The Evolving Newsroom

Because some things are worth repeating: Alltop's journalism page is a great entry point to dozens of blogs about journalism and the news business.

More from Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2008. This time a few words of note from journalist Dan Gillmor on how we decide who to trust as we become swamped with information from an increasing number of diverse sources:

“From a journalistic perspective: Blogging and other conversational media are entering a new phase when it comes to community information needs — they're growing up.

"Traditional media are using these tools to do better journalism, and are beginning to engage their audiences in the journalism.

"Entrepreneurial journalists are finding profitable niches. Advertisers are starting to grasp the value of the conversations, and so on.

"The big issues remain, including the crucial one of trust. Here, too, we're seeing progress.

"The best blogs are as trustworthy as any traditional media, if not more. The worst, often offering fact-challenged commentary, are reprehensible and irresponsible.

"But audiences are learning, perhaps too slowly, that modern media require a more activist approach.

"We need to be skeptical of everything, but not equally skeptical of everything. We need to use judgement, to get more information — and to go outside our personal comfort zones.”

Dan Gillmor
Director, Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship
Kauffman Professor of Digital Media Entrepreneurship
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication, Arizona State University
startupmedia.org

ReadWriteWeb posts about Technorati's latest breakdown of the blogosphere and disagrees that the figures show blogging has become mainstream.

Here are the figures from Technorati:

And here's how ReadWriteWeb sees them:

Of those 133 million blogs that Technorati has indexed - guess how many of them have been posted to in the last 7 days? 1.1% of them, or 1.5 million total.

Just for context, 1.6 million people in the US have defaulted on their mortgages last year. In 2005 there were 1.6 million people around the world who could speak Esperanto. 1.6 million people went to the Minnesota State Fair last year.

Is blogging mainstream? Globally, fewer people are posting to their blogs each week than go to the Minnesota State Fair or speak Esperanto.... Trying to blog (as 130 million+ people have in the past 6 years) may be somewhat mainstream, but actually blogging does not seem to be so yet.

ReadWriteWeb goes on to say that:

Reading blogs is becoming increasingly mainstream and the line between a blog and another kind of website is growing increasingly blurred. Writing full length blog posts even as regularly as once a week is hard, though.

Too right. It takes considerable time and effort, which can be hard to sustain.

We expect that microblogging may become more popular than blogging, if it hasn't already! From updating your status message on Facebook or MySpace, to posting 140 word updates on lunch or politics on Twitter to offering truncated public religious testimonials on a site like Gospelr (Twitter for Christians) - there are a whole lot of people already microblogging, if you will.

I agree, as do a number of the notables who commented on the Technorati research. Here's Michael Arrington, founder of Techcrunch:

Microblogging platforms like Twitter and Friendfeed are the fast food equivalent of the blogging world, and continue to gain popularity because they let people update multiple times per day with 140 characters or less on what they are doing, how they're feeling, etc. Not only is microblogging a terrific method of self expression, the value of the raw data that's created is enormously important. The Twitter messages I read during the two presidential conventions gave me a good idea on how people reacted to the various speeches. It's not statistically relevant, but pollsters will be watching that data more and more closely over time.”

And here's New York-based venture capitalist, Fred Wilson (who has invested in the two microblogging sites he mentions):

“Blogging is getting easier and easier and some day, we'll all have blogs of one sort or another. Most won't look like my blog, maybe more like mytumblog or my twitter feed, but even more likely they'll look like something else.”

“Earlier this year I wrote on my blog [http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/06/my-vision-for-s.html], ‘Honestly I am not envisioning anything other than this; every single human being posting their thoughts and experiences in any number of ways to the Internet.’ That's where we are headed and blogging is a big part of that.”

There's some really interesting nuggets in the Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2008 report. Well worth dipping into.

Here's me sharing my Facebook page (among other things) at the eFest education conference in Auckland earlier today. The picture comes courtesy of Thom Cochrane, academic advisor at Unitec, who was in the audience, snapped the pic on his Nokia n95, posted it to his blog and referred to it in his presentation which followed.

