How to Reach a Non-Typical Audience

As a 27-year old, I believe I am the demographic that the two dozen editors here at this conference (mostly of the above 45 crowd) are trying to reach. Although, I myself feel very separated from even the undergraduates at USC. Nowadays, even a 5-year age difference can create a gap of technology knowledge the size of Lake Michigan. So how can the editors and publishers of the world keep up? Well, the first step is by attending conferences such as this one. The second step is to hire young talent, take a chance on someone with a little less resume padding and a little more innovation and ideas.

Chaka M’kali is an example of someone who will be shaping the media in the future. His focus is on community outreach programs and empowering youth. This may seem separate from a daily paper, but this isn’t true for much longer. The fact is, the youth he is empowering are the journalists and bosses of the future and the content users of today. Editors would be wise to listen to what they have to say.

Ocean MacAdams, said he considers MTV News a “gateway drug” for viewers. They go to his news site to get the rundown of news, and then they move on to other sites to get more information for the news stories they care about. MTV News started out primarily covering music but has now evolved as the channel grew. Now it is really about pop culture, politics, race, gender, sexuality and more. “We don’t have to cover hard news,” MacAdams said. “We do it because our audience cares about it.” I have to believe this is surprising to the editors here at the conference, although I hope not. It is frustrating to constantly hear that the youth of today are disinterested in culture, politics and the world around them. This kind of thinking needs to stop, and once it does I wouldn’t be surprised if the newspapers of this country were the stronger for it.

Rahaf Harfoush (http://www.rahafharfoush.com/blog/) considers iGoogle and Google Reader as ways to organize the millions of stories, information, video and blogs people are bombarded with every day. I consider it an example of the many different ways users are now self-editing their content and making it appeal to their own personal self-interests. As an individual, this seems liberating, but I can see how the idea of readers picking and choosing from hundreds of papers can make newspaper companies tremble in their boots. Harfoush recommends digg.com (http://digg.com) to help aggregate news into a more digestible format.

Harfoush was asked by one of the editors if she felt like she was a good representation of youth today. She didn’t think Harfoush was normal, she thought she was a geek. This is ludicrous. Harfoush pointed out that the majority of youth are going online, and sites like Google and digg.com are how they view and search out news. MacAdams added that 60 percent of the people that come to MTV News, get there through other news and online sites. Personally, I think assuming 20-year-olds do nothing but watch local television and play X-box is exactly the type of mentality that are destroying newspapers today.

MacAdams also pointed out that while large newspapers are struggling, college papers and local papers are thriving. This is very true, and really shows the shift from a large, omnipotent voice of a paper to a eclectic, evolving conversation present in online media sites and blogs.

What about the digital divide? As the world gets smaller through new technology, what happens to those who cannot afford to have a computer and online access? The gap seems wide, perilous and all-consuming. Michael Williams asked the editors to ask what their companies could do to help this problem (i.e. product giveaways, technology grants). What remains to be seen, however, is how low-income populations will play catch up in a world advancing at light speed. It is hard for me, and I was fortunate to grow up without economic strains.

Harfoush mentioned the generational gap present in the workforce today. When you have 20-year olds on Blackberries during meetings and looking at Facebook during the day, does this mean they are less productive during the day? I think you have to look at how much more work output people of my generation are expected to produce, and for the most part we always live up to that task. I see in my parents the work ethic that putting in a 60-hour work week means you are successful and a good worker. For people of my generation, the number of hours you work a week is not nearly as important as what you produce during that time. Why sit in a cubicle and stare at the wall, waiting for someone to call you back when you can find 1,000 different ways to get a hold of someone else or see what other news organizations are doing. 

But what about when comments on a website are constantly aggressive? How does this come across to other readers who come to the site?  MacAdams said there are some restrictions that need to be upheld, there needs to be a clear code of conduct as to where the line is and why it shouldn’t be crossed. I worked for a website this summer, and we had a very large reader forum that we were very proud of. However, when someone said something we considered to be slanderous, we removed it. It didn’t happen often, and we always emailed the person and explained to them why their comment was being removed. I think this extra step is important, because some people don’t realize how harsh what they are writing is, and others need to be reminded that a news website is STILL A NEWS WEBSITE, and needs to be professional.

Future tools

Future Tools:
Why did you come to this event?

