A question regarding target audiences

I think all the ideas presented so far are really fantastic and forward thinking. The presentations also apply a lot of what was discussed in previous workshops during the seminar.

My question is how can a website move ahead with these features without first asking members of the target audience if they would even be interested in them?

Bilingual Television

It doesn’t feature news programming, but LATV is a national bilingual cable channel worth looking at. 

Group 2 presentations

Everyone in the group really thought about untapped audiences in their respective areas and did a good job coming up with great ideas on getting those people interested and involved with their websites. 

More on Spanish speakers…

I like how Mark Bickel targeted a specific audience within the overall Spanish speaking audience in his presentation instead of lumping the entire group together as a monolithic, homogenous demographic. 

Reaching out to Spanish speaking audience

There’s a lot of talk about catering to Spanish speaking audiences. With many Spanish language television stations, websites and newspapers, is this effort too little too late?

Regulating UGC

Should news organizations edit user-generated content?

Some people fear what users might say in their online posts.

Gahran says most news organizations are either ignoring the content or using a heavy handed approach to regulating content.

She suggests editors should step in when a contentious issue arises and try to set forth a constructive dialogue.

If users recognize that the news organization is trying to be constructive in their approach to an issue, they too will make an effort to be constructive.

Reader submitted content

Gahran suggests news organizations should place reader submitted content on the front page of their websites.

To those in the profession who turn their nose up to such an idea, Gahran suggests that news organizations should go ahead and put the reader submitted content on their home pages and then analyze the website statistics to measure the online reader response to the content.

Hey, why not?

What do the rugby and knitting communities have in common?

They would both be well served by an RSS feed on your news org’s website. 

Fox News is progressive?

Gahrans cites Fox News as a news organization that’s light years ahead in experimenting with the web. Fox News’ website features a mass of made-for-mobile phone exclusives that feed text, photos and video to subscribers at all times. 

An Ah-Ha! moment during Amy Gahran’s talk

Gahran made an interesting point during her talk - the prison community in this country is in the millions. Why are no news outlets dedicated to serving this community? 

Followup on Faultlines: The Register’s credibility checklist

A group of editors and reporters, working through the newsroom’s Diversity Committee, wanted to develop a strategy for covering immigration and other sensitive stories that would help them overcome any perception of bias. The result was a series of questions that became the Credibility Checklist.

CREDIBILITY CHECKLIST
Is the story fair?
* Have I thought through my biases, and discussed them?
* Do the quotes, statistics and anecdotes present a fair picture?
* Does the full story—including photos, graphics and design --
reflect a balanced report?
* Does the story end in a way that allows readers to draw their
own conclusions?
Is the story forthright?
* Am I clear with readers about how much reporting
went into my story?
* Have I included what I don’t know about the story,
when relevant?
* Have I presented the true strengths of opposing points?
Is the story accessible?
* Have I made clear in the report why readers should care?
* Have I included context, scope and impact?
* Have I used the appropriate storytelling tools in the toolbox?
* Do I understand the audience I’m trying to reach?
Do we have the right sources?
* Does the story reflect the diversity of stakeholders in the issue
(political, ethnic, geographic, etc.)
* Am I approaching my beat/job in a way that will reflect the
diversity of the area I cover?
Do we avoid loaded language?
* Is the tone appropriate?
* Is the language free of bias?
* Have we avoided labels?

Social networking sites affiliated with The Bakersfield Californian

The Bakersfield Californian and Mercado Nuevo use social networking and user-generated content Web sites to serve our key audiences. Our target audiences are: Assimilated hispanics, Time-starved readers, Newcomers, Families with children

All of our sites are powered by Bakomatic, developed in-house. For more information about Bakomatic, please visit www.participata.com.

The Bakersfield Californian
www.bakersfield.com > People tab (blogs; profiles)
www.bakersfield.com/yourwords > User generated content (articles, photos)

Mercado Nuevo
Mas magazine (Latino audience)
www.masbakersfield.com
Bakotopia (teens and young adults, local pop culture, music)
www.bakotopia.com
Northwest Voice (northwest area of Bakersfield)
www.northwestvoice.com
Southwest Voice
www.swvoice.com
New To Bakersfield (newcomers site, Kern Life)
www.newtobakersfield.com

Are blogs the new forum for civil rights?

Atlanta Journal-Constitution article about blogs and justice. 

Jena 6 and the blogosphere

Here’s another interesting story from Howard Witt about the blog involvement in the Jena 6 issues. For all of his coverage, go to http://www.chicagotribune.com/jena

Jena 6 in national media

Witt’s coverage of Jena 6

We are discussing the Jena 6 coverage from earlier this year. The story gained steam in the African American blogosphere. I first heard about the Jena 6 case not from the blogs, but from a Chicago Tribune story about the blogs by Howard Witt. This is the article that I read about a day or two before the national media really picked up coverage on the Jena story.