Thom and colleagues have armed Unitec design students with n95s and encouraged them to use the phones to blog, vlog, articulate and collaborate as they study. You can see an outline of the programme on a wiki Thom used during his presentation and get a feel for his teaching/learning style at his blog. It's worth a visit.

My presentation constituted a whirlwind tour of the bigger changes we've seen in the news media since 1975, a year when we woke up to Merv Smith on 1ZB, put an ad in the paper on Saturday if we wanted to sell something, and came home at night to Dougal Stevenson's dispassionate delivery of the 6pm TV news.

These are my slides. I didn't manage to attach the notes to them, though, so who knows whether they'll make any sense.

Stephen Harlow, my co-conspirator in introducing a group of Wintec communication students to web2.0 tools and concepts, then took over to talk about how we're encouraging our students to blog, link, use keywords, experiment with audio, video and images, try out tools such as del.icio.us and RSS readers, and get used to talking to each other online.

There are many challenges in starting a course like this. Among them are knowing what to introduce first, having the patience to let new bloggers find their voice, being persistent in encouraging more considered writing, and waiting for the penny to drop about the value of things like RSS feeds, social bookmarks and good use of keywords (hard concepts to understand if you generally only look at five websites and don't go looking for anything in particular).

But we're well on the way, learning as we go, and enjoying watching the likes of Media Witty (aka Rhys's blog) and Sarah Byles' Motorsport blog develop.

Watch this space.

The Beatbloggers - a group of US journalists experimenting with using social networking tools such as Facebook, Google groups, blogs and Twitter in their reporting - have posted an interview with New York Times writer Brian Stelter.

He talks particularly about how writing a blog differs from writing a print story. This is a subject that's come up a lot in conversation recently with journalists and journalists-in-training, so I thought I'd post some of his comments here.

"When I was first starting, it was a challenge to figure out what is a blog post versus what is a print story," he said.

He said his blog is a way to pitch stories for the paper, and to report out stories for the paper. He can write a short post for his blog and gauge the reaction. He can also spend days, weeks or even months reporting little tidbits before he puts it all together into a large story for print.

"It's frequently an archive for when I'm writing a story for the paper, so I can go back and use some of the thoughts I had three months ago for a story," he said about his blog.

Stelter has never known a non-wired world of journalism. He can't imagine not be able to use tools like his blog, Twitter or other social networks to help get instant feedback from readers. He really values the connectedness and feedback he gets from being wired.

"I think the big and most general advantage is it kind of makes it easier to share stories, ideas, links and to be able to ask for advice, contacts and sources," he said about being a wired journalists. "When I go on Twitter and post about what I'm writing about, I'm opening myself up to opinions, more points of view and more sources. That's almost always a benefit."

I enjoyed this rant from music blog The Lefsetz Letter which has a go at newspaper executives who are "online ignorant, even if they can speak the language, they’ve got no insight, because they don’t utilize the damn thing". (Thanks to Charlie Barthold for the link)

He starts by noting how cross newspaper executives are with the likes of TradeMe and CraigsList for stealing their lucrative classified ads (Fairfax bought TradeMe to get them back again, although whether they're properly leveraging the deal is another story).

Then he goes on to talk about reading more news than ever online:

Yes, today’s supposedly ignorant younger generation? Its members are more up on what’s happening in the world than you ever were at that age. Because the news is at their fingertips. Online. Updated, in depth, constantly. Whereas the newspaper is firm, calcified as of yesterday.

Actually, you can read the newspapers today. On the west coast, the "New York Times" and "Wall Street Journal" go live, in their entirety, at 9 PM. The "Los Angeles Times" at midnight. I get all three physical newspapers, but not for breaking news, only secondary stories. Breaking news lives on the Web. Just like twenty four hour cable news killed network news, the Net is killing newspapers.

And newspapers cannot respond. Oh, they’ve got the right, just not the capability. Online custom states the newest story is first, and in descending order are all the old stories. None of the newspaper sites utilize this structure. They all look a bit like the physical newspaper. Give me the breaking news at the top. Give me clickable sections on the left. The newspaper giants are proving to me, just like their record company brethren, that they’re online ignorant, even if they can speak the language, they’ve got no insight, because they don’t utilize the damn thing.

