May 19, 2009
If the White House, the Vatican, Major League Baseball and, yes, even the FBI, are going tech, should your organization be far behind?
Mark Luckie at 10,000words puts the spotlight on four traditional organizations that are spiffing up their Web presence with photo galleries, podcasts, YouTube offerings, iPhone apps, Twiiter feeds and more. Compare your efforts to Luckie’s four examples.
By Michele McLellan, 05/19/09 at 10:48 am
Posted in Mobile delivery | Social Networks | Technology
Comments (0) • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend
May 15, 2009
JD Lascia explores how news organizations are using social media to engage people in sharing and conversation
JD Lasica’s Webinar, “Engaging Users with News” was rich with examples of news organizations doing just that. I recommend you take a look at the entire NewsU replay ($24.95). A pdf of his slides is available free of charge.
The Webinar on Tuesday, sponsored by Knight Digital Media Center and News University, underscored several points that bear repeating:
- Free Web tools and services are available in abundance. Whether it’s Seismic for video, Flickr for photo aggregation, or Ning for an instant social network, cost is no longer a barrier to adopting social tools.
- People do want to share. JD’s examples of a map mashup featuring photos of the Minneapolis bridge collapse and NewWest’s photo sharing group on Flickr underscored that point. Also, NPR’s Hurricane Information Center that relied on volunteers during Hurricane Gustav (and used Ning to create the network).
- Local experts are more than sources. Linking experts and users directly is a valuable service a news platform can provide. One example: Linking to the blog of a wildfire expert. -
- Social media is all about sharing and conversation. A news organization can be a community platform for that.
- Social media is a job for everyone in the newsroom, from the top editor on down. I am convinced that the only way to fully appreciate the power of social media is by using it. Even if you don’t like a specific tool or service, figure out how others are using it and way. Use that information to inform your online media strategy.
As Lasica said: “We’re not talking about a social media beat. It’s really got to be ingrained into the newsroom culture that everyone now is part of this greater social media ecosystem and you’ve to go find ways to get hooks into these networks.”
By Michele McLellan, 05/15/09 at 1:52 am
Posted in 09 Class: Using Social Media to Build Audience | Aggregation | Audience development | Social Networks | Technology | Tools for journalists
Comments (0) • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend
March 17, 2009
Twitter in the court: A juror creates an uproar with a tweet on jury deliberations in a high-profile corruption trial and Twitter rescues The Philadelphia Inquirer’s live blog report on the controversy
The Philadelphia Inquirer provided live blog coverage of the corruption trial of a Philadelphia-based state legislator since October. Things got really interesting and Twitter was involved as the trial came to a close earlier this week. I asked Chris Krewson, executive editor/online news, to describe what happened in this guest post.
UPDATE: Adds correction about Twitter use in reporting from courtroom. Internet connection did not fail but the reporter on the move found Twitter handy way to file breaking news updates.
By Chris Krewson
A federal jury was in recess for the weekend after nearing the end of its deliberations in the corruption trial of former Democratic State Sen. Vince Fumo - a legend in Philadelphia politics - when Inquirer City Editor Julie Busby called me Sunday night.
”One of the jurors has been posting about the deliberations on his Facebook and Twitter (pages),” Busby said. “We’re posting our story.”
This began a series of social-media-inspired events that kept our users riveted to their computers and televisions through Monday morning, after four months of The Inquirer’s
gavel-to-gavel live coverage of the trial and exclusive reporting when the jury quickly delivered its decision on 137 counts.
The back story
Former state senator Vince Fumo has been on trial since October. Editor Bill Marimow had long wanted the newsroom to do a live blog of a trial, so The Inquirer reported live from inside the courtroom every day, using the CoverItLive platform for the immediacy it allows.
We also collected the audio through the PACER federal court document tracker service, and posted after the court recessed each day. All that is available on the page that collected our coverage.
