07newsroom

Phoenix Jones, Open Newsroom, Scanning Photos: Tips for Editors

Prompt of the Day
Does your town need a superhero to fight crime? Make a reference to Phoenix Jones, the self-styled superhero arrested in a paper spray incident in Seattle. Jones's names is at the top of the Google hot search list early Tuesday morning. Here's the rest of the round up of editor tips (short url's includede to make sharing easier).

Open newsroom
Call it budget, sked or newslist - when newsrooms turn process into product and plan in the open, everyone wins: http://bit.ly/ptWxaK The Guardian has started publishing its news budget on the web, letting readers in on the process. From Dan Roberts, a Guardian editor -- Have Your Say:

What if all those experts who delight in telling us what's wrong with our stories after they've been published could be enlisted into giving us more clues beforehand? What if the process of working out what to investigate actually becomes part of the news itself?
It might seem a minority pursuit, but the experience of covering breaking news already suggests otherwise. Like many websites, we are discovering some of our best-read stories are the live blogs that report events as they unfold, often with brutal honesty about what we don't know or hope to find out.

What do we learn? The Guardian business news desk is kicking of the earnings season with a report on Alcoa's earnings and a politician's plan to crackdown on internet porn will be subject to a "reality check." It turns out the hidden plans of a newsroom gain nothing by being kept private.

In praising this step, Matthew Ingram of GigaOm (Memo to Newspapers: Let Your Readers Inside the Wall) says the time for secrecy is over: "Either newspapers develop a more balanced relationship with the people formerly known as the audience, by allowing them to contribute to the process, or they will find their audience has gone elsewhere."

Value of Photos -- From Your Archives, From the Police
In Conway, Ark., the Log Cabin Democrat has been scanning and publishing 5,000 photos a month. It organized them into what it calls the Conwaypedia. Another initiative from this Morris newspaper is Faulkner County Booked, which is attracting 300,000 pageviews a month.
These steps are part of the Morris drive to put digital first. A Morris exec, Derek May, posted this more detailed explanation of what the company is doing in an attempt to reverse a 40% drop in revenue and a 75% drop in profits over five years.
Digital first might have a familiar ring: Digital First, of course is the holding company for the JRC and MediaNews Group newspapers, from San Jose to New Haven.
It's also the rallying cry in papers from Seattle to Wichita:
In Seattle Times’ new digital-first newsroom, roles change to ‘creation, curation, community’ | Poynter. http://bit.ly/n0nzcE
Wichita Eagle: Testing a new organizational model for a digital-first newsroom | Knight Digital Media Center http://bit.ly/okhsUf
Making the most of every frame captured by staff photographers and your readers keeps readers engaged. When my hometown paper published a gallery showing the opening of a new fire station, our family was delighted to find this photo of my father: Photo Gallery: Canton's New Fire Station -  CantonRep.com http://bit.ly/nIKxE6  One tip: allow readers to add caption material.

Pumpkins, Unicef and Pet Costumes: Halloween Ideas
Who runs the pumpkin contest in your market? Size matters: 1,704-pound pumpkin earns CA farmer $10,224 in Pumpkin Weigh-off prize money: http://bit.ly/p7K0Ma

Unicef Halloween drive is a good peg for a prompt: Are you donating to Unicef this year?
UNICEF's Little Orange Box Goes Digital This Halloween http://on.mash.to/qlPEZc

Favorite pet costumes: MainStreet.com has a pet costume roundup: http://bit.ly/rqKgyO

Have you brainstormed your Halloween coverage plan? Have you been inspired by the Guardian to publish a list of stories your have in the works?

Occupy Your Town, OccupyWallStreet: Tips for Editors

Occupy Your Town
Occupy Wall Street is not just about Wall Street. How to track similar protest movements in your town? Look at this list from Occupy Together. The site says there are organizers working in 1,271 towns (now 1,302 towns), including major metros but also smaller towns from San Luis Obispo, CA, to Greensboro, NC, from Allentown, PA, to Springfield, MO.