And now papers have bloggers on their sites. I’ve got to ask you… When I can go directly to most bloggers’ pages, do you really think I’m going to dig down deep on a newspaper’s site to find some blog written by some old school fart beholden to the old game?

Boiling that down to a few points... do you agree that:

1. Young people are more informed than previous generations because they have news at their fingertips?
2. Newspaper websites are modelled too much on newspapers and not enough on web usability
3. Newspaper executives don't spend much time online so they don't 'get it'
4. Newspaper blogs are well and good but are effectively buried and difficult to find

My answers would be:

1. Not sure, but I'd like to think so
2. Yes they are. They need to evolve and quickly.
3. Absolutely true. If you only log on for email and Google there's no way you can understand the nature of the threat/opportunity the web is bringing to your doorstep
4. Yeah, they're buried and that could be improved. Also true that some aren't worth bothering with. But some are and it's a step in the right direction - if nothing else the individuals who are blogging will become more web-savvy and understand the threat/opportunity facing the company they work for.

I've been meaning to point to this for a while. US journalist Dave Cohn, aka digidave, is exploring new models for journalism with a site he's building called Spot.us.

The site aims to put news consumers in touch with journalists and publishers - allowing the consumers to request news about topics of interest. As Dave says in an introductory video: "If you have 200 people, they can all hire a journalist to write a story that those 200 people agree is important."

As I understand it, Spot.us will assist not only in putting news consumers together with journalists (presumably freelances) but will also try to find publishers in relevant locales willing to publish the story once it's written.

This is an interesting exercise in empowering consumers to contribute to the news agenda - traditionally the preserve of news editors.

If it gains traction it could prove a useful middle ground between trained/paid journalists and citizen journalists who have an eye for a story but lack the time, resources or expertise to develop it.

It's certainly a step up - in terms of transparency and inclusion - from news hotlines, private emails to reporters and those 'email us your pictures' invites on mainstream sites.

Transparency, one of the key qualities of successful online business ably described by the folks at The Cluetrain Manifesto, has long been lacking in news.

Your average consumer has no idea what's involved in gathering and reporting news. They've never heard of news editors, copyfetching, sub-editors, production editors or page layout. And journalists tend to think readers should trust them implicitly with the business of gathering and telling news stories. They give very little away about how they go about it.

Reporters may quote people and sources in the story, but they give no indication of how many people they spoke to or over what time period, whose comments were dropped owing to lack of space or erudition, how much of a given story came from the wires, where the initial lead came from. They seldom reference the websites they've looked at while researching the story, or books or journals. Yet these are all pieces of information that give context to a story.

The practicalities of listing an entire set of resources for each story are prohibitive: it would take too long and clutter the website/newspaper. So the trust does have to be there. But I believe far more openness about newsgathering processes will become essential as online sensibilities take hold and as news sites become more prolific and less uniform.

A good start would be to make sure there's information on news sites about editorial policies and processes, style guides and how front page stories are chosen - what the acid test is for a good story. Making journalists more accessible is also a good idea (including email addresses with stories, encouraging those who blog to engage in conversation with readers, using social networks to work more collaboratively with sources, for example).

I hope that over time seasoned news veterans and newer non-mainstream journalists will learn from one another and adopt a loose set of standards for news. Such that all stories, whether published on a blog or on a mainstream news website, will include details and links for their sources (people and websites) to enable readers to check the facts for themselves if they want.

Bloggers, of course, have made an able start having adopted the practice of routinely linking to source material and generally including some information about themselves on their sites. There's room for more information though about how they go about gathering material, what policies they have for quoting people, accepting free stuff, checking facts etc.

Astute readers will notice I haven't done this on my own blog. Fair cop. But it is on the to-do list, along with a complete redesign of my various online outlets. Someone give me a nudge if I've made no progress by the end of next month.

This is interesting. The Washington Post is going to run stories from popular technology blogging site TechCrunch (#1 in the world according to BloggerBoard) in its Technology section.

"TechCrunch will provide washingtonpost.com readers concentrated and continuously updated insights into cutting-edge start-ups, products and other online ventures," the Washington Post says in a press release.

"This addition rounds out the Technology section, which already provides in-depth reporting on the latest news and trends affecting every aspect of the technology industry, from medical innovations to the evolutions in global media policy, personal technology to issues of security."