Reporter Bob Moran, who was behind the keyboard in the courtroom most of that time, has this to say about the experience:
“Cameras are not allowed in federal courtrooms, so this was the closest thing to “live” coverage that anyone could offer. I don’t know what numbers the liveblog generated (ed note: When big names were on the stand, the live blog often topped the list of most-trafficked blogs on the site), but it did have a core audience from local and state politics and from the legal community in Philadelphia. Also, many people close to Fumo, including prominent politicians, were on his list of potential witnesses. As a result, they were barred from attending court, but had access to the proceedings through the live blog. We needed to get permission beforehand from U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Buckwalter to transmit from the courtroom. The AP reporter would file stories and updates from the courtroom, so what I was doing was not unprecedented - just different. And more immediate.”
So we settled into a routine of covering the trial in a very 21st-century way. And we discussed how to present the verdict to our users, settling on a graphic presentation of the charges over a photo of the ex-senator.
Our plans were nearly stalled by a text message, by a juror, on March 5, to his Twitter account.
The social media aspect
Our Page 1 story in The Inquirer on Monday describes what happened:
“Defense lawyers for former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo moved late yesterday for an immediate halt in jury deliberations and the removal of one juror, contending that the juror posted oblique remarks on Facebook.com and Twitter.com - including one declaring, “Stay tuned for a big announcement on Monday everyone!”
“The petition, filed on the eve of the scheduled sixth day of deliberations in Fumo’s federal corruption trial, stated that there was “substantial evidence” that the juror, who was not identified, had violated admonitions not to disclose the status of deliberations.”
In the newsroom, we prepared for a delay. One theory held that the juror would be dismissed and an alternate juror appointed, which would mean the two weeks of deliberations so far would be tossed out and begun anew.
An alternate juror was summoned to the judge’s chambers. As Moran tried to update developments, he had to move around so much that he could not live blog from his computer. (Note: Earlier post incorrectly reported that the internet connection failed.)
Twitter connection
Bob broke news on Twitter from his iPhone: First, that the alternate had been called to the hearing. Then, that the judge was allowing the original juror to remain.
Bob clarifies the chaotic situation inside the courtroom Monday:
“I went to the courthouse expecting to cover a hearing on the Facebook juror. No one outside the jury expected a verdict. The courtroom was closed and there were only a few people present roaming the halls. Then there were developments on several floors of the court building. At that point, I was calling in updates to the City Desk and posting basically the same stuff on Twitter ... I could not liveblog at that point because I had to keep moving. Once it was announced that a verdict was reached, I went into the courtroom, sat down and started to liveblog using CoveritLive. ... (so) it wasn’t Twitter to the rescue because a connection failed. It was Twitter being handy while I was being mobile, which was also the case when I had to stand around outside afterward.”
Finally, that the jury was very near a verdict. As in, they were ready to announce it that morning.
Bob logged back into Cover It Live as the jury assembled, and then began his live blog again.
The verdict
We’d tested out the very elaborate Flash graphic (at the top of this page), which would update as the verdict came in. We’d assumed that would take up to two hours for the foreman to work his or her way through all 137 counts, and timed the Flash accordingly. (Post initially reported incorrect number of counts.)
Instead, less than 30 minutes later, the jury convicted Fumo on all counts.
Our live blog provided us with an edge in posting this type of news that other local media could not match. While nearly every TV station broadcast news of the verdict shortly after we did, Moran’s rolling updates were far superior to every other report available.
Indeed, the Fox owned-and-operated station showed a reporter outside the newsroom reading our live blog on camera, with the anchor occasionally noting that the reporting was coming from a philly.com live blog.
(Local independent journalist Amy Z. Quinn chided them on Twitter and on her blog, Citizen Mom.)
The results
Our users were hooked. Twitter users re-posted news of the verdict and our coverage; viewership of the story and blog announcing the verdict were among the top 5 items viewed on philly.com through the day.
More importantly, The Inquirer’s newsroom was involved in breaking a story using Twitter, which will pay exponential dividends in our coverage over the next few months.