Twitter is one of the best listening posts. Here is a list, from Listorious, a web company that pulls together guides to related material on Twitter, of many of the Occupy Twitter feeds.

Do a Twitter search: http://twitter.com/#!/search-home
Enter "occupytownname" all as one word, using your town and nearby communities. Example: http://twitter.com/#!/search/occupyallentown

Many communities have seedbeds of anger over high unemployment rates and a sense that immoral financial activity enriched a privileged few while knocking millions of others into poverty. There is an equally strong sentiment that more government intervention or higher taxes will not solve the problem. Are you tapping into the strong feelings on all sides of this issue? Put up some prompts on Twitter and Facebook, with references to what is happening from Seattle to Fort Lauderdale.

A sign that organizers of these modern-day Hoovervilles are planning for the long term? Have they made provisions for toilets, hygiene, and bad weather?

Teens and tanning beds
Now that California has banned anyone under 18 from using a tanning bed, teenagers and parents in your area may have strong opinions on the role of government and the health impact of indoor tanning.
Possible prompts: Should our state ban tanning beds for anyone under 18? Would you allow your teenager to use a tanning bed? California has the highest age limit. Other states have bans for under 14 year olds or for different age groups.

Parent Unions
Parent unions are another California idea that may be taking root in your town. This weekend, the AP ran a piece about a new type of parent group organized to push for fundamental change in local schools. 'Parent unions' spring up in school districts from San Diego to Buffalo, N.Y., pushing for academic reform: http://apne.ws/pvf8V8
Is there a parent union in your area? Do parents want the ability to force change through petition? What role should parents have in running local schools?
From the article:

Behind the parent empowerment movement is a feisty Los Angeles-based nonprofit, Parent Revolution, which in 2010 pushed through a landmark law giving parents authority to force turnarounds at failing schools through a petition.

Known as the "parent trigger," the California law was the first of its kind in the nation. It inspired Texas and Mississippi to adopt similar laws and legislation is under consideration in 20 other states. Two states have voted down parent trigger bills.

Lee Cowan of NBC Nightly News covered this last month: 'Trigger law' put to the test in Compton, Calif.

Cowan's lede:

On its face, the idea sounds so simple: if a school is persistently failing, give parents the power to change it. But the reality of putting that notion into practice is proving challenging, at best.

In the last two years, California, Texas and Mississippi have passed so-called "parent trigger" laws. In each, the law stipulates that if at least 51 percent of the parents of children enrolled in a school sign a petition, they can trigger change.

Diane Ravitch, a professor at NYU, attacks what she calls a "deceptive scheme" in this letter about the trigger laws, published in the Washington Post.

The experts are solidifying their views. What do your readers think?

Traffic and Real Estate
Readers are always fascinated by traffic and the status of major commercial real estate properties. As the experts of their own realms, they are also vocal. Here are examples from the Centre Daily Times page on Facebook that showed good social media instincts and good reader engagement:
Traffic: A reporter and photographer are on the scene. We'll have updates online. Crash closes U.S. Route 322
Real estate: Wonder why the former A&P has been vacant for all of these years? Today's story provides the background. 
By including Facebook as a conversation platform, the CDT involved readers in the conversation.

Follow the Money
Looking to learn more about money in politics? @OpenSecretsDC Resource Center has guides for beginners, FAQs and more http://ow.ly/6LUTP
Much of what is published here for voters is very useful, too, for reporters.

Rich List Rankings, DADT and Local Story Ideas

Follow the Money

Every September, Forbes publishes an update of The Forbes 400, the list of the richest people in America.
Every spring Forbes runs the richest people in the world and every fall, the publisher lists the richest people in the United States. Each list is an opportunity for local coverage.

A year ago, this MLive post was typical of the way local outlets used the material: Metro Detroit boasts 5 on Forbes 400 richest list: Ilitch, Taubman, Moroun, Penske, Ford | MLive.com.

Here is a similar post about the spring list, from a Florida TV station: Central Florida billionaires make Forbes’ richest list.

The Forbes site allows you to search by state. For example, here are the Connecticut people on the 2010 rich list.

