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.”