Journalism

Will the Lede, lead?

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Once again I’m working on a story about how journalism is getting bolder in its experimentation with new media. Not just looking for new ways to distribute content, but for creative ways to provide us with richer context around stories.

So much has been taking place in blog-like, search-enhanced journalism that’s it’s almost becoming a standard.

The Lede – New York Times

Two great ‘papers’ – published from Twitter Streams:

  • Utah Politics – where anyone can sign up to be a ‘Contributing Editor’
  • The Guardian – claiming it is”the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via TwitterTwitter Only Jurnalism:

If you have any other great examples, feel free to leave a comment here, or send me a tweet. Thanks!

Inane chatter, walkie-talkie reporter and TV News

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This is hilarious.

But it is also a sad comment on the formula into which most news has slipped.

For years most of us communicators have been saying that it’s time to break out of the structure of news –how stories are told.

But how could you blame the reporter who has joined an organizations that requires him to do it their way, which conforms with the industry standard, which is really a formula invented about half a century ago? Bucking the trend and attempting to frame a story opposed to the inverted pyramid or the sound-byte sandwich is a good way to be back on the street.

And so we have the evening news full of this.

Yes, we get a few variations of this:

  1. All the news that’s fit to miss – Networks have been losing audiences (1 million a year!) over the past 25 years (Journalism.org study)
  2. All the news that’s fit to sell –when the market creates the story that a poor talking head pretends to turn into news
  3. All the fluff that’s fit to Tivo/surf away from

So what do we do?

  • How about demanding a new news format for a start?
  • How about hiring reporters who are master storytellers, rather than “award winning” fact-finders?
  • How about blending long features into mix ? (By this I don’t mean “16 horrible health violations in the restaurants you frequent, next!”)

Something has to give. I don’t see these conversations happening in my local TV stations, and few (like Tak Hikich) asking for a different formula.

So until then, we’ll see a lot of the walkie-talkies and statutory shots, I guess.

Another great use of a wiki

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The first two things people think of, when following breaking news is Twitter, or Google Alerts. No doubt about it, these are great.

Ever considered ‘following’ a Wiki?

I do it all the time, because I am the kind of person who’s not content with the echo-chamber headline stuff  (you know: “OMG there’s been a plane crash in…”)

Here’s a great Wiki on Haiti relief.  Maintained by the Open Street Map (OSM) Community.

Even if you’re interested not following the relief ops, and are just curious about how social media works in these extreme situations, wikis and maps are great. check it out. As we have begun to see, maps are being used more and more by media orgs and journalists to report on details of a story.

Quotes for the week ending 23 Jan, 2010

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“We’ve got the Internet here at Signal, and it’s been a miracle that we’ve been able to stay on air … “Don’t ask me how we’ve managed to do that.”

Mario Viau, station director at SignalFM, in Port-au-Prince, which has been on the air and online since the earthquake struck..

“Because this is just a dirge. I’m ready to shut it off. And I’m sure there’s plenty other about to do the same.

Anonymous commenter on the Rolling Stone blog that live blogged the Hope For Haiti Now telethon. He went on to say that Live Aid “existed to raise money for a terrible epidemic. But the performances were more like a giant party. People were interested, and it was a huge success. This sad telethon will be immediately forgotten. And that’s a shame. Wasted opportunity.”

“Good attitude Mr. Anonymous. With a mindset like that nothing will ever happen.”

Someone going by the name of Jeff, responding to the above poster.

“We are experiencing an outage due to an extremely high number of whales.”

Message on the Twitter web site, supposedly after Haiti suffered aftershocks on Wednesday.

“It puts into the public domain every bit of information collected by public bodies that is not personal or sensitive, from alcohol-attributable mortality to years of life lost through TB. Happily, not all the data sets deal with death.”

Editorial in the Guardian, on the launch of new website, data.gov.uk, which Tim Berners Lee ( and professor Nigel Shadbolt) served as advisors, on the request of Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

“News Corp. needs Google more than Google needs News Corp.”