Publishing at a time President Obama is pushing his Buffett rule for a minimum tax on millionaires, the Forbes list is also an opening for a local reporter to ask the wealthiest people in your area to weigh in on the tax debate.

Ask, Tell

Starting today, (Tuesday Sept. 20), the US military is open to openly gay service members. The topic can be mined for Facebook and Twitter prompts that will stir conversation in your area. What does it mean to a local recruiter? To students in your area considering enlisting? To veterans groups?

The AP has a strong piece about elite military training: Academies don't expect much change from DADT end http://bit.ly/oyZkN2 

Even the Pentagon is tweeting about this: Twitter / @DeptofDefense: #DADT is Repealed. http://bit.ly/no1rRi 

The Army is there, too: @USArmy Today marks the end of "Don't Ask Don't Tell." The law is repealed. http://ow.ly/6zmR1 #DADT #Military

A local reporter can use advanced Twitter search, the hashtag #DADT and local geographical information to find people in your area who are also Tweeting about the day.

ASNE Chat

 Copy editors in staggered shifts, starting at 6 AM? Dismantling the night rim was just one step Sherry Chisenhall took in Wichita. Read more and ask Sherry questions at #ASNEchat today at noon, Eastern time.
Wichita Eagle: Testing a new organizational model for a digital-first newsroom | Knight Digital Media Center http://bit.ly/okhsUf

Hat Tip

Many thanks to Yvette Walker and Steve Buttry, who continued the discussion about the use of Twitter for breaking news stories, based on my note about the Reno air crash and the @rgj Twitter feed.

Yvette: NewsTeach - Disaster plan 2.0 — does it include social media? http://bit.ly/qiCYUN

Steve: Carl Lavin studies Twitter use in covering Reno air crash « The Buttry Diary http://bit.ly/o7GO2R

 

Honoring Constitution Day -- Ideas for Editors

Saturday is Sept. 17, Constitution Day. Some tips for prompts and coverage, including examples. Short url's included to encourage sharing.

Many schools will celebrate on Friday, including this one in California that is using contemporary cultural figures to help students learn: SpongeBob and Angry Birds to help teach the Constitution | students, school, constitution - News - The Orange County Register http://bit.ly/p1ASox

Are you running a quiz? Here's one Constitution Quiz.

Another, for children from the US Mint (one screen down):H.I.P. Pocket Change Web Site - Constitution Day http://1.usa.gov/nQFTmK

A third from Scholastic News In-Depth Constitution Quiz: http://bit.ly/pB8Ekq

A dive into your archives will find articles, photos or letters that may be worth running again:

Example: Constitution was born of compromise - mcall.com http://bit.ly/ngeVmE

Example: LETTER: Republicans in Congress who signed Grover Norquist pledge violating U.S. Constitution - The New Haven Register -  http://bit.ly/r96vMZ

With prompts on Facebook, Twitter and on your site, a quiz, a few selections from the archives, an online post of the entire document, and a guide to events, your instant Constitution Day package will stir conversation and spotlight our core legal document.

Possible prompts: What is your favorite part of the Constitution and why? Who has read the entire document? Do you have a favorite figure from that part of our nation's history? How do you describe the Constitution to young children? What is your school doing for Constitution Day?

Examples of guides to events:

*At least three events mark Constitution Day in Modesto - Bee Editorials - Modbee.com

*Constitution Day Events | TAMUtimes 

*Tech plans events for Constitution Day | The News Star 

My favorite part is the First Amendment. A new poll shows growing support among teenagers. Helping readers learn about the Constitution may help all of us protect our rights.

 

Wanted: Managing Editor to Build 35-Person Westchester Team

A year ago, I posted a note about the need for Swiss-Army-Knife Journalists, multi-media reporters and editors who can use a range of skills to collect, process and distribute high-value information.

In 2011, more candidates than ever are walking into newsrooms with digital experience. Even more crucial, they are arriving with a digital attitude -- the knowledge that they will use a variety of tools and platforms to gather and disseminate news and other information. Two foundations of that attitude: continuous innovation and continuous improvement.

