Whether you're conducting an interview or narrating a segment, make sure you're paying attention to the other person and not just mindlessly reading your notes (or the teleprompter). Chances are, you'll need to react to something they say.
Put everything in context
CNN iReport producer David Williams found a creative -- if entirely unintentional -- way to combine two hot entertainment topics in 2006: Madonna and "Snakes on a Plane."
He was filling in for the entertainment producer, and it was "at the height of the 'Snakes on a Plane' hysteria," Williams remembers. "We ran a story about snake handlers having to deal with large amounts of snake poop during production. I gave it the brilliant but juvenile headline 'Poop on a Plane' and went on with my day."
His fatal flaw? "I didn't really think about how this would look on the CNN.com homepage," he says.
"The headline above it was about Madonna causing a stir in Germany," says Williams. "It looked sort of like this: German authorities watching Madonna poop on a plane. The fine folks at Gawker had a good time with it."
Amusing, but whether you're writing headlines or choosing quotes to go in a story, the lesson is the same: Take the time to think about the context for your words. Often, that will shape how you use them.
The devil is in the details
"When CNN first started going to a system of running videos off of computer codes, it was easy to get the eight-digit numbers mixed up," says CNN senior producer Tricia Escobedo. I think you can tell where this story is going.
"One day, when I was a TV writer for CNN International, two of the top stories were the annual 'running of the bulls' in Pamplona, Spain, and some sort of violence in the Middle East," Escobedo recalls. "I wrote the story for the anchor to read on CNNI over the video of the deadly violence, but inadvertently put in the number for the running of the bulls. I was horrified when I heard the anchor read about mayhem in the Middle East -- and saw the video of a bunch of crazed bulls chasing after some nutty tourists!"
"So the lesson is: Check those minor details and logistics," she says. "They can lead to major mess-ups."
Relax
Ah, internships. Time and scene of so many mistakes. Well, let's call them "learning experiences."
Toward the beginning of his career, CNN video copy editor James Dinan interned with the news department of a radio station in Newton, New Jersey.
"After a couple of days learning the ropes and staying out of trouble, I was offered the chance to cover one of the World Cup soccer games from Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey," Dinan recalls. "It was a simple task -- do a live spot about the game itself, as well as record one or two features about the sights and sounds surrounding the game."
Remember what we said earlier about live segments having excellent potential for mess-ups? Yeah.
"It was time for my live shot, and I was prepared. Or so I thought," Dinan says. "The first words out of my mouth...
"Italy rebounded from its opening match defeat by upending Norwegia, 1-0.
"Norwegia? Wasn't that a fictitious country featured in 'Duck Soup' or a Three Stooges short?" he jokes. "I was supposed to say Norway, but I had Norwegian on the brain and, somehow, the two managed to fuse together into a made-up word."
Luckily, Dinan's boss let him cover another game, Ireland vs. Norway, and he pronounced the country's name perfectly the second time around. His slip-up is a reminder not to psych yourself out before going on camera -- and not to worry too much about the little things.
Read it out loud
Here at CNN, we get our fair share of prank phone calls with super-fun fake names. But even if it's not a prank name, it helps to stop and think about -- and pronounce out loud -- any name you come across.
"In my first job in journalism, among the many things I had to do at a teeny-tiny paper was edit an advice column written by the newsroom staff," says CNN senior editor Jan Winburn. "People called in questions, and the newsroom secretary transcribed them and handed them around to staffers to track down answers."
One day, someone called in the following question: "I would like to find out why Jack Hammers and his equipment are allowed to work at 4 a.m. on Clinkscales and Worley and disturb people's sleep." See where this is going?
"The reporter who got this question dutifully called the city public works department and wrote an answer something to the effect that no one at the department was aware of anyone working at that intersection," says Winburn. "The joke, of course, is that she transcribed the question off the phone as Jack Hammers instead of jackhammer ... and I didn't catch it!" Winburn has kept the clip for more than 10 years.
Pro tip: It always helps to read your stories out loud, even if you're writing for print. Not only does it help make the writing flow, it makes it easier to catch embarrassing errors. And always have a second person read over your story.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Sports Events This Week
If you have not yet written your sports-coverage article, here are a listing of Lancer sporting events the remainder of this week:
Tuesday, September 20
4p M Tennis Away vs. Goshen College
4p W Tennis Home vs. Goshen College
Wednesday, September 21
4p W Soccer Home vs. Holy Cross
7p M Soccer Away vs. Indiana Tech
7p W Volleyball Away vs. Marian Univ.
Friday, September 23
7p W Volleyball Home vs. Spring Arbor University
Saturday, September 24
10a JV/V Baseball Away vs. Ancilla
1p M Tennis Home vs. Huntington
1p W Volleyball Home vs. Taylor University
2p W Tennis Away vs. Huntington
3p M Soccer Away vs. Huntington
Softball Grace Tournament Home
Tuesday, September 20
4p M Tennis Away vs. Goshen College
4p W Tennis Home vs. Goshen College
Wednesday, September 21
4p W Soccer Home vs. Holy Cross
7p M Soccer Away vs. Indiana Tech
7p W Volleyball Away vs. Marian Univ.
Friday, September 23
7p W Volleyball Home vs. Spring Arbor University
Saturday, September 24
10a JV/V Baseball Away vs. Ancilla
1p M Tennis Home vs. Huntington
1p W Volleyball Home vs. Taylor University
2p W Tennis Away vs. Huntington
3p M Soccer Away vs. Huntington
Softball Grace Tournament Home
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Press and the Future of Religion
How do you respond to this information/analysis by Chuck Colson?
The Press and the Future of Religion
By Chuck Colson | Christian Post Guest Columnist
The United States is often referred to as a “post-Christian” nation. In one sense, that is true: The moral and cultural assumptions shaped by Christianity that used to hold sway in American society, can no longer be taken for granted. They must be defended and contended for in the public square.
But that’s not the same as saying that Americans are becoming more like Europeans when it comes to matters like church attendance or belief in a personal God. In many ways the shift in cultural assumptions I just noted is taking place in spite of what Americans believe and do, not because of them.
You would be hard-pressed to know this judging from media reports. These reports seize on any bit of evidence, however suspect, to promote the thesis that Americans are becoming more “secular.” Every few months we are told about some new study that purports to show how secularism and even atheism is on the march.
We are supposed to conclude that instead of going to church our children will spend Sunday mornings reading the holographic edition of the New York Times on their iPad 15 while sipping a latte made from coffee beans grown hydroponically in zero gravity.
It’s a tidy, convenient story. But unfortunately for its tellers, it just doesn't square with the facts.
That’s what two of my favorite researchers, Rodney Stark and Byron Johnson of Baylor, recently told the Wall Street Journal. The flip side to the media’s pouncing on any finding of our alleged drift away from religion is its “yawning” over findings to the contrary.