Greg Patterson, attorney at Espresso Pundit, in Mike Sunnucks’s story on the battle eating up over the Fair Use Doctrine

“Yet, honest Abe and HAL9000, both had one thing in common. They conveniently applied a Heuristic theory as they were, in fact, the only one calling the shots.”

Steven Lowell, PR Manager, Voice 123, on why failure, and the ‘Heuristic Algorithm’ is a bad long-term solution.

Context will save journalism

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It often takes a good journalist to put things in context.

Forget the inverted pyramid. Forget the fair-and-balanced dance of pretending to give equal time. Sometimes it’s the power of good storytelling, that puts things in rich perspective.

I am a big fan of Arizona Republic’s E. E. Montini. In his column today (Putting Janet, John and Jon in context) he puts the whole brouhaha of Homeland Security chief, Janet Napolitano in context. Why? Because politicians tend to mangle context just to score points with their electorate. The ground rule: “Every single thing said by every single politician is taken out of context. Usually by other politicians.”

And so it is left to journalists to dig out the nuggets from the past. Nuggets that readers tend to forget, that supporters hope was buried in the archives. Most of us think of Google as the great equalizer, the amazing memory machine. But there’s nothing like seeing context pop up on the front page of a dead tree. Thanks to the other machine, the journalist.

Crowd-sourcing: we are smarter than me

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

On to the second C I talk about: the wisdom of the crowds concept, and the belief that “the people formerly known as incompetent” can actually make great contributions.

I see this in organizations where everyone may not be a ‘communicator’ but there are many who can be Antennas, Filters or Connectors.

The best examples of crowd sourcing tend to be in journalism. Two great sites come to mind:

  • Oh My News – the earliest citizen journalism site that began in South Korea.
  • Spot.Us – a community-funded news site I came to discover this year and support.

However, in two other very different areas we see it in action:

  • Google used our collective results for influenza related searches and came up with the Google Flu tracker.
  • Starbucks tapped into its customer base with MyStarbiucksIdea

Bottom line: People will contribute their ideas and when they do it is up to someone in the organization to recognize it, map it, use it.

Quotes for ther week, ending 12 Sept 2009

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“Stories are a terrible way to store information.”

Zach Echola,  a founding member of Wired Journalists, on the role of journalism in providing context. Howard Owens and Ryan Sholin were the other two founders of Wired Journalists, an amazing resource!

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Facebook, the online social grid, could not command loyalty forever.”

Opening line in an article in the NYT on people quitting Facebook.

“we now tweet and friend and tag. But that’s not all—we also listen.”

Colleen Ringer, Comms Manager, blogging about Downtown Phoenix Partnership’s new web site that launched this week. The site has bloggers and several social media options to help users find useful information and build a community.

“Probably not.”

Jim Nail, chief marketing and strategy officer of TNS Cymfony, on whether brands should respond to criticism via social media. The quote was in a  story about a false story about P&G’s Always circulating via social media.

“don’t worry we won’t tell your followers!”

TwittDir, yet another ‘let us help you get famous on Twitter’ type appliications that asks you to add your name in a directory chock full of models, sexed-up people.

“If you were expecting an Apple jetpack or an Apple hovercraft, or even an Apple tablet, you didn’t get that.”

Michael Gartenberg, a technology analyst on Steve Jobs reapparance at Apple’s launch of the iPod Nano.

For attendees at social media conference y’day

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Hyperlinks may seem insignificant, but they can be subversive, helpful and enlightening.

At last evening’s video conference I suggested that one way of improving our communication is to embrace this ‘link economy.’ And since social media is the connective tissue, it keeps this economy humming.

It involves some loss of control, which makes it unsettling to some, but it also opens up plenty of new opportunities. I see these as falling into four groups:

  1. Collaboration  – It’s almost impossible to use social media with a control-freak, silo mentality
  2. Crowd Sourcing – We soon learn that ‘they are smarter than I’
  3. Content Curation – While everyone is creating, some of us better start curating
  4. Community Building – Social networks are nothing but communities.