Two months ago, I joined a digital startup company, Main Street Connect, that has developed a proven model for local coverage. We are ready to expand from our base in Fairfield County, CT, into Westchester County, NY.

In the next few days we will be posting an opening for the editor who will lead that expansion: A Westchester Managing Editor who will build a 35-person news team and use our demonstrated success to start dozens of new local news sites. The posting:

We're Main Street Connect - the leading innovator of hyper-local online news. This dynamic online local news team seeks an energetic Westchester County Managing Editor to lead the company's expansion into one of the most vibrant local news environments in the U.S.

Successful applicant will:

* Have a strong journalistic background
* Demonstrate deep experience with online news, social media, and SEO
* Report directly to the national managing editor, Carl Lavin.
* Receive generous benefits and equity

To apply:

Send resume, cover letter, and clips to [email protected], subject line: Managing Editor.

Our company

Main Street Connect (www.MainStreetConnect.us) is a fast-growing, web-based, start-up media company with 10 online news sites already up in Fairfield County, CT. This is an opportunity to be a part of building the next great American digital media company.

Visit our sites:

*www.TheDailyNorwalk.com

*www.TheDailyWestport.com

*www.TheDailyFairfield.com

*www.TheDailyNewCanaan.com

*www.TheDailyDarien.com

*www.TheDailyWilton.com

*www.TheDailyWeston.com

*www.TheDailyEaston.com

*www.TheDailyGreenwich.com

*www.TheDailyStamford.com

Learn about our company online at www.MainStreetConnect.us.

 

Shining A Light On Government

Anthony Dixon grew up in Montclair, N.J., the town where my wife and I raised our children. Anthony later joined the military and was in a transport vehicle in Iraq when a roadside bomb exploded. Shrapnel pierced the floorboards, killing the 20-year-old soldier. When I was deputy managing editor for news at the Philadelphia Inquirer, we published an investigation showing that too little armor protected military vehicles in those years. Our reporters tracked down proof that steel companies in Pennsylvania and vehicle assembly lines in Ohio operated as directed by the military on a normal schedule, with weekends off, even while Pentagon officials were saying they were doing everything they could to safeguard the troops.

One order from Washington, one more shift at the assembly plant, one more armored vehicle in Baghdad, and Anthony would be alive today. Lawmakers, families and military officials read our articles and changed policies. Today, troops in the field are better protected.

Nothing can bring about positive change more quickly than quality journalism. Journalism is also the sector of our economy undergoing the most profound disruption. While others may lament the uncertainty and the erosion of incumbent business models, the same technologies that have been so disruptive also provide new opportunities --  opportunities for more people than ever before to use more powerful tools to create and distribute quality journalism.

A friend and neighbor, Steve Engelberg, spoke recently about his work as managing editor of Pro Publica, the non-profit newsroom based in New York that produces powerful investigations that serve the public. Steve talked about the intense data crunching that produced Dollars for Docs, a single database that lists doctors who received a total of $258 million from drug companies promoting pharmaceutical sales. Is your doctor on the list? Now you can find out with one click. 

Steve noted a stark example of what happens when news organizations are not providing scrutiny. He discussed the case of city employees in Bell, Calif., who were each paid many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in salaries. Eventually, two reporters at the Los Angeles Times, Jeff Gottlieb and Ruben Vives, uncovered the sky-high payments and a web of corruption in the town. No community newspaper revealed the story for the simple reason that there was no community newspaper in Bell.

Terry Francke, an open government consultant, described the long decline in his article, Why the Bell Scandal Happened and What Can Be Done:

These multi-community publications attempted to be the same watchdogs over local councils and school boards that their individual predecessors had been but were spread far more thin.

The former Industrial Post (last known as the Community News) went through several chain companies' hands until disappearing as even an independent name. And whatever close coverage of local news it had into the 1990s has been gone for the past decade.

