fix journalism » Social networking

Why teach new networking habits in j-schools?

Donica Mensing — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:36:55 +0000

The word “networks” gets thrown around a lot. In terms of journalism, one could argue that journalists have always been about networking. We network with sources, subjects and readers and use that networking to our advantage when finding and writing stories. “Social” networking in this age, however, means something different. A recent post on the [...]

#truth or a scenario for weeding through the Twitter din

Michael Higdon — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:03:31 +0000

I walked up to the imaginary doctor and interviewed him using my Evernote (btw, you need this if you're a journalist, not just for iPhone) voice recorder. He told me Michael Jackson was in critical condition. When I hit save on Evernote, it automatically uploaded the sound file to the web. Annie has access to my Evernote account and watched it load live, then saved it to her computer, briefly trimmed it down, uploaded it to SoundCloud.com (YouTube for audio) and Tweeted the sound clip embeded on the L.A. Times website with a nutgraf. Total time for first breaking news report: 10 minutes While I waited in the waiting room, the editor and I coordinated my and the L.A. Times tweets using a synced Tweetdeck (iPhone app + her desktop app). I tweeted extra details while the editor spread the word. As people retweeted us, we retweeted them with #truth People who lied (or abused the hash tag) were retweeted with #untruth so that people would ignore them and continue to retweet our reports. Read More ...

Ask not what SND can do for you, but what you can do for SND

Michael Higdon — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:59:03 +0000

Capitalize on this focusing point right this second. Do not wait for people to forget you screwed up. Move forward NOW! There are points in history where the world or a group or a culture pay attention to something and change quickly. They are called paradigm shifts. This is one of those opportunities. Take everyone's advice. Members have provided a lot of feedback not normally available. Do it. Then make sure there is a place for members to regularly provide feedback from today on into forever. Where the hell can we go to be heard other than when you piss us off? Nowhere. So make somewhere for us to go when we're not pissed. SND is no longer a society of print journalists, get over it. Many members lement that we're no longer true to our craft. We're not prepress people anymore. It's odd that we can call ourselves forward thinking and still lement about that fact. It's a tough world. I know, I just graduated and had to spend the last year ignoring print in order to ensure I could get a job. I still suck at new media, we all do. Let's get better. Web design has just started, it'll be like 2004! It's like getting all your pages in color all over again. There are a limited number of web usability conventions and it's not all that different than print. [... Click the headline to read more]

Making information valuable

Donica Mensing — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:14:26 +0000

Journalists write stories. Most stories are intended to convey information. The strategic thinking that should be the next step — who needs this information, how might they act on it, how will they find it, how will they share it, how is it useful to them? — gets little attention in most newsrooms. This piece [...]

How my generation thinks (kinda sorta)

Michael Higdon — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:19:07 +0000

I read a lot of articles about how my generation (1983-1987 ish) and younger are doomed because of social media and all the changes. We apparently have short attention spans and all that jazz. Well here's a video that puts that into perspective for all you 26 and olders (kind of).

Why won’t readers pay for content? Well they will

Michael Higdon — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:02:06 +0000

Absolutely right. The argument that people will go elsewhere doesn't jive in one-newspaper towns such as Reno or even San Francisco. If the Reno Gazette-Journal or San Francisco Chronicle started charging for content readers would have absolutely nowhere else to go for local information involving courts, schools, people and business. The New York Times certainly does not cover Reno or San Francisco like readers need it to be covered. And neither do any of the alt publications in town. [...]

Journalism cannot just save itself or it will fail

Michael Higdon — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:13:34 +0000

So instead, news needs to find a way to create something that doesn't only help the journalist, but helps thousands of other unpaid creative people. uNews must be for more than news. It must be for all creative endeavours. It must be for InnoCentive.com, it must be for people who want to make money off of their own videos, images news, games, information and other content. uNews can't actually be called "uNews." uNews needs to be for everyone AND news. And it has to be as fun and interesting to be a part of as all of your awesome Apple products. uNews must be a paradigm shift on how we operate on the Web. It must serve as a focusing point for all communications. Otherwise, it will fail like the other micropayment systems did. Other systems segregated content away from the Web instead of integrating people into each other. That is the key. uNews must CENTALIZE the web instead of further DECENTRALIZING it. But wouldn't it be great of a news company made it? [...]

Credibility and credulity

Donica Mensing — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:22:41 +0000

As a teacher, the evolution in power from media gatekeepers to the individual citizen has tremendous implications for what students (and others) are expected to competently manage. We have an elaborate set of tools designed to help students operate in an environment where information is as scarce as water in a desert, but very little established in our educational institutions for how to intelligently manage a flood. The same analogy holds true for citizens seeking political information, businesses seeking economic information, politicians seeking policy information, etc. Dan Gillmor, author of "We the Media," describes an aspect of the problem this way in a lengthy and interesting post titled Principles for a new media literacy:

Forums vs. comments, oooh the variables

Michael Higdon — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:11:31 +0000

The Nevada Sagebrush Web site has newly added forums that aren’t very active while the comments are very active. I see two variables that might explain this (well really three). One is time, I’m just impatient and forums need more time to explode. Two is promotion. We post starter content on them and try to [...]

Geo coding helps bring us together

Michael Higdon — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:32:57 +0000

Geo coding is using geographically coded content so it’ll appear on a map like on Flickr. A great idea that Chris Vannoy helped me realize is to make a news site homepage a big map of the city and to have all of your news geocoded according to its location. Then you can make the [...]