One such finding is a Baylor survey showing that the percentage of Americans who are atheist – 4 percent – is the same as it was in 1944. And that same survey showed that “church membership has reached an all-time high.”
Again, if all you had to go on is what you read or heard in the mainstream media, both of these facts would come as a surprise to you. The media, you see, uncritically trumpets reports that “young people under 30 are deserting the church in droves,” but they don’t go on to tell you that, “once they marry . . . and especially once they have children, their attendance rates recover.”
Likewise, reports about the politics of younger evangelicals are, to put it charitably, selective in their reading of the evidence.
Neither Stark, Johnson, nor I are suggesting that some kind of conspiracy is at work. What we see here is the human tendency to view evidence in ways that comport with our worldview.
Secularists, both outside and inside the media, see decreasing religiosity as the wave of the future, an inevitable byproduct of cultural refinement and evolution. So they naturally gravitate towards stories that confirm that hypothesis.
It doesn't help that the press “doesn't get religion.” Newsrooms are filled with people who don’t know believers and, thus, don’t have real-world experience with the phenomenon they assume is on the decline. They are strikingly uninformed. So much so that they’re calling orthodox Christians “theocrats,” as I've discussed in another commentary.
But, as Stark and Johnson remind us, you can’t always believe what you read in the newspapers. The reports from the real America are very encouraging. Millions of us are practicing the faith and passing it on to our children.
That’s a fact that even bad reporting won’t be able to change.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
'Holy Trinity' of News Helps Small-Town Papers
Newspaper Deathwatch, Newspapers
Small-Town Newspapers Thrive as the Big Boys Fade
By Matthew Fleischer on September 13, 2011 12:59 PM
USC Annenberg journalism professor Judy Muller has an op-ed in today’s LA Times lauding America’s small-town newspapers. which she says are “doing just fine, thank you,” despite the collapse of their larger, big-city brethren.
Some 8,000 weekly papers still hit the front porches and mailboxes in small towns across America every week and, for some reason, they’ve been left out of the conversation. So a couple of years ago, I decided to head back to my roots, both geographic and professional (my first job was at a weekly), to see how those community papers were faring. And what I found was both surprising and inspiring. …
The “holy trinity” of weekly papers consists of high school sports (where even losing teams benefit from positive spin), obituaries (where there’s no need to speak ill of the dead because everyone in town already knows if the deceased was a jerk) and the police blotter. The latter can be addictive, even to outsiders. These items, often lifted intact from the dispassionate log of the sheriff’s dispatcher, are the haikus of Main Street: “Caller states that there is a 9-year-old boy out mowing the lawn next door and feels that is endangering the child in doing so when the mother is perfectly capable of doing it herself.” Or: “Man calls to report wife went missing 3 months ago.”
She’s right. This Fishie hated his hometown, but still checks the police blotter of the local paper from time to time to see if anyone he knows is in there. Although apparently my local paper is bucking the trend. According to Muller most papers aren’t giving their content away for free online. Which is why they’ve been able to thrive. We’ll see how long that lasts. Probably until Patch gets its act together and figures out a way to gut their advertising base.
Looks like local papers may still have a good amount of time.
Small-Town Newspapers Thrive as the Big Boys Fade
By Matthew Fleischer on September 13, 2011 12:59 PM
USC Annenberg journalism professor Judy Muller has an op-ed in today’s LA Times lauding America’s small-town newspapers. which she says are “doing just fine, thank you,” despite the collapse of their larger, big-city brethren.
Some 8,000 weekly papers still hit the front porches and mailboxes in small towns across America every week and, for some reason, they’ve been left out of the conversation. So a couple of years ago, I decided to head back to my roots, both geographic and professional (my first job was at a weekly), to see how those community papers were faring. And what I found was both surprising and inspiring. …
The “holy trinity” of weekly papers consists of high school sports (where even losing teams benefit from positive spin), obituaries (where there’s no need to speak ill of the dead because everyone in town already knows if the deceased was a jerk) and the police blotter. The latter can be addictive, even to outsiders. These items, often lifted intact from the dispassionate log of the sheriff’s dispatcher, are the haikus of Main Street: “Caller states that there is a 9-year-old boy out mowing the lawn next door and feels that is endangering the child in doing so when the mother is perfectly capable of doing it herself.” Or: “Man calls to report wife went missing 3 months ago.”
She’s right. This Fishie hated his hometown, but still checks the police blotter of the local paper from time to time to see if anyone he knows is in there. Although apparently my local paper is bucking the trend. According to Muller most papers aren’t giving their content away for free online. Which is why they’ve been able to thrive. We’ll see how long that lasts. Probably until Patch gets its act together and figures out a way to gut their advertising base.
Looks like local papers may still have a good amount of time.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Disgraced Journalist Publishes Book on His Experience
From today's Fort Wayne News-Sentinel:
Ex-Bush aide's book shows power of faith, redemption
Goeglein covers plagiarism scandal and 9/11 in volume to be released this week
By Kevin Leininger
of The News-Sentinel
Tim Goeglein has written a book.
To those who somehow found perverse pleasure in the revelation three years ago that he had plagiarized portions of at least 27 columns published in The News-Sentinel – resulting in his abrupt resignation as a White House aide – those six words are sure to resurrect old snickers and sarcasm.
The 48-year-old Fort Wayne native knows that better than anyone, but is willing to endure it because he believes “Man in the Middle: an Inside Account of Faith and Politics in the George W. Bush Era” (B&H Publishing Group) contains important and timely truths about one man's redemption and an entire nation's soul.
The book's release this coming Thursday – just four days after the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks – is coincidental but perhaps also providential. The events of that day are prominent in the book, just as Goeglein, now a vice president with Focus on the Family, was prominent in shaping the administration's response in a way that foreshadowed the unexpected grace he would experience during his darkest hour seven years later.
As deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, Goeglein was indeed Bush's “man in the middle” – “the reliable, loyal conduit for the president's agenda to the outside groups,” he writes – especially the Republican's conservative, religious base. Goeglein's contacts proved invaluable after 9/11, when he helped plan the prayer service at Washington's National Cathedral.
The resulting interfaith service, which featured not only Bush and Christian clerics but also Muslims, Hindus and members of other faiths, demonstrated national unity but also reaffirmed the intrinsically American notion that liberty is guaranteed not by government, but by God, he said.
In his first newspaper interview about the book, Goeglein said one of his goals was to share insights into how a president he clearly admired was guided by faith when dealing with profound issues such as stem-cell research, the appointment of two Supreme Court justices, and the terrorist attacks that claimed thousands of lives and continue to shape our domestic and foreign policies.
But Goeglein doesn't get around to 9/11 until the eighth chapter. He begins the 227-page book (after a brief prologue and a foreword by Bush political guru Karl Rove) by writing about his childhood and parents Stan and Shirley, who still live in Fort Wayne, and how he betrayed those he loved most by claiming other people's work as his own.
That lie began to unravel in 2008 when he opened an email from a reporter who wanted to know if the plagiarism rumor was true. “I knew instantly this would be the most impossible day of my life ... My only prayer was, ‘God help me,' ” he wrote. "Every one of the values I was raised by ... I had violated completely ... I resigned that afternoon, writing a personal letter of apology to the president ... (and) departed the White House, shattered and fearful.”
That fear only grew when he was unexpectedly called into the Oval Office a few days later – and was astonished to experience, perhaps as never before, the power of faith and forgiveness.
“I had embarrassed the most powerful man in the world, but he showed me remarkable mercy,” Goeglein told me. “He forgave me, and I was speechless.” As he wrote in the book, Bush's faith had helped him overcome his own demons, including alcohol, which caused the president to tell Goeglein: “I have known mercy and grace in my own life, and I am offering it to you now.”
A few days later, an apology session with News-Sentinel Editor Kerry Hubartt, turned into “yet another remarkable session of grace ... I asked for his forgiveness, which he offered unconditionally,” Goeglein wrote.
We all sin, even those who reveled in Goeglein's transgressions. But few of us have had to pay for them so openly, and fewer still have issued such a public confession.
But a power much higher than the president offers forgiveness all the time. As Goeglein writes, the knowledge that God does not give believers what they truly deserve ought to induce a deep sense of humility and gratitude.
And so he was saddened and alarmed by reports that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will exclude clergy from some high-profile memorial events this weekend – perhaps some of the same religious leaders he and Bush were so eager to include after 9/11, and represent the kind of grace and forgiveness that can comfort, strengthen and transform individuals and nations alike.
“Decline is a choice, but I believe America's best days are still ahead,” Goeglein said. “This is a religious republic, and you can't understand America if you don't understand that.”
The book – "I did write it," Goeglein said – aims to make certain you do.
This column is the commentary of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of The News-Sentinel. Email Kevin Leininger at kleininger@news-sentinel.com, or call him at 461-8355.
Ex-Bush aide's book shows power of faith, redemption
Goeglein covers plagiarism scandal and 9/11 in volume to be released this week
By Kevin Leininger
of The News-Sentinel
Tim Goeglein has written a book.
To those who somehow found perverse pleasure in the revelation three years ago that he had plagiarized portions of at least 27 columns published in The News-Sentinel – resulting in his abrupt resignation as a White House aide – those six words are sure to resurrect old snickers and sarcasm.
The 48-year-old Fort Wayne native knows that better than anyone, but is willing to endure it because he believes “Man in the Middle: an Inside Account of Faith and Politics in the George W. Bush Era” (B&H Publishing Group) contains important and timely truths about one man's redemption and an entire nation's soul.
The book's release this coming Thursday – just four days after the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks – is coincidental but perhaps also providential. The events of that day are prominent in the book, just as Goeglein, now a vice president with Focus on the Family, was prominent in shaping the administration's response in a way that foreshadowed the unexpected grace he would experience during his darkest hour seven years later.
As deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, Goeglein was indeed Bush's “man in the middle” – “the reliable, loyal conduit for the president's agenda to the outside groups,” he writes – especially the Republican's conservative, religious base. Goeglein's contacts proved invaluable after 9/11, when he helped plan the prayer service at Washington's National Cathedral.
The resulting interfaith service, which featured not only Bush and Christian clerics but also Muslims, Hindus and members of other faiths, demonstrated national unity but also reaffirmed the intrinsically American notion that liberty is guaranteed not by government, but by God, he said.
In his first newspaper interview about the book, Goeglein said one of his goals was to share insights into how a president he clearly admired was guided by faith when dealing with profound issues such as stem-cell research, the appointment of two Supreme Court justices, and the terrorist attacks that claimed thousands of lives and continue to shape our domestic and foreign policies.
But Goeglein doesn't get around to 9/11 until the eighth chapter. He begins the 227-page book (after a brief prologue and a foreword by Bush political guru Karl Rove) by writing about his childhood and parents Stan and Shirley, who still live in Fort Wayne, and how he betrayed those he loved most by claiming other people's work as his own.
That lie began to unravel in 2008 when he opened an email from a reporter who wanted to know if the plagiarism rumor was true. “I knew instantly this would be the most impossible day of my life ... My only prayer was, ‘God help me,' ” he wrote. "Every one of the values I was raised by ... I had violated completely ... I resigned that afternoon, writing a personal letter of apology to the president ... (and) departed the White House, shattered and fearful.”
That fear only grew when he was unexpectedly called into the Oval Office a few days later – and was astonished to experience, perhaps as never before, the power of faith and forgiveness.
“I had embarrassed the most powerful man in the world, but he showed me remarkable mercy,” Goeglein told me. “He forgave me, and I was speechless.” As he wrote in the book, Bush's faith had helped him overcome his own demons, including alcohol, which caused the president to tell Goeglein: “I have known mercy and grace in my own life, and I am offering it to you now.”
A few days later, an apology session with News-Sentinel Editor Kerry Hubartt, turned into “yet another remarkable session of grace ... I asked for his forgiveness, which he offered unconditionally,” Goeglein wrote.
We all sin, even those who reveled in Goeglein's transgressions. But few of us have had to pay for them so openly, and fewer still have issued such a public confession.
But a power much higher than the president offers forgiveness all the time. As Goeglein writes, the knowledge that God does not give believers what they truly deserve ought to induce a deep sense of humility and gratitude.
And so he was saddened and alarmed by reports that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will exclude clergy from some high-profile memorial events this weekend – perhaps some of the same religious leaders he and Bush were so eager to include after 9/11, and represent the kind of grace and forgiveness that can comfort, strengthen and transform individuals and nations alike.
“Decline is a choice, but I believe America's best days are still ahead,” Goeglein said. “This is a religious republic, and you can't understand America if you don't understand that.”
The book – "I did write it," Goeglein said – aims to make certain you do.
This column is the commentary of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of The News-Sentinel. Email Kevin Leininger at kleininger@news-sentinel.com, or call him at 461-8355.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Building the Future of News
From the foreword of a new book entitled "Entrepreneurial Journalism" set to appear in November from CQ Press:
The opportunities are indeed endless. That is why I am a cockeyed optimist about the future of news. There is more demand for and interest in news than ever. We have more ways to gather, analyze, and distribute news than we ever could have imagined before the Internet. We have new ways to listen to the public, so we can serve them better. We have new efficiencies to exploit.