By Michele McLellan, 03/17/09 at 9:52 am
Posted in Blogging | Social Networks | Technology
Comments (0) • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend
February 03, 2009
News organizations and entrepreneurs take note: EveryBlock and News Mixer - products of Knight’s News Challenge - make their code public.
Journalists or citizens who want to offer neighborhood-level news and information and to improve online comments have powerful resources coming their way thanks to the Knight News Challenge.
Later this year, Everyblock will publish the open source code for the application that already powers its “micro news” engines in 11 U.S. cities.
EveryBlock scrapes the Web for content of interest and makes it available by neighborhood down to the block level. Simply input an address and it will show you links to news, links to public data such as building permits, rezoning proposals, liquor licenses, restaurant inspections and, of course, crime reports.
The project, with $1.1 million from Knight, has been a powerhouse so far. As Wilson Miner noted at the one-year anniversary earlier this month:
“There are lots of ways to measure how far we’ve come since that first day. We launched in three cities, and today we cover eleven cities across the U.S. We started with 37 types of data, and today we have more than 130 unique data types, with 602 different sources of news and blogs alone.”
That EveryBlock has a track record in so many cities may make it particularly appealing to established news sites and start ups. Now, EveryBlock leader Adrian Holovaty notes it is time to go public with the code as part of terms of the Knight grant. “Thanks to our out-of-the-ordinary funding—a generous grant from Knight Foundation—our team has been given free rein to invent a new form of news, and, more importantly, iterate on the concept. ... But now we’ve reached an interesting point in our project’s growth: our grant ends on June 30, and, under the terms of our grant, we’re open-sourcing the EveryBlock publishing system so that anybody will be able to take the code to create similar sites.”
This puts Holovaty and his crew at an interesting crossroads: “EveryBlock’s philosophies and tools will have the opportunity to spread around the world much faster than we could have done on our own, but it puts the six of us EveryBlockers in an odd spot. How do we sustain our project if our code is free to the world?”
Holovaty and crew are looking for ideas and partners to continue their project without depending on grants. Ideas include “building a local advertising engine and/or selling hosted versions of the open-source software, but we’re sure there are other ways for EveryBlock to be a successful business. “
Interested? Here is Holovaty’s contact information. And watch this space and the EveryBlock blog for more on the code release, due by the end of June.
Also on hand is News Mixer, developed by a cadre of Medill journalism students - some of them programmers learning journalism under a Knight grant. News Mixer is another open source project that opens new possibilities for news and social media. NewsMixer attempts to make commenting on news articles more pertinent and focused, avoiding the problem of long, diffuse threads that mix comments that relate to a story or post with comments that have little or nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Medill professor Rich Gordon reports that two organizations already are using the News Mixer code:
“There are now at least two separate organizations actively working with News Mixer’s open-source code.
“One is the (Knight News Challenge-funded) Populous Project, which announced recently that it will incorporate News Mixer’s functionality into the Populous open-source publishing platform for collegiate newspapers.
“And just this past week, e-Me Ventures (a Chicago-based technology firm affiliated with Gazette Communications, which sponsored the class that developed News Mixer) announced it had deployed a portion of the News Mixer code as an add-in to a test site, powered by WordPress.
” ‘The News Mixer idea was huge. I was really blown away by the work that [the students] did,’ said Abe Abreu, CEO of e-Me. ‘We wanted to be the first to do something with it.’ “
On the Idea Lab blog, Gordon describes options for organizations that want to deploy News Mixer.
So get going. Do either or both of these products seem useful for your Web audience? How will you use them on your site? Please share ideas in the comments.
(Disclosure: I do some consulting for Knight but not with the News Challenge.)
By Michele McLellan, 02/03/09 at 1:59 am
Posted in Technology | Tools for journalists
Comments (2) • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend
Exploring innovation, transformation and leadership in a new ecosystem of news, by journalist and change advocate 
RSS Feed
