The Evolving Newsroom

"Every media brand, to remain relevant, needs to get into the business of helping their audience find the best content on the topics they cover, and not just publish their own content."

A quote from Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 which appears in DigiDave's useful post on Social Bookmarking for Journalists 101.

DigiDave, aka David Cohn, makes the following excellent point early on in his post:

"My bone to pick isn't that news organizations don't know about social news sites. They obviously do - and want to benefit from the traffic spikes they can offer. My concern is that individual journalists aren't using them enough - which is a pity, because if anybody should be recommending news articles through these sites [Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit etc] it should be journalists, whose job it is to know what is good and bad information. If we live in an era of micro-internet celebrities, and micro-blogging - these sites offer a platform where collectively journalists can show our inherent value on the social web."

I also like his sketch of the main social bookmarking sites, using the device of imagining what news publication they would be if they were print products. For example, he likens Digg to a teen magazine (tend to like easily digestible content: pictures and top ten lists), Reddit to the San Jose Mercury News (heavily focused on hardcore technology) and Propeller to USA Today (packaged for the masses, not a tech or geeky audience).

Plenty more good stuff in there. Well worth a look.

The ever-readable Paul Bradshaw kicked off a series on online journalism basics recently with the importance of brevity - both for writing and for multimedia.

It's a good point that can't be made too often so here it comes again - as succinctly articulated by Paul:

• The web is different. It is not print, it is not television, it is not radio. So why write content for the web in the same way that you might write for a newspaper or a news broadcast?
  

• Shorter articles tend to work better online because most people struggle to read long documents on screen, or find scrolling too much hassle if they’re looking for something specific or succinct.
  

• Within the article itself, paragraphs should be succinct. Stick to one concept per paragraph. Once you’ve made your point, move on to the next par.
  

• Brevity is equally important when producing multimedia material. For the medium that brought us YouTube, anything over three minutes is too long.
  

• Brevity works well online because it allows for more effective distribution: others can link to the specific element they are commenting on, or even embed it on their site.

• What’s more, it provides the raw material for further journalism: a user might decide to re-edit the material to provide a different narrative; or mash it up with maps or databases; or they might incorporate it into further investigation into a particular issue - all of which further distributes your good name, and provides further material for you to build on.