But most important, we have entrepreneurs and journalists who have the courage to try to build the future of news. And now, thanks to this book, they have a plan
The opportunities are indeed endless. That is why I am a cockeyed optimist about the future of news. There is more demand for and interest in news than ever. We have more ways to gather, analyze, and distribute news than we ever could have imagined before the Internet. We have new ways to listen to the public, so we can serve them better. We have new efficiencies to exploit.
But most important, we have entrepreneurs and journalists who have the courage to try to build the future of news. And now, thanks to this book, they have a plan
Zamperini Story Tops One Million
It may be the dawn of the age of e-books, but last week Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand struck a blow for print editions by surpassing the one million copies in hardcover sales, USA Today reported.
"In this time of explosive growth in e-book sales, the mega-success of Unbroken in hardcover clearly underscores that the demand for print editions of great reads is still enormous," said Gina Centrello, Random House president and publisher.
Inventor of E-Books Dies
Here is the first portion of an article from the New York Times. The entire article may be seen by clicking here.
Michael Hart, who was widely credited with creating the first e-book when he typed the Declaration of Independence into a computer on July 4, 1971, and in so doing laid the foundations for Project Gutenberg, the oldest and largest digital library, was found dead on Tuesday at his home in Urbana, Ill. He was 64.
His death was confirmed by Gregory B. Newby, the chief executive and director of Project Gutenberg, who said that the cause had not yet been determined.
Mr. Hart found his life’s mission when the University of Illinois, where he was a student, gave him a user’s account on a Xerox Sigma V mainframe computer at the school’s Materials Research Lab.
Estimating that the computer time in his possession was worth $100 million, Mr. Hart began thinking of a project that might justify that figure. Data processing, the principal application of computers at the time, did not capture his imagination. Information sharing did.
After attending a July 4 fireworks display, he stopped in at a grocery store and received, with his purchase, a copy of the Declaration of Independence printed on parchment. He typed the text, intending to send it as an e-mail to the users of Arpanet, the government-sponsored precursor to today’s Internet, but was dissuaded by a colleague who warned that the message would crash the system. Instead, he posted a notice that the text could be downloaded, and Project Gutenberg was born.
Its goal, formulated by Mr. Hart, was “to encourage the creation and distribution of e-books” and, by making books available to computer users at no cost, “to help break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy.”
Over the next decade, working alone, Mr. Hart typed the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the King James Bible and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” into the project database, the first tentative steps in a revolution that would usher in what he liked to call the fifth information age, a world of e-books, hand-held electronic devices like the Nook and Kindle, and unprecedented individual access to texts on a vast array of Internet archives.
Today, Project Gutenberg lists more than 30,000 books in 60 languages, with the emphasis on titles of interest to the general reader in three categories: “light literature,” “heavy literature” and reference works. In a 2006 e-mail to the technology writer Glyn Moody, he predicted that there would be a billion e-books in 2021, Project Gutenberg’s 50th anniversary, and that, thanks to advances in memory chips, “you will be able to carry all billion e-books in one hand.”
Nearly all the books are in the public domain, although a relatively small number of copyrighted books are reproduced with the permission of the copyright owner. The library includes two books by Mr. Hart: “A Brief History of the Internet” and “Poems and Tales from Romania.”
“It’s a paradigm shift,” he told Searcher magazine in 2002. “It’s the power of one person, alone in their basement, being able to type in their favorite books and give it to millions or billions of people. It just wasn’t even remotely possible before; not even the Gideons can say they have given away a billion Bibles in the past year.”
Michael Stern Hart was born on March 8, 1947, in Tacoma, Wash. His father was an accountant; his mother, a cryptanalyst during World War II, was the business manager for a high-end women’s store. The couple retrained to become university teachers and in 1958 found posts at the University of Illinois, in Urbana, where his father taught Shakespeare and his mother taught mathematics.
Michael began attending lectures at the university before entering high school and, following a course of individual study on human-machine interfaces, earned a bachelor of science degree in 1973.
Work on Project Gutenberg proceeded slowly at first. Adding perhaps a book a month, Mr. Hart had created only 313 e-books by 1997. “I was just waiting for the world to realize I’d knocked it over,” he told Searcher. “You’ve heard of ‘cow-tipping’? The cow had been tipped over, but it took it 17 years for it to wake up and say, ‘Moo.’ ”
Michael Hart, who was widely credited with creating the first e-book when he typed the Declaration of Independence into a computer on July 4, 1971, and in so doing laid the foundations for Project Gutenberg, the oldest and largest digital library, was found dead on Tuesday at his home in Urbana, Ill. He was 64.
His death was confirmed by Gregory B. Newby, the chief executive and director of Project Gutenberg, who said that the cause had not yet been determined.
Mr. Hart found his life’s mission when the University of Illinois, where he was a student, gave him a user’s account on a Xerox Sigma V mainframe computer at the school’s Materials Research Lab.
Estimating that the computer time in his possession was worth $100 million, Mr. Hart began thinking of a project that might justify that figure. Data processing, the principal application of computers at the time, did not capture his imagination. Information sharing did.
After attending a July 4 fireworks display, he stopped in at a grocery store and received, with his purchase, a copy of the Declaration of Independence printed on parchment. He typed the text, intending to send it as an e-mail to the users of Arpanet, the government-sponsored precursor to today’s Internet, but was dissuaded by a colleague who warned that the message would crash the system. Instead, he posted a notice that the text could be downloaded, and Project Gutenberg was born.
Its goal, formulated by Mr. Hart, was “to encourage the creation and distribution of e-books” and, by making books available to computer users at no cost, “to help break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy.”
Over the next decade, working alone, Mr. Hart typed the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the King James Bible and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” into the project database, the first tentative steps in a revolution that would usher in what he liked to call the fifth information age, a world of e-books, hand-held electronic devices like the Nook and Kindle, and unprecedented individual access to texts on a vast array of Internet archives.
Today, Project Gutenberg lists more than 30,000 books in 60 languages, with the emphasis on titles of interest to the general reader in three categories: “light literature,” “heavy literature” and reference works. In a 2006 e-mail to the technology writer Glyn Moody, he predicted that there would be a billion e-books in 2021, Project Gutenberg’s 50th anniversary, and that, thanks to advances in memory chips, “you will be able to carry all billion e-books in one hand.”
Nearly all the books are in the public domain, although a relatively small number of copyrighted books are reproduced with the permission of the copyright owner. The library includes two books by Mr. Hart: “A Brief History of the Internet” and “Poems and Tales from Romania.”
“It’s a paradigm shift,” he told Searcher magazine in 2002. “It’s the power of one person, alone in their basement, being able to type in their favorite books and give it to millions or billions of people. It just wasn’t even remotely possible before; not even the Gideons can say they have given away a billion Bibles in the past year.”