It's only a matter of time before content deals between established niche blogging sites and mainstream news providers become commonplace, surely.

Link via journalism.co.uk (via Twitter).

Here's an interesting case study of a neighbourhood blog gaining some early success - in part because it's printed and delivered to local letterboxes.

It's a NZ site called Flying Pickle (but thanks to UK blogger Seamus McCauley for the link) and it serves three suberbs outside Wellington - Korokoro, Maungaraki and Normandale - with an approximate population of 6,500 people: "peaceful, sleepy, middle class suburbs with a handful of local shops, 3 schools, 3 kindys, reasonable broadband penetration, a good deal of home-based businesses."

"At first, the website was advertised on community noticeboards and in several shop windows. It scored several hundred hits from curious locals. The first print edition resulted in a surge of traffic, posts and comments from the residents."

They say lessons to date include: it pays to automate the ad booking and print-preparation process; keep an open editorial policy; gaining local recognition and trust is key to winning over advertisers.

This is a really interesting idea and one to watch.

This piece from The Poynter Institute in the US looks at the pros and cons of reporters live-blogging from events and story locations.

Under the headline Live Blogging: How It Makes Us Better Journalists, Mallary Jean Tanore talks to a number of journalists who have live-blogged at one time or another, either using their regular blogs or micro-blogging formats like Twitter, which allows you to post just 140 characters at a time.

AP reporter Ben Walker... is one of many journalists who have found that live blogging can actually help us grow as storytellers - by teaching us to look for quirky details and be better listeners, note takers and deadline writers.

"Your powers of observation are doubled and tripled when you live blog," Walker said. "You see things and look for things that you would not not look for in a story. You might look at a situation in a different way, and you might listen for a different type of quote."

Another of those quoted is graphic artist Charles Apple, with The Virginian-Pilot, who has been live blogging at conferences since the 2005 Society for News Design's annual workshop in Houston.

He's been told he makes live blogging look easy."That's definitely not the case. Blogging is a lot of hard work. You're typing narrative, uploading photos, doing some light coding," Apple said. "It's difficult to do all this and a.) remain engaged in whatever session is going on, and b.) without distracting anyone sitting near you."

For Apple, live blogging has taken instant gratification to a whole new level. He's intoxicated, he says, by the immediacy of it all. "I thought I was in love with the idea of drawing a graphic and then seeing it in print five hours later. And for 20 years plus, I was," Apple said.

"But forget all that! I can type up a few talking points about a speaker behind the podium, snap a few photos and upload a nice post about her presentation so folks around the world can read about it -- all before she's even done speaking.

"Once you get that kick, you find yourself hungry to do it again. And again."

UK blogger Martin Belam has been running a series on making the most of comments on blogs. It's quite wide-ranging and I'm finding it useful (especially in reinforcing my intention to move on from Blogger at some stage to a platform with more functionality).

In this post he talks about how to engage with people commenting on blogs:

"If people have taken the time to leave comments on your blog, then join in as
well... If people ask you a question, take the time answer it.

"Increasingly publishing platforms enable bloggers to set up a different look and feel for comments left by the author of a post. I'm a fan of this idea, as I think it helps to highlight when an author is engaged with the audience response to the content they are publishing.

"You've much more chance of getting an answer and continuing a conversation if
you also approach the person directly. If the person has left an email address
alongside their comment, I will also take the time to drop them a short polite
email."

He also looks at moderation, using RSS for comments, using comments to manage complaints and more. Worth a read if, like me, you're a relative newcomer to blogging and want to develop a more conversational style.

I wrote yesterday about Alltop, a new site that makes it easy to read stories and blogs on a particular topic in one place without having to set up RSS feeds and a reader.

I hadn't had a good look around yet yesterday but had begun wondering what it was like as a news aggregator and how well it would work for journalism blogs.

As if by magic, I got an email overnight from Guy Kawasaki, one of Alltop's creators, telling me about the site and pointing me to a journalism page which collates journalism blog posts.

Can't fault the content. It's got most of the journalism blogs I read, a fair few I haven't and includes my own blog which is naturally rather pleasing. In all I counted 85 blogs on the journalism page, each with the five latest headlines listed.