Some newsrooms are taking an important step and developing ambitious goals for local coverage, with rollouts planned nationally by Patch and MainStreetConnect, state efforts from Oregon to Texas, and more focused efforts dotted across the nation, from Philadelphia to San Diego. 

Then there are the tools, new software that citizens can use to pinpoint problems in their own communities. Companies that offer such tools include CitySourced and SeeClickFix. Outside the United States, I Paid A Bribe is just one website that puts similar tools in the hands of people who want better government. President Obama praised that site during his trip to India this month. 

Even the most ordinary acts of government have an extraordinary impact on the lives of ordinary people. With the right vision and tools, journalists can continue to shine a light on these actions. One way to pay tribute to Anthony Dixon is to make sure that light shines brightly.

 

 

Pockets of hope

The people at the Citizen Media conference kicking off the ONA meeting in Toronto are from independent web sites and from start ups but also from big media companies. Jennifer Carroll at Gannett gets it. Rob Curley with WashingtonPost.com gets it. Steve Yelvington with Morris Communications gets it. Experiment, get a conversation going with the community, balance hot news with evergreen content, balance work by pros with work by amateurs, make the tech side highly functional. Test, teach, try something, evaluate, make it better. Hire tinkerers. Use Flickr. Aggregate. Make connections.

Local, local, local: Page views, page views, page views

Watching the numbers: Hyper-local news can mean whatever you think your neighbors will talk about -- a house fire on the next block? a new school principal? street closing? It also can mean that readers will visit your web site again and again, increasing traffic by 50 percent or more. The Record in Parsippany, N.J., is edited by Dennis Lyons. He talked to Editor & Publisher about the success of the hyper-local strategy, which includes very frequent web updates:

"It is less of a print-driven approach," Lyons says while chatting in his office, "being absolutely as local as we can be and getting readers involved as often as possible." The early jump on the Web is key, he adds, noting that the paper's monthly page views jumped from 3.3 million in March 2006 to 4.9 million in March 2007.

"We started out with baby steps, doing about five updates each day," he says of his 58-person news staff, which includes 18 reporters. "Now we are up to 35 or 40." The site now covers such events as school closings, "which we had never done before."

Reporters say they are getting used to providing online updates throughout the day, rather than saving a story for the print edition. Vidya Padmanabhan recalls a February fire in nearby Washington Township, which she heard about at 6 a.m. through a tip. Once confirmed, she posted a story, then made more calls to get comment. She then learned a 5-year-old girl in the home had awoken her parents to the blaze and helped them escape, and that detail was added at 9 a.m.

Later in the day, a second reporter arranged for an interview with the family, which was shot by a staff videographer and posted online by the afternoon. The second reporter then wrote it up for the next day's paper.

Do the math: that's a 48 percent increase in page views over one year. All that's required: New assignments, new hours but most of all a new attitude in the newsroom. (Do the other math: 40 posts a day, from 18 reporters, means three posts per working reporter per day.) One step is to use pre-qualified community news providers. At The Inquirer, we took one small step last week, posting text and a photo  submitted by the Cherry Hill Fire Department. Over the course of a few days, it received a couple of hundred page views, about what a similar staff story would receive.

 

Give thanks for sugar-free Red Bull

Rob Curley talked for about six hours to two diverse groups from The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Daily News, and philly.com: executives, reporters, web people, photographers, editors, ad sales folks, producers, tech gurus, graphics experts. He inspired, he amazed, he energized. He demonstrated what can be done and he demonstrated what can be done to make money. He drank a lot of Red Bull. A Curley intern, Amanda Finnegan, who was traveling with him, said it's a good thing that stuff is available sugar free.
Curley's Seven Commandments (as I distilled the six hours):
1. Own breaking news, and make sure your audience knows it.
2. Go hyper-local, deeper than you ever imagined. Don't just build a container, fill it. (Plenty of photos of youth sports? Yes!)
3. Database like crazy.
4. Multimedia overkill.
5. Evergreen content. Examples: Mark Twin (for Hannibal, Mo.), KU sports history (Lawrence, Kan.)
6. Platform independent: paper, web, sms text to cell phones, