Blogs | Forums | Interactives | Analytics | Networks | Visuals & Audio | Scenarios | Ahead
The greatest hope for the immediate future is making your publication necessary - again
A theme present in nearly every conversation about the future of media is how broad the range of information sources has become. Yet the most basic element of economics, "demand," is often a forgotten part of the conversation.
A primary theme of Best Practices will be to establish how to become a necessary part of the community conversation - be that conversation local, regional, national or beyond. The categories below identify several important areas of opportunity for online editorial and commentary sites and provide regularly updated links to resources in those categories.
Blogs
By any definition, a blog is the closest online relative to the traditional editorial or commentary found in any print media. Its online presence makes the blog a much more effective means of communicating with an audience. The blog's immediacy, flexibility and ability to link to related content gives the blog writer an easily focused outlet for opinion, ideas and concrete reporting.
The blog also opens lines of discussion through its response feature, giving the user an ability to react to the writer in ways that challenge the traditional editorialist, but also allow a dialog that usually improves the flow of information in a community.
Resources:- 11 tips in effective blog writing
- George Orwell’s 5 Rules for Effective Writing
- 25 Blogs about Blogging
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Blogs
- What Everybody Ought to Know About Blogging - 97 Blog Tips
- Murky Boundaries – What are the guidelines for the personal blogs of journalists
who work for mainstream news organizations? - Update on Beatblogging.org Six Months In
- 3 Ways an Editorial Calendar Improves Your Blog
- 10 Tips for Bloggers
- A Bloggers' Code of Ethics
- Can newspapers do blogs right?
- NBC Reminded That In Web 2.0, News Won’t Keep
- The media’s uneasy relationship with the public revealed
- Research: The BBC goes blogging: Is ‘Auntie’ finally listening?
- Looking Ahead - How Dallas lets readers know what's coming
- Blogging and News sites
- Bog or cog? Blogs forcing newspapers to re-examine role
Forums
Often maligned as unmanageable and full of legal jeopardy, the online discussion forum remains an excellent opportunity for a newspaper to generate dialog on important topics in their community.
To be successful there must be careful consideration of the forum ground rules, including moderation, duration of discussion and consequences of poor citizenship among participants.
Resources:- On Moderating a Discussion Forum…
- Moderating internet forums: What's smart, not what's new
- Resources for Moderators and Facilitators of Online Discussion
- Moderating Online Chat Rooms
Interactives
An area where most newspaper editorial/commentary sections might achieve the greatest impact with their readers may be the inclusion or increased use of interactive elements. My providing the reader with a "Hands-on" experience, the news, ideas and information being presented gains greater value.
Resources:- Mashup Tutorials
- Mashup of the Day
- Mashup Examples
- Mashups Resource Center
- Games and Civic Engagement
- Example: Patchwork Nation
- The interactivity gap: Embrace the Web
- Opinion: Juan Thomassie on interactive features that create and keep an online audience
- Example: USAToday's Candidate Match Game
- User feedback drives five principles for multimedia news on the Web
- Interactive graphic: Wealth calculator
- Interactive graphic: UTs new Supercomputer
- International Space Station construction continues
Analytics
Understanding the reader, and what he or she is reading, can play a significant role in adapting the site to meet their needs. A balance of traditional news judgment and marketing prowess will make you site competitive in an increasingly crowed information environment.
Resources:- Top 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started in Web Analytics
- Top 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started in Web Analytics #2
- Top 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started in Web Analytics #3
- Book: Web Analytics Demystified: A Marketer's Guide to Understanding how Your Web
By Eric T. Peterson - A Few Good Web Analytics Tools - Measure your Web site's success
- Understanding Web Traffic: Direct, Search, and Referred
- It’s not about “what” but “why” - Understanding Web Analytics Graphs
- Web Analytics: Understand, Then Segment Your Audience
Networks
Social networks and their importance in the communication world of your readers (both young and old) is a perfect opportunity for traditional media to move into the emerging role of conversation catalyst.
Network analysis also gives editors insight into who connects with whom and how these connections lead to decision making at almost every level. Understanding this complex social construct can provide the editor unique ways to reach a diverse, and diversely connected audience.
Resources:- Video: Social-networking trends take new directions
- Book: Social Network Analysis: A Handbook ... By John Scott
- Social Network Analysis, A Brief Introduction
- Video: Social Networking in Plain English
- Six Conditions that Form Online Communities
- Online social networks - Everywhere and nowhere
- Study: Social networks may subvert 'digital divide'
- Twittering the news: DOs and DON'Ts
- How Twitter creates a Sixth Sense
- visualcomplexity.com - Social Networks
- Videos: When Social Networks enter Popular Culture
- Media Frenzy - Big Media’s Crush on Social Networking
- BBC: Web users 'fear media intrusion'
- Top Five U.S. Social Networking Sites - 2008
- Digging Deeper – Your Guide to Social Networking Online
- Social Networking Web sites and Teens: An Overview
- Social Networking, the "Third Place," and the Evolution of Communication
Visuals & Audio
As staffing continues to be reduced in newsrooms, the need for editors to understand the range of communication methods beyond words. The ability to produce complementary images or audio to accompany editorials or opinion pieces adds value and depth to the online report.
Resources:- Turning the page on political cartoons
- Animated infographics and online storytelling: Words from the wise
- The Best of the SND.ies
- Persuasive Art - Cartoons Matter
- Interactive infographics
- Infographics and pictograms, more research
- information aesthetics – form follows data - data visualization & visual communication
- Many Eyes - For Shared Visualization and Discovery
- Chart Types - Net Charting gallery of examples
- Attractive Online Diagrams, Charts And Maps
- Articles by Topic: Developer's Toolbox
- Picture the Possibilities
- Online Storytelling Forms
- Video journalism: How-to implement it and why newspapers can beat TV
- Best of news media podcasts
- Podcasting Tools
- Video: Podcasting in Plain English
- New Media Is Now Mainstream Media; Podcasting Growth Is “Massive”
- It's not the device, it's the information
Scenarios
The ability to quickly produce likely outcomes for a variety of scenarios gives the editorial writer the opportunity to logically discuss options and/or lead discussion about matters of public interest.
Resources:- How to Build Scenarios
- Vision 2010 - The Scenario Building Process
- Scenarios - Foresight and Change
- Scenarios and Visioning Work
Ahead
As topics of discussion present themselves in the Best Practices: Editorial and Commentary Online blog (coming soon) and as new ideas surface in the popular and trade press, links to information about these concepts will be presented here.
Resources:
Michael Williams is an associate professor of interactive media and the chair of the News-Information track of the 
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