Social Media lets us:

  • Conduct due diligence faster, deeper
  • Look at trends, by mapping out events as they break –swine flu, forest fires, crime rates
  • Bypass bottlenecks — from network outages, censorship, slow feedback
  • Tap into the ‘wisdom’ of the crowds –citizen journalism

Two great Citizen Journalism sites:

One other interesting way to enlarge a story I omited to mention: The Lede from The New York Times. By the way, it happens to be a blog!

On the topic of Citizen Journalism and Civic Journalism:

The purpose of civic journalism is “not to inform the public, but to form the public.”

– Charlotte Grimm, Scripps Howard Foundation

Pay attention to these:

  • Wolfram Alpha –a search engine that will knock your socks off!
  • TwtPoll –If you use Twitter, and want to check the pulse of your followers, try this!
  • TweetDeck – aA desk-top application that will help you manage multiple Twitter accounts
  • iPadio – a simple way to podcast from your iPhone
  • Flickr – much more than a way to share pictures with your inlaws!
  • BlogTalkRadio.com – a simple way to create a podcast using a phone!

Finally:

  • Forget scoops, and consider ‘swoops’
  • Less Content Creation and more Content Curation

Quotes for the week, ending 29 Aug 2009

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“He took the long view. He never gave up. And though on most issues I very much wished he would give up.”

John McCain, on his friend and Senate adversary, Ted Kennedy who passes away this week.

“IBM is trying to push this debate onto social nets via the most convenient device–the remote you’ve just used to switch channels. “

Fast Company story on the new move to get TV viewers to micro-blog from the couch.

“I would say I’m a different GoDaddy Girl.”

Erin Kalin, a mother and singer who is the latest GoDaddy Girl, who hopes to be a role model for young girls.

“I like to call that person The TMI  Guy.”

A post from CaliberPulse, on how each one of know someone who posts Too Much Information

“a kind of virtual race to get as many people online by the Olympics alongside all the real physical races that will be going on.”

Martha Fox, the British government’s digital champion.

“It’s a balance between the issue and the (one) person …“Pick people who symbolize the issue.”

Kimberly Dozier, on the challenges of being an ’embedded journalist’ in a session (‘Reporting from the frontlines’) at the SPJ Journalism Conference in Indianapolis.

Kill the leave behind for the long tail?

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

I had a very stimulating conversation with an editor today and we talked about the motivation to take everything that’s ink on paper to an online platform.

So the question I had was, do those who salivate after the long tail value of content (be assured I am a champion of this) really think that the printed product will lose its audience?

After all, as the popular argument goes, why would anyone pick up a magazine or a paper, when they could read the same content on a mobile device or on a laptop? 

My short answer to that: “experience.”

Anyone could duplicate the story, or even enhance it, for an online audience. But it’s no substitute for the print experience. Content that can be folded, torn, highlighted, photo-copied, taped to a wall, or slipped into a folder can never be substituted. Even on a digital reader.

Then there is our appetite for short-form and long-form journalism. Our brains are wired to shuffle between short content and in-depth stories; our eyes are trained to scan headlines, sidebars and  info-graphics; our bodies trigger automatic responses to seeing large bold headlines of shocking news (like this and this).

To those who say, “yes, but newspapers are filled with yesterday’s news,” my response is that sometimes, the story the day after, put together by thoughtful editors, is what we really want. Could we forget the front pages of thistory –on 09/12?

  • When that United Airlines flight splash-landed in the Hudson, were you content having followed the tweets in real time? Or did you crack open the paper the next day to see how the ‘miracle’ unfolded?
  • As of this morning, the wires and other online media updated us on the passing of Ted Kennedy -a story that all ink-on-paper publications missed for obvious reasons. Would you skip the “old news” in tomorrow’s papers, or will you dive into those broad contextual pieces, timelines, photos, eulogies?

As I told my friend, the problem we are facing is people buying into idea (urban legend?) about people’s reading habits , and partly in the fancy notion that the opposite of the (printed) leave-behind is the (digital) long-tail.

I should be the last person to say this, but digital is not a great replacement for all communication. Some times it is a really bad choice; cutting back on newspapers will be a self-fulling prophecy feeding the idea rather than responding to the notion that “no one really reads!”