Michael Stern Hart was born on March 8, 1947, in Tacoma, Wash. His father was an accountant; his mother, a cryptanalyst during World War II, was the business manager for a high-end women’s store. The couple retrained to become university teachers and in 1958 found posts at the University of Illinois, in Urbana, where his father taught Shakespeare and his mother taught mathematics.
Michael began attending lectures at the university before entering high school and, following a course of individual study on human-machine interfaces, earned a bachelor of science degree in 1973.
Work on Project Gutenberg proceeded slowly at first. Adding perhaps a book a month, Mr. Hart had created only 313 e-books by 1997. “I was just waiting for the world to realize I’d knocked it over,” he told Searcher. “You’ve heard of ‘cow-tipping’? The cow had been tipped over, but it took it 17 years for it to wake up and say, ‘Moo.’ ”
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
65% of Adults Now Use Social Networks
Damon Poeter (@dpoeter) writes in PCMag.com (@PCMag) that the percentage of adult Internet users using sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is now 65%, up from 61% a year ago, according to a report released by the Pew Research Center (@pewinternet & @pewresearch).
Accounting for the percentage of adults who don't use the Internet at all, that still means that half of all Americans now use social networking sites, Pew researchers say.
The number of Americans using such sites has exploded since 2005, when Pew found that just 8% of Internet users, or about 5% of all adult Americans, said they did. The percentage of Internet users saying they use social networking sites has more than doubled since 2008, when 29% of respondents said they were using them, according to the Pew survey.
Pew reports that women aged 18 to 29 are the most voracious users of social networking sites, with 89% of Internet users in that group participating in such sites and 69% of them reporting that they do so daily. Accounting for all age groups, 69% of adult women using the Internet say they’re social networkers as compared with 60% of men.
Accounting for the percentage of adults who don't use the Internet at all, that still means that half of all Americans now use social networking sites, Pew researchers say.
The number of Americans using such sites has exploded since 2005, when Pew found that just 8% of Internet users, or about 5% of all adult Americans, said they did. The percentage of Internet users saying they use social networking sites has more than doubled since 2008, when 29% of respondents said they were using them, according to the Pew survey.
Pew reports that women aged 18 to 29 are the most voracious users of social networking sites, with 89% of Internet users in that group participating in such sites and 69% of them reporting that they do so daily. Accounting for all age groups, 69% of adult women using the Internet say they’re social networkers as compared with 60% of men.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Are We Thankful for Freedom of the Press in America?
(from Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac)
It was on this day (September 5) in 1958 that the novel Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak, was published in the United States.
Doctor Zhivago is set during the Russian Revolution and World War I, and it tells the story of Yuri Zhivago, a doctor and poet, and his love for a woman named Lara.
Pasternak worked on his novel for decades, and finished it in 1956. He submitted the book for publication, but although Pasternak was a famous writer by then, his manuscript was rejected —the publishers explained that Doctor Zhivago was not in line with the spirit of the revolution, too concerned with individualism.
An Italian journalist visited Pasternak at his country house and convinced the novelist to let him smuggle a copy of Doctor Zhivago out of the country to the leftist Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Pasternak is said to have declared as he handed over the manuscript: "You are hereby invited to watch me face the firing squad!"
He was not executed, but when the upcoming publication was announced in Italy, Soviet authorities were furious, and forced Pasternak to send Feltrinelli telegrams insisting that he halt publication of the novel. One of them said: "I have come to the profound conviction that what I wrote cannot be regarded as a finished work," and in another Pasternak called his novel "in need of serious improvement."
But Feltrinelli was not fooled, and continued with publication. Soon enough, Feltrinelli received a private, scribbled note from Pasternak begging him to continue. Pasternak wrote: "I wrote the novel to be published and read. That remains my only wish."
Feltrinelli published Doctor Zhivago, and helped get it published all over the world. The Soviet Union's attempts to stop its publication only made it more interesting to readers. When it was first published in Italy in November of 1957, the first printing of 6,000 copies sold out within the first day. Doctor Zhivago was published in the United States on this day in 1958, and even though it wasn't published until September, it was the best-selling book of 1958. It quickly became a bestseller in 24 languages.
Pasternak was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1958, and when he first heard of the award, he sent a telegram to the Swedish Academy that said: "Immensely thankful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed."
Two days later, Soviet authorities forced him to write again, this time to say he would refuse the prize. Pasternak died two years later, in 1960, and Doctor Zhivago was not published in the Soviet Union until 1988.
Doctor Zhivago begins: "On they went, singing 'Rest Eternal,' and whenever they stopped, their feet, the horses, and the gusts of wind seemed to carry on their singing. Passers-by made way for the procession, counted the wreaths, and crossed themselves. Some joined in out of curiosity and asked: 'Who is being buried?'—'Zhivago,' they were told.—'Oh, I see. That's what it is.'—'It isn't him. It's his wife.'—'Well, it comes to the same thing. May her soul rest in peace. It's a fine funeral.'"
It was on this day (September 5) in 1958 that the novel Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak, was published in the United States.
Doctor Zhivago is set during the Russian Revolution and World War I, and it tells the story of Yuri Zhivago, a doctor and poet, and his love for a woman named Lara.
Pasternak worked on his novel for decades, and finished it in 1956. He submitted the book for publication, but although Pasternak was a famous writer by then, his manuscript was rejected —the publishers explained that Doctor Zhivago was not in line with the spirit of the revolution, too concerned with individualism.
An Italian journalist visited Pasternak at his country house and convinced the novelist to let him smuggle a copy of Doctor Zhivago out of the country to the leftist Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Pasternak is said to have declared as he handed over the manuscript: "You are hereby invited to watch me face the firing squad!"
He was not executed, but when the upcoming publication was announced in Italy, Soviet authorities were furious, and forced Pasternak to send Feltrinelli telegrams insisting that he halt publication of the novel. One of them said: "I have come to the profound conviction that what I wrote cannot be regarded as a finished work," and in another Pasternak called his novel "in need of serious improvement."
But Feltrinelli was not fooled, and continued with publication. Soon enough, Feltrinelli received a private, scribbled note from Pasternak begging him to continue. Pasternak wrote: "I wrote the novel to be published and read. That remains my only wish."
Feltrinelli published Doctor Zhivago, and helped get it published all over the world. The Soviet Union's attempts to stop its publication only made it more interesting to readers. When it was first published in Italy in November of 1957, the first printing of 6,000 copies sold out within the first day. Doctor Zhivago was published in the United States on this day in 1958, and even though it wasn't published until September, it was the best-selling book of 1958. It quickly became a bestseller in 24 languages.
Pasternak was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1958, and when he first heard of the award, he sent a telegram to the Swedish Academy that said: "Immensely thankful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed."
Two days later, Soviet authorities forced him to write again, this time to say he would refuse the prize. Pasternak died two years later, in 1960, and Doctor Zhivago was not published in the Soviet Union until 1988.