Hover over any headline and you get a preview of the content along with a time and date stamp so you can decide whether it's worth your time to click through. Very nice.

I like looking at headlines on a page like this, too. It's a much easier way to scan multiple blogs for good stuff to read than scrolling vertically through a reader.

Verdict: works for me.

Perhaps we'll hear fears voiced that this 'best of' approach to filtering content limits the information people are exposed to and skews the news agenda.

But I see it like travel. This kind of aggregation is like a package tour - not to everyone's taste but great if you like a crowd, have limited time or aren't a particularly confident traveller. Doesn't mean you can't book the plane ticket yourself next time and meander along on your own.

http://journalism.alltop.com is a must-visit for anyone working in journalism.

Richard MacManus's review of Alltop on ReadWriteWeb this week caught my eye for two reasons - the site seems worthy of exploration and he took a swipe at mainstream media's portrayal of blogs.

Alltop is a simple-to-use site designed to make reading stories and blogs from across the web easier for people who've yet to get to grips with RSS feeds.

I've been wondering for a while how people who don't spend much time online can get a taste of all the good stuff out there.

I spent months meandering along link trails trying things out until I found a few sites I liked enough to stick with. It took a while to set up the paraphernalia too - RSS feeds, readers, bookmarks etc.

Not everyone has time to meander and Alltop looks like a good middle ground - somewhere web part-timers can dip their toe in and find new voices to read.

Alltop "imports the stories of the top news websites and blogs for any given topic and displays the headlines of the five most recent stories". There are roughly 40 topics including News, Culture, Living, and Geekery.

Richard gives the content a thumbs-up: "The... selection on Alltop is smart and savvy - these are quality blogs." I haven't looked too closely yet but can't see any reason to disagree.

Richard goes on to wonder whether blogs mixed in with news stories will appeal to web part-timers and lays some blame for scepticism about blogs at mainstream media's door:

"While some people recognise that blogs are as much a part of the news ecosystem
as mainstream media these days, many others still see blogging as a way to let
the world know what you had for breakfast.

"So a service like Alltop is unlikely to change the latter attitude, which is
unfortunately the most common one (not helped by mainstream media, which often
portrays blogs as superficial social networking sites)."

His comment hurts a bit but it's not entirely short of the mark.

A lot of news websites are getting better at serving up their own blogs and figuring out where blogs fit into the news smorgasbord. But reporters and columnists are often miles behind.

Especially risible is the tendency to characterise all blogs as the preserve of talentless writers with dull lives. The blogosphere I live in is a vibrant place brimming with well-articulated insight - often superior to that carried by newspapers on their comment and features pages.

The problem, I think, is that many reporters don't spend enough time online, don't take it seriously, wouldn't know an RSS feed from a keyword and consequently make themselves and their news organisations look out of touch.

Three cheers, then, for Wintec, AUT, Whitireia and other journalism schools in New Zealand which recognise the need for digital training and are starting to do something about it. More about their various intiatives later. Here's hoping the recognition catches on in newsrooms too.

This hits a nail on the head very nicely, I think. It's from Seamus McCauley on Virtual Economics. After extolling the virtues of a hayfever remedy that worked particularly well for him he goes on to deliver the following media strategy advice for companies:

"This is what marketing looks like. Produce something good that people want to tell their friends about, and let them get on with it. Your product and your customer service is your marketing now, and the most useful thing your marketing department can be doing is training everyone at your company with a customer-facing role to understand that during every single customer interaction they are now effectively talking to the press."

Not just customer interactions. In effect, any conversation any of us has these days could end up being published. Any conversation.

I'm a journalist-turned-blogger so I tend to apply journalism rules to blogging: if I'm going to post about a conversation I tell the other person that's what I'm likely to do, take notes and strive to make the post accurate, fair and balanced and with suitable attribution. That's what I was taught at journalism school.

But there wouldn't be too many non-journalist bloggers who would do that. Why would they? Which means the conversation I had at the dairy this morning, at the bank at lunchtime, via email this afternoon, on Twitter tonight or at the pub next week could wind up published.

It gives pause for thought, doesn't it.

And then there's the photos. I found some horrendous photos in a shoebox recently (and some absolutely lovely ones) and digitised many of them. But there are a fair few, of my friends and of me, that I won't put on Flickr. Mullets, after all, are best left in the past where they belong. Here's hoping my friends are of the same mind.

Seamus went on to add this nice bit of advice for companies (media companies take note, too):

"Oh, and making a nice website that contains genuinely useful information for people to link to, and making themselves available to answer questions from everyone politely and accurately."

Via Jeff Jarvis, here's a top 10 list of advice from Knight Citizen News Network on how to blog without blowing it. All common sense.

1. Check your facts
2. Don't carry on virtual vendettas
3. Obey the law
4. Weigh promises
5. Reveal secrets selectively
6. Consider what you copy
7. Learn recording limits
8. Don't abuse anonymity
9. Shun conflicts of interest
10. Seek legal advice
    

Simon Jenkins, a former Times editor, told The Lords Communications Committee that blogs were like 'bar room chats' and couldn't be taken as seriously as newspaper columns, reports journalism.co.uk.

A blogger himself, he said he found the flexibility of writing a blog stimulating but wouldn't want blogs to replace 'old-fashioned' newspaper columns.

As far as I'm aware, no one is currently considering doing so.

Andrew Neil, meanwhile, raises an interesting view: "The rise of blogging and opinion outside of the mainstream has caused newspapers a problem, because quite often these blogs are more interesting than the editorials in the newspapers."

The Telegraph in London from time to time invites guests in to respond to questions set by readers. The most recent was BBC director-general Mark Thompson.

Telegraph Communities Editor Shane Richmond blogs about that here, along with the BBC, the licencing fee that part-funds it, and a response to blogger Martin Belam's summary of the Q& A and his thoughts on Mark Thompson 'getting off easy'.

Entertaining blogs and an interesting idea. Haven't been back in NZ long enough to know if anything similar happens on any of the news sites here.

Does it?

This is a great example of a reporter getting with the digital programme. Her website is spot on - a blog, information about her, links to her work, her CV, several ways to contact her and engage in conversation.

She is a newsroom recruiter's dream - not only a journalist but a blogger with a science background who started 'teaching herself HTML at age 10'. Now that's a skill set.

Beat Blogging is an experiment under way in the US that does pretty much what it says on the tin - a dozen or so reporters are using blogs and social networks to develop their beat. The Beat Bloggers' progress is being documented for the rest of us to follow.

It's a collaborative effort involving 13 news organisations plus NewsAssignment.net, Jay Rosen's site dedicated to exploring the potential of open source reporting and crowdsourcing. (Other NewsAssignment.net projects include Assignment Zero with Wired magazine, which recently wound down, and Off The Bus with Huffington Post.)

Reporters' blogs are often an extension of their published stories - points or paragraphs that had to be cut by the subs - or a place to publish stories or odds and ends that never made the paper.

This is different. This is a conscious effort to use the blog as a way of furthering stories, to bring social networks into reporting and facilitate public conversations with readers and experts around issues in the reporter's beat.

The participants are varied and they're going about the project in quite different ways. Some want total openness with the more people participating the merrier. Others want a private but robust community of contacts and experts. Some are using Google Groups as a starting point, others are looking at Blogger, Facebook and Ning.

Kent Fisher, for example, who is an education reporter with the Dallas Morning News, is setting up a blog as a means to broadcast to his contacts and his main goal is to get more stories and better reporting.

Brad Wolverton of the Higher Education Chronicle is using Google Groups as a starting point and wants to encourage lots of conversation about his beat. A rival reporter already wants to join, and he raises the interesting question of where a blogbeat reporter draws the line - does he protect his scoops or prioritise an open, public conversation online?

Eric Berger of the Houston Chronicle is setting up a blog with nine sub-blogs, all on specific science subjects and each led by two scientists and a motivated lay person. He wanted to give the scientists a direct voice, and aims to link from his blog to the sub-blogs as they become relevant to the day's news agenda.

They're several weeks into this now and already there's plenty to read on http://www.beatblogging.org/blog/. Great place to drop in from time to time and get ideas.