Video clip: Epic 2015 by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson
Epic 2015 is presented from the viewpoint of a fictional “Museum of Media History.” The year is 2015. Journalism is no longer the same. Epic 2015 explores the effects of convergence. Popular news conglomerates such as Google News and Newsbot, as well as other Web 2.0 technologies such as blogging, social networking, podcasting, GPS and web map services such as Google Maps, have changed the definition of journalism. The video examines the potential effect these technologies may have on not only journalism, but also society.

Some statistics:
-70% of Americans think journalism is important to the quality of life, but 64% are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their community
-55% of younger adults get their news from the web
-Only 7% of the 18-29 demographic said they get most of news from newspapers

Amy Gahran, Editor, Poynter Institute’s group weblog

How to get into the online media mindset:
1. Need to realize the web is a conversational form of media. Gahran stresses that it is about having a conversation. “We need to stop thinking of community as just an audience,” she said. “The community wants to engage with its news organization.” She advises to stop thinking of journalism as a finished project; instead, think of it more as a flow.

Gahran’s tips for embracing online media:

1. You get what you give, meaning journalism is about more than just time and effort, it is about attitude. It requires participation and the willingness to step outside of one’s comfort zone.

2. Remember it is always easier to join a conversation than start one. So get out in the community and listen to what people are talking about.

3. Ask people in community what they want. Talk to them face to face and ask them where they hang out online and what sites they prefer to visit. Get involved: through email, forums, talk radio, text messaging… Don’t get discouraged by the technology. Listen to your community. Let them lead you.

4. Don’t just look, but engage in conversations, speak up. It is not just about gathering information for a specific topic. Gahran says we must LISTEN to the community.

5. Hang around, and once you find these conversations, don’t just pop in and out when you need something. Commit to the relationship.

6. Remember that conversation is key. Act like you care about what people have to say. Read the comments on your site.
The community wants to engage and participate.

TOOLS:

1. Feeds (RSS), a web feed, is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content.

2. Twitter
-Seems like a great way to connect with social media; it lets you post 140-character posts.
“Think of Twitter as a way to have a little bit of mindshare,” said Gahran. It is a way to follow people and see what they are saying.

As with feeds, Twitter is not so much about reading everything someone says. It is more about just finding out what is going on with people. It is a way to get inside people’s heads

Gahran encourages journalists to think of using online tools as part of the reporting process. It is no longer just about doing formal research (i.e. interviews).

Leslie Rule, Center for Locative Media, KQED

Locative Media and all things geo

Gotta Go GEO… how do you tag content to place?

Move forward, off-line and back into the community

Locative Media:

Is bound to a place
Applied to real places
It has the potential to trigger real social interactions.
The goal is to engage; if you have a cell, you have a GPS locator in your cell phone

Locative Media is about taking geological and local interest, and elevating it beyond longitude and latitude. On any corner, everywhere, there is a history, and journalists can tap into that by tagging content to that place.

Power of Locative Media, according to Rule, is that you can tag content to a place and then actually send someone there to experience it.

Is there something about place that changes the nature of a story?

“It is about engagement,” said Rule. “People are engaged with their place and have a lot to say about it.”

Quick Link for More Information on Geo-Tagging

http://www.geobloggers.com/archives/

Leslie Rule on New Media Technology

Locative Media: media bound to a location, applied to real places, and with the potential to trigger real social interactions and the goal to engage.
“On any corner, in any city in any place, there is a whole history that has occurred there,” Rule said. “Tagging content to this place can create an online experience.”

Tagging Content: Words, images and video tagged to a specific place of news value, also called “Geo-tagging”. The best place to do this is with Google Earth (http://earth.google.com).  The content can be words, links, pictures and video so a whole multimedia experience is created.

“What locative media does is it creates a new media landscape,” Rule said. “All of us are very closely tied to our place, and this creates a very active community.”

Rule said environmental journalism lends itself well to locative media, by showing readers where the subject of a story is taking place. I am an environmental reporter, so the thought of being able to really take my readers to a specific location and show them what is happening there, my stories would have much more of an effect.

Rule gave an example of a cell phone in the future that will vibrate when you pass a Starbucks and send you a text message offering you a coupon for 15% off a latte. I do not like the idea of this from a consumer standpoint, because I see it as over stimulation and over selling. But at the same time, as a reporter, being able to create media at a given location and simultaneously send it out as a geo-tag is very interesting. There has to be some balance there, although I don’t see how.