Doctor Zhivago begins: "On they went, singing 'Rest Eternal,' and whenever they stopped, their feet, the horses, and the gusts of wind seemed to carry on their singing. Passers-by made way for the procession, counted the wreaths, and crossed themselves. Some joined in out of curiosity and asked: 'Who is being buried?'—'Zhivago,' they were told.—'Oh, I see. That's what it is.'—'It isn't him. It's his wife.'—'Well, it comes to the same thing. May her soul rest in peace. It's a fine funeral.'"
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Be a Stringer!
From the blog of a friend, Dave Fessenden. This is an excerpt--to read the entire entry, click here.
What do Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain and Sherwood Eliot Wirt (the founding editor of Decision Magazine) all have in common?
Well, besides being amazingly accomplished writers, they all began their careers working on a newspaper. And therein lies a lesson. Newspaper experience is a valuable education for any writer.
I hated my first job with the editor’s recurring comment, “This stinks; rewrite it” had something to do with it. But I learned a lot. Having to write on a deadline and making sure I got the facts straight were good disciplines.
I know what you’re thinking — hasn’t the Internet put most newspapers out of business?
Well, it hasn’t helped, but there are still a lot of newspapers out there—well over a hundred dailies and weeklies in Pennsylvania, for example. And many of them have both a print and an online edition.
Your chances of landing a full-time job as a reporter may be slim to none, unless you have a journalism degree and experience, or your favorite uncle owns the paper. Far better to try for a position as a part-time reporter, otherwise known as a stringer. (I don’t know what the origin of that word is, but at one newspaper I worked at, it meant they would “string you along” for months and months with a vague promise of full-time employment.)
You may also find it difficult to get an assignment at a daily paper; the competition is surprisingly fierce. So if you’re having no luck with a daily, try a weekly. And if you can’t get hired as a stringer, perhaps you can write individual feature articles.
What do Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain and Sherwood Eliot Wirt (the founding editor of Decision Magazine) all have in common?
Well, besides being amazingly accomplished writers, they all began their careers working on a newspaper. And therein lies a lesson. Newspaper experience is a valuable education for any writer.
I hated my first job with the editor’s recurring comment, “This stinks; rewrite it” had something to do with it. But I learned a lot. Having to write on a deadline and making sure I got the facts straight were good disciplines.
I know what you’re thinking — hasn’t the Internet put most newspapers out of business?
Well, it hasn’t helped, but there are still a lot of newspapers out there—well over a hundred dailies and weeklies in Pennsylvania, for example. And many of them have both a print and an online edition.
Your chances of landing a full-time job as a reporter may be slim to none, unless you have a journalism degree and experience, or your favorite uncle owns the paper. Far better to try for a position as a part-time reporter, otherwise known as a stringer. (I don’t know what the origin of that word is, but at one newspaper I worked at, it meant they would “string you along” for months and months with a vague promise of full-time employment.)
You may also find it difficult to get an assignment at a daily paper; the competition is surprisingly fierce. So if you’re having no luck with a daily, try a weekly. And if you can’t get hired as a stringer, perhaps you can write individual feature articles.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Hyperlocal News Site Helps Hurricane Relief
The News Frontier
The News Frontier, The Observatory — August 30, 2011 03:07 PM
After Irene: How a Hyperlocal Is Helping
In the Catskills, the Watershed Post is coordinating relief efforts
By Alysia Santo
In the Catskills region of upstate New York, where flooding from Hurricane Irene wiped out entire towns, a hyperlocal site called the Watershed Post is helping to coordinate relief efforts and trying to connect people who are stranded. This local news web site defines its coverage by the bucolic area surrounding New York City’s watershed. But the area is a “news desert” too, and the damage and destruction people are experiencing has the editors of the site, Julia Reischel and Lissa Harris, scrambling to keep up.
Watershed Post is using a live blog not only to aggregate official updates, but as a forum for witnesses to share information. It’s a service that was desperately needed in the severely damaged, and isolated, area of the Catskills. Residents are using it to find loved ones, or announce people’s location to family members, while also warning readers of bad roads, closed bridges, and other hazards. The blog went live on the site Saturday night and has become a go-to source for many local citizens; multiple posts are coming through every minute.
The blog is being run on an advertiser-supported free live-blogging service called CoverItLive, but the Watershed Post’s version has been so inundated with posts that the ads were interrupting user access. At the request of Reischel and Harris, CoverItLive suspended all advertising for the Watershed Post’s live-blog today.
Meanwhile, Reischel says, they are getting an avalanche of phone calls from area residents who are asking the Watershed Post to help them get a rescue team out to a loved one’s house. “We’re sort of becoming this relief organization,” says Reischel, who, along with Harris, has been constantly working the phone—providing locations to emergency responders, letting them in on reports of people stranded, and updating local residents with real time information on the sort of details that come up when an entire area is flooded. For example, the problem of washed away medications was the subject of a recent post. An area pharmacy offered to deliver prescriptions, and a local physician, Dr. Holly Llobet, offered to write and fill them: “Anyone who needs medication, whet (sic) they’ve lost it in the flood or bec (sic) the CVS is no longer there, I am donating my time to write prescriptions,” said Llobet in a phone conversation with Harris, which was then posted on the blog.
The Watershed Post—covering five counties and fifty towns in the Catskills since last year—is run from Reischel and Harris’s home, and Resichel says they are staying in rather than going out to report, not only because it’s dangerous to drive, but because they “have so much information coming in, and most of it desperately needs organization,” says Harris. “We feel that we are the most useful here.”
Reischel says while the Post is pretty well informed on the communities that are flooded but have power, she is trying to focus on areas that do not yet have electricity. She says the people who have made it out of these no-phone or no-Internet areas are reaching out to the Watershed Post, “frantically requesting information. They feel cut off.”
The biggest need lies in coordinating people who are stranded. “I cannot stress enough, scores of people are stranded,” says Reischel. “They are isolated in their homes and they are terrified.”
Fore more on the Watershed Post, read CJR’s News Frontier profile.
The News Frontier, The Observatory — August 30, 2011 03:07 PM
After Irene: How a Hyperlocal Is Helping
In the Catskills, the Watershed Post is coordinating relief efforts
By Alysia Santo
In the Catskills region of upstate New York, where flooding from Hurricane Irene wiped out entire towns, a hyperlocal site called the Watershed Post is helping to coordinate relief efforts and trying to connect people who are stranded. This local news web site defines its coverage by the bucolic area surrounding New York City’s watershed. But the area is a “news desert” too, and the damage and destruction people are experiencing has the editors of the site, Julia Reischel and Lissa Harris, scrambling to keep up.
Watershed Post is using a live blog not only to aggregate official updates, but as a forum for witnesses to share information. It’s a service that was desperately needed in the severely damaged, and isolated, area of the Catskills. Residents are using it to find loved ones, or announce people’s location to family members, while also warning readers of bad roads, closed bridges, and other hazards. The blog went live on the site Saturday night and has become a go-to source for many local citizens; multiple posts are coming through every minute.
The blog is being run on an advertiser-supported free live-blogging service called CoverItLive, but the Watershed Post’s version has been so inundated with posts that the ads were interrupting user access. At the request of Reischel and Harris, CoverItLive suspended all advertising for the Watershed Post’s live-blog today.
Meanwhile, Reischel says, they are getting an avalanche of phone calls from area residents who are asking the Watershed Post to help them get a rescue team out to a loved one’s house. “We’re sort of becoming this relief organization,” says Reischel, who, along with Harris, has been constantly working the phone—providing locations to emergency responders, letting them in on reports of people stranded, and updating local residents with real time information on the sort of details that come up when an entire area is flooded. For example, the problem of washed away medications was the subject of a recent post. An area pharmacy offered to deliver prescriptions, and a local physician, Dr. Holly Llobet, offered to write and fill them: “Anyone who needs medication, whet (sic) they’ve lost it in the flood or bec (sic) the CVS is no longer there, I am donating my time to write prescriptions,” said Llobet in a phone conversation with Harris, which was then posted on the blog.
The Watershed Post—covering five counties and fifty towns in the Catskills since last year—is run from Reischel and Harris’s home, and Resichel says they are staying in rather than going out to report, not only because it’s dangerous to drive, but because they “have so much information coming in, and most of it desperately needs organization,” says Harris. “We feel that we are the most useful here.”
Reischel says while the Post is pretty well informed on the communities that are flooded but have power, she is trying to focus on areas that do not yet have electricity. She says the people who have made it out of these no-phone or no-Internet areas are reaching out to the Watershed Post, “frantically requesting information. They feel cut off.”
The biggest need lies in coordinating people who are stranded. “I cannot stress enough, scores of people are stranded,” says Reischel. “They are isolated in their homes and they are terrified.”
Fore more on the Watershed Post, read CJR’s News Frontier profile.
How Smaller Gets Bigger
Some thoughts on hyperlocal news sites from Columbia Journalism Review. How viable would a hyperlocal site be for the Warsaw/Winona Lake area?
The Business of Digital Journalism — May 10, 2011 12:02 AM
How Smaller Gets Bigger
By Jan Schaffer
“The future of journalism will be a tale of smaller and smaller organizations making a bigger and bigger impact,” asserts Lisa Williams, founder of Placeblogger.com.
I couldn’t agree more. They will rise and fall, collaborate and compete, succeed and fail—and be replaced by new startups.
So what does this mean for the business of digital journalism? For one thing, it means we have to do business in dramatically different ways—not just collecting money differently. So here are three places to start. Many of these things are already happening and could add to “The Story So Far.”
Identify the players and mind the gaps: Traditional news organizations should take more cues from independent news startups. Value sells. And value derives from engagement and from unique kinds of content.
• Identify the gaps in news coverage and find ways to fill them. This may mean you create a niche product but it could also mean you enter a news partnership with another journalistic outlet that is covering something you’re not.
• Instead of trying to cover twenty areas poorly, pick six to eight and own them. Partner with other news creators locally or nationally for the rest.
• Make sure you know who’s doing what in your community. Map the media assets that you have. Know who the emerging power players are. I have found it shocking how some traditional news outlets are not paying attention to their own news ecosystem. As far as they are concerned, they are the only game in town. Yet we are beginning to see hyperlocal sites (not just Patch.com) expanding to start new sites in nearby towns.
• Nurture the nickels, not just the dimes. Multiple revenue streams begin to add up. Some of the independent news startups are looking at more than just grants and/or advertising. They are cultivating consulting income (web and social media development), content syndication, niche products, and event income that can include registrations fees and corporate sponsorships. These events can produce new kinds of knowledge networks in communities and open the doors for different kinds of support.
While there is much fretting about how new online news outlets have not fully taken the place of traditional news organizations, the fact is that many hyperlocal sites are covering communities that never had much, or any, coverage before. And a growing roster of statewide investigative journalism initiatives are doing some remarkable accountability journalism—and sharing it with other news organizations in their states.
Incubate your competitors. A radical thought or a new opportunity? Nurture not just what’s good for your company but also what’s good for the community and give it buzz. Make your competitors your collaborators.
• Pull a J-Lab. It may sound counterintuitive but invest $150,000 in a greenhouse fund to nurture the best of your local news providers with micro grants tied to collaboration opportunities. I guarantee you will raise the bar for everyone and begin to connect the news silos that are cropping up.
• Put out a call for collaborative enterprise stories. Since last fall, J-Lab helped to seed fourteen Philadelphia stories that are running on multiple platforms with only $70,000 in funding from the William Penn Foundation. You can do this, too.
• Take those empty desks in the newsroom and turn them into them into co-working spaces. Invite community site founders to work alongside you and even pay a token rent. See what ideas that proximity fosters. Know and nurture the ideas in your community before they blindside you.
• Develop citywide Networked Journalism initiatives. For instance, J-Lab’s Net-J pilot project, funded by the Knight foundation, helps support a community manager at a mainstream news organization and provides small stipends to at least five local news sites willing to try collaborating for a year. The Seattle Times has grown its network from five hyperlocal sites to thirty-nine sites; The Charlotte Observer from five to sixteen. The Portland Oregonian just launched its network with seven smaller news sites that want to partner.
As we learned in a recent survey to gauge Seattle readers’ perceptions of these networks, eight in ten of the 996 respondents said they valued both the network of partners and The Seattle Times itself for making it easier to connect with community news. Times editors said the partnerships had bolstered their brand, even if its website did not see a direct traffic gain.
Once you start erecting an infrastructure that helps all media, you are in a position to leverage different kinds of support.
Initiate a different “ask.” So far in the digital journalism world, we have asked people to be advertisers or to be subscribers. We have asked them to be donors or funders. We have asked them to be citizen journalists or poorly paid professional journalists. We have asked them to rate and share our stories.
We have not asked them to do something that might have more appeal: to be “media players”—media players who are charged with being good stewards of a robust local news and information landscape. It rang so true to me when Batavian editor Howard Owens explained, in “The Story So Far,” that many of his local advertisers don’t care about click-throughs, they just want to support the community. We’ve heard that from many startups.
What would such civic stewardship begin to look like? It could take the form of participating in a knowledge network—a series of events in which people meet and learn about civic issues, literary news, legislative priorities, and fun folks in town. It helps if your events generate some water-cooler chitchat.
Don’t laugh: The Texas Tribune has brought in more than $500,000 in event revenue in the last two years. Many of its events are now the place to be, and the Tribune is breaking news that others news organizations find they must cover.
Media players could also belong to statewide Journalism Trusts, donating funds, advice, and their non-journalism expertise (event production, anyone?) to foster robust news and information. Check out the early Vermont Journalism Trust.
Asking people to participate in ways that don’t require professional journalism skills helps re-channel energies and dampen concerns about authority or the accuracy of amateur journalists. And it gets a different kind of attention from prospective funders.
To be sure, the business of digital journalism gives us much to wring our hands about, as the Tow Center report attests. But having judged several journalism awards contests this year, I’m seeing some of the strongest entries coming from new journalism sites, not the traditional players. I’ve just finished vetting another 378 proposals from women media entrepreneurs; the ideas are enormously varied and the applicants’ skills run deep.
What I see missing from so many of the conversations about how we garner support for the future of journalism is the recognition of the low-hanging fruit growing in many communities—independent news entities that are going to continue to launch. We need more new thinking that validates and engages them in the overall enterprise.
The Business of Digital Journalism — May 10, 2011 12:02 AM
How Smaller Gets Bigger
By Jan Schaffer
“The future of journalism will be a tale of smaller and smaller organizations making a bigger and bigger impact,” asserts Lisa Williams, founder of Placeblogger.com.
I couldn’t agree more. They will rise and fall, collaborate and compete, succeed and fail—and be replaced by new startups.
So what does this mean for the business of digital journalism? For one thing, it means we have to do business in dramatically different ways—not just collecting money differently. So here are three places to start. Many of these things are already happening and could add to “The Story So Far.”
Identify the players and mind the gaps: Traditional news organizations should take more cues from independent news startups. Value sells. And value derives from engagement and from unique kinds of content.
• Identify the gaps in news coverage and find ways to fill them. This may mean you create a niche product but it could also mean you enter a news partnership with another journalistic outlet that is covering something you’re not.
• Instead of trying to cover twenty areas poorly, pick six to eight and own them. Partner with other news creators locally or nationally for the rest.
• Make sure you know who’s doing what in your community. Map the media assets that you have. Know who the emerging power players are. I have found it shocking how some traditional news outlets are not paying attention to their own news ecosystem. As far as they are concerned, they are the only game in town. Yet we are beginning to see hyperlocal sites (not just Patch.com) expanding to start new sites in nearby towns.
• Nurture the nickels, not just the dimes. Multiple revenue streams begin to add up. Some of the independent news startups are looking at more than just grants and/or advertising. They are cultivating consulting income (web and social media development), content syndication, niche products, and event income that can include registrations fees and corporate sponsorships. These events can produce new kinds of knowledge networks in communities and open the doors for different kinds of support.
While there is much fretting about how new online news outlets have not fully taken the place of traditional news organizations, the fact is that many hyperlocal sites are covering communities that never had much, or any, coverage before. And a growing roster of statewide investigative journalism initiatives are doing some remarkable accountability journalism—and sharing it with other news organizations in their states.
Incubate your competitors. A radical thought or a new opportunity? Nurture not just what’s good for your company but also what’s good for the community and give it buzz. Make your competitors your collaborators.
• Pull a J-Lab. It may sound counterintuitive but invest $150,000 in a greenhouse fund to nurture the best of your local news providers with micro grants tied to collaboration opportunities. I guarantee you will raise the bar for everyone and begin to connect the news silos that are cropping up.
• Put out a call for collaborative enterprise stories. Since last fall, J-Lab helped to seed fourteen Philadelphia stories that are running on multiple platforms with only $70,000 in funding from the William Penn Foundation. You can do this, too.
• Take those empty desks in the newsroom and turn them into them into co-working spaces. Invite community site founders to work alongside you and even pay a token rent. See what ideas that proximity fosters. Know and nurture the ideas in your community before they blindside you.
• Develop citywide Networked Journalism initiatives. For instance, J-Lab’s Net-J pilot project, funded by the Knight foundation, helps support a community manager at a mainstream news organization and provides small stipends to at least five local news sites willing to try collaborating for a year. The Seattle Times has grown its network from five hyperlocal sites to thirty-nine sites; The Charlotte Observer from five to sixteen. The Portland Oregonian just launched its network with seven smaller news sites that want to partner.
As we learned in a recent survey to gauge Seattle readers’ perceptions of these networks, eight in ten of the 996 respondents said they valued both the network of partners and The Seattle Times itself for making it easier to connect with community news. Times editors said the partnerships had bolstered their brand, even if its website did not see a direct traffic gain.
Once you start erecting an infrastructure that helps all media, you are in a position to leverage different kinds of support.
Initiate a different “ask.” So far in the digital journalism world, we have asked people to be advertisers or to be subscribers. We have asked them to be donors or funders. We have asked them to be citizen journalists or poorly paid professional journalists. We have asked them to rate and share our stories.
We have not asked them to do something that might have more appeal: to be “media players”—media players who are charged with being good stewards of a robust local news and information landscape. It rang so true to me when Batavian editor Howard Owens explained, in “The Story So Far,” that many of his local advertisers don’t care about click-throughs, they just want to support the community. We’ve heard that from many startups.
What would such civic stewardship begin to look like? It could take the form of participating in a knowledge network—a series of events in which people meet and learn about civic issues, literary news, legislative priorities, and fun folks in town. It helps if your events generate some water-cooler chitchat.
Don’t laugh: The Texas Tribune has brought in more than $500,000 in event revenue in the last two years. Many of its events are now the place to be, and the Tribune is breaking news that others news organizations find they must cover.
Media players could also belong to statewide Journalism Trusts, donating funds, advice, and their non-journalism expertise (event production, anyone?) to foster robust news and information. Check out the early Vermont Journalism Trust.
Asking people to participate in ways that don’t require professional journalism skills helps re-channel energies and dampen concerns about authority or the accuracy of amateur journalists. And it gets a different kind of attention from prospective funders.
To be sure, the business of digital journalism gives us much to wring our hands about, as the Tow Center report attests. But having judged several journalism awards contests this year, I’m seeing some of the strongest entries coming from new journalism sites, not the traditional players. I’ve just finished vetting another 378 proposals from women media entrepreneurs; the ideas are enormously varied and the applicants’ skills run deep.
What I see missing from so many of the conversations about how we garner support for the future of journalism is the recognition of the low-hanging fruit growing in many communities—independent news entities that are going to continue to launch. We need more new thinking that validates and engages them in the overall enterprise.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Reactions to CNN Report?
Here is the video clip of last evening's CNN Anderson Cooper 360 report on Hephzibah House in Winona Lake. I'd be interested in your comments on the quality and balance of the reporting.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2011/09/01/ac-tuchman-ungodly-home.cnn?&hpt=hp_c2
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2011/09/01/ac-tuchman-ungodly-home.cnn?&hpt=hp_c2
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