I can also see this as a huge boon for the travel industry, and travel writers. Being able to create a multi-media project at different locations that could then be cataloged for reference by future travelers to see a place and get a different view than they would in a travel magazine or even on a travel website.

But what is the journalistic content on this? This is what George Rede of the Oregonion asked, and it needed to be said. The fact is, the definition of journalism is changing and shifting from a publication focus to a community focus. The debate between editorial content and user content has only just begun.

Motorcycle crash

After last night’s dinner conversation, I was still thinking about Michael’s motorcycle crash analogy. I realize his point wasn’t about the headline, but about the content of the video and reader’s desire to see the crash.

The question I ask is if the DMS had video of the crash, would you have posted it?

If photo had a picture of the crash, would it have run in the paper? Newspaper editors have always debated using sensational photos. Shouldn’t we be having those same conversations about videos?

The same question can be asked of humor videos. As David mentioned, people like YouTube because many of the videos are funny. Newspapers do the same thing with photos as well. We use funny pictures or pictures of pandas not because we care about the latest panda born in some zoo, but because readers like that kind of stuff.

We have to stop thinking that we’re better than the people who like YouTube and start thinking about ways to present the news in ways that appeal to them.

Amy Gahran On Future Tools of the Trade

Amy Gahran said online news media is now a conversation between users and journalists, not a publication. She offered some tips to make this concept easier:
1. You get what you give-This means if you are trying out some new things and you don’t see them working, you need to have a better attitude toward them and be willing to step out of your comfort zone.

2. It’s always easier to join a conversation rather than start one, both online and in real life.

3. Ask your online community where they go online and what they prefer- You can find out about email lists, forums and other sources of information that your readers care about.

4. Don’t just observe, engage in the process and the conversations-Listen to what your community is talking about and get involved. A lot of people in the news business think this will undermine their credibility, and this is not true at all.

5. Hang around the conversations for a while-Don’t just pop in and out.

6. Act like you care about what your readers are telling you-this is a wealth of information for you to use, don’t take it for granted. Encourage good culture in an online community by being present in the comment process.

Gahran offered several tools to help make the above suggestions possible. The first one of these are RSS feeds. Feeds are grabbed by feed readers and tell you what sights are producing what and when. You can find a group of publications that you like, and find out what they are posting and publishing. You can then put together different types of folders for different areas of interest, and then keep them organized for easy access. But remember, old news is often redundant, so keep your folders clean of old feeds or feeds you have already viewed. Gahran said to use feeds in the way that makes the most sense to you. Not all feed readers work the same, and there are many of them out there, so search around. Make sure you check the feature list and the reader allows you to import and export OPML files and create separate folders for different types of content. Gahran recommends Google Reader as a base RSS feed as well as Flock.

Gahran recommended all the journalists in the room comment on blogs, and one way to make this easy is to use a blog tracker. This way, you can keep track of a conversation within a blog that you have commented on without keeping the blog open the whole time. Instead, it will go into your RSS feed.  Gahran said Co.mments is a good site to use as a blog tracker.

Gahran also discussed social media, Gahran referred to it as her “personal posse.” Gahran said it allows her to converse with her readers and allowing herself to share with them. Gahran recommends Twitter as the best site to use for social media. “Twitter allows you to publish tiny 140-word blurbs,” Gahran said. “It is really a mind share.” You can choose people you want to “follow,” (see their feeds and see what they are doing) and you can be “followed” (have people reading your bursts and giving you comments.) Gahran said it allows her to reach out for help on presentations, stories and anything else she has on her mind about her profession. “You want to use this as part of your process as a journalist,” Gahran said. “You are getting out to the community at large and improving your online presence.”

Being the catalyst for an engaged society

Knight Digital Media Center
Sunday, March 2, 2008

Being the catalyst for an engaged society
Current practice - What’s being done at the participants’ papers: Results of discussion exploring the role of editorial/commentary in our democracy.

WHAT WORKS?
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Video of political interviews

Kansas City Star
Unfettered letters: unedited comments on published letters.
-Reaction: Is this fair?

Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader
Cartoons without captions
-Let readers add captions online
-Make this a contest
-Idea of commentary by “standup” cartoonist

Wausau Daily Herald
Write the Sunday editorial on Tuesday. Then send it to a reader react board… published together in print and online on Sunday
-Issue of: lost of timeliness with doing this

The Portland Oregonian
Community Writers Project
-Asked readers to nominate themselves if they thought they wrote well
-Selected 12 out of 250…
-Asked to send resume, statement of interest, and three writing samples
-Want people to bring ideas from their community

Video profile interview

The Sacramento Bee
Blogs on specific topics (such as: California politics, global warming, water policy)
-Automated “letters” system: taking notes to editor

The Arizona Republic
Weekly Q&A: way to promote community conversation

The Des Moines Register
Presidential Candidate database: ran eight days of analysis on different points of information about Presidential Candidate race

**Question: “How do we define success?”

The Dallas Morning News
Edit bloggers; offer more specialized blogs
-Brings more traffic

The Washington Post
Widget use w/ columnists

Statesman Journal
Have found ideas from others and welcomes other Web sites to do the same.
-Edit blog transparency with comments from reader.

The Fort Meyers News-Press
Instant editorials by editorial writers; daily online editorials that are signed opposed to unsigned. This is more personalized.

-Blog that includes critics

-Use of video from editorial board guests.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK?

The Washington Post
Transparency is an issue. It is lacking on editorial board. Unless you are a columnist, no one knows who is on editorial board. There is no interactivity between editorial board and community. Get letters and calls all the time asking who is on this board, and it is a closed, hidden process. Problem is “arrogance”. Culture of place to be “mightier than thou.” Doesn’t seem to be much interest in change
-There is outrage over the idea of video recording some daily meetings and some meetings with guests.

The Dallas Morning News
Issue with letters and presentation. Terrible presentation of letters

Unmonitored blogs

Missing opportunity to interact with people all over the world

Opening Remarks

Michael Williams began the day with a video clip entitled “Epic 2015”, by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson. The video plays like a video version of 1985, only instead of the government taking over the lives of the people, information technology does. Thompson and Sloan describe a world where Google and Microsoft battle against one another for dominance in the media market. In this media market, there are no more powerful newspaper or broadcast companies. Thompson and Sloan predict a showdown between The New York Times and Google for media dominance, and in the end “all the news that’s fit to print” goes dark. In this new world, the role of news and information has reversed. Instead of media sending out information and helping to shape the opinions of the public, the public is now in charge. Blog posts and user-driven content become the main source of news gathering and dissemination.

“Today is the day we will stop talking about what you are going to do with your newspapers,” Williams said.  “You have to focus on how you are going to take what you learn here today and tomorrow and make your online content better.”

Williams called on the editors around the room to work towards stronger online content, and move away from the worry over printed editions of their newspapers. As a lover of the printed word, everything from the smell of the crumpled papers and the smear of black ink it leaves behind on my fingers, this is a hard truth to face, but a necessary one all the same.

Conversational Media: Tools and Skills

Here’s an array of tools and skills that can help you make the most of conversational media. In my Mar. 3 presentation in the Best Practices: Editorial/Commentary in Cyberspace seminar I’ll be discussing these in more detail and answering participants’ questions

1. RSS feeds and feed readers

VALUE: Fundamental tool and skill for efficiently following multiple online venues or conversations. Saves time, and often is more timely.

Search feeds provide serendipity and diversity of sources/conversations. (I’ll demonstrate)

TIPS:

• Always look for feed options for anything relevant to your work (or life!). Many forums, services, etc. offer feeds.
• Experiment with different feed readers. Which is easiest to use?
• Use folders that make sense in your work process (not nec. by topic). Feel free to reorganize feeds and folders as work patterns shift.
• You don’t need to read everything. More important to read the latest. “Mark all as read” is fine, and reduces stress.
• Export your feed list as an OPML file periodically for safekeeping.

Resources:

Wikipedia: Aggregator (background info)
• Open directory project: Feed readers (list of tools)

Never used a feed reader before? Try Google Reader.

2. Conversation Tracking Tools

It helps to be able to follow ongoing conversations, especially ones you’ve contributed to.

Blog comments: Co.mments and CoComment: Free web-based services that will keep an eye on comments being made to blog posts that you specify. Bookmarklets make it easy to start tracking a conversation. Both offer feeds from your account. Not compatible with every blog platform, but they work most of the time.

Feed options: Many forums offer feeds for each thread. Look for that option and use it. Feeds are always easier to manage than e-mail alerts.

On your column: Offer a “notify me of new comments by e-mail/feed” option in the comments section for each post.

3. Social Media: Your Personal Posse

I’ll demonstrate Twitter. But Facebook and LinkedIn also can be useful.

I’m “live tweeting” this seminar today at amylive. (More about this.)

4. Local aggregators

Here’s how my hometown, Boulder CO, looks via Topix, OutsideIn, and Craigslist.

Follow this seminar today on Twitter

As I just mentioned on Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits, today I’ll be offering live coverage of this seminar via the popular social media tool Twitter. You can follow the action via my Twitter account, amylive.

How to follow me: If you have a Twitter account, just “follow” me at amylive. If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can sign up for free in just a few seconds. Or you can just subscribe to my Twitter feed and follow the action in your feed reader.

...Yes, I’ll be covering Twitter, feeds, and feed readers in this morning’s session on “Future Tools.”

Also, I’m working with KDMC’s web team to archive my “tweets” from today in a special post to this blog—like we did in December for KDMC’s Total Community Coverage seminar.

Enjoy! And if you want to follow me on Twitter on a regular basis, my regular ID is agahran. (I only use amylive when covering events, because I don’t want to deluge all my “followers” with a stream of very-frequent posts.)

Lessons from Dallas good and bad

Here were my links to what works:

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/We’ve made a lot of improvements since we launched.

And what doesn’t:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/letters/vitindex.htmlThe letters presentation is HORRIBLE. Who would click on this?

What’s in a role…

What’s a mainstream editorial/opinion/commentary editor/writer’s role in a digital world? This is a multiple choice question:
A. Thought/community leader.
B. Moderator//facilitator of community conversation.
C. Aggregator of others’ opinions, facts, ideas.
D. Model for well-articulated, critical thinking on issues of community importance.
E. All of above.
F. None of above.

Getting into the Conversational Media Mindset

The best editorial/commentary writers always know what their communities care about today. That means listening. And what are you listening to? By and large, to conversation. People do talk, and that’s not trivial.

Increasingly, communities are talking amongst themselves via conversational media—especially, but not exclusively, online. Any media tools or channels that enable ongoing discourse between more than two people is potentially a form of conversational media. Examples include: e-mail lists, forums, blogs, comments to news stories, talk radio, chat rooms, Facebook and MySpace, Twitter, podcasting, and more.

The more you know about how conversational media works, and how to follow and join conversations there effectively, the easier it will be to craft compelling editorials and commentary.

Here are a few things to keep in mind in order to make the most of conversational media...

TIPS FOR DOING CONVERSATIONAL MEDIA RIGHT:

1. You get what you give. This is the general philosophy and social dynamic that explains all the other tips below. It also means if you’re not finding conversational media rewarding, you might not be giving enough. “Giving” here doesn’t mean time or effort—it means attitude, quality of participation, and willingness to step outside your comfort zone.

    

2. It’s always easier to join a conversation than to start one. Don’t expect conversations to come to you—you must find them and go there. (Remember this if you’re being asked to start an online community from scratch.) Ask around: Where do your community members hang out online now? Do they listen to talk radio? Use any social media tools? Text on their cell phones? When you find conversations in your communities, take time to listen first, to learn the conventions and culture.

    

3. Let your community guide your choice of tools and skills. When deciding which conversational media tools or skills to learn first, focus on whatever is most popular in your community. If they love MySpace, you should be there. If they’re into talk radio, call in. If there’s a popular community forum or e-mail list, subscribe. If they live through their cell phones, start offering text alerts and use Twitter. What works for them matters more than what you find comfortable or familiar. You are not your audience.

    

4. Don’t just lurk. Transparency builds your credibility and interest. It’s important to join community conversations openly. (Editorial/commentary writers can probably do this more easily than news reporters. Use that edge.) But don’t just talk about you, your news org, or your pet topics. Learn—and openly discuss—whatever your communities care about. Don’t be afraid to disagree, to voice an opinion, or to be wrong or criticized. Be open to being influenced.

    

5. Hang around. Communities generally dislike dilettantes. Once you find venues for meaningful community conversations, become a “regular.” Don’t just drop in when you want to get something from the community.

    

6. Conversation is more compelling than publication. Start thinking of your editorials and commentaries as an outgrowth or continuation of conversation, not merely as self-contained finished works.

    

7. Act like you care what people have to say. If your news org allows public comments on its site (and it should), be sure to engage in public discussion there —and encourage your news colleagues to join you. Too often, news orgs largely ignore comments unless a flame war breaks out. This sends the message that the news org either doesn’t really care about, or chooses to hold itself above or apart from, its community. The appearance of apathy or snobbishness breaks, rather than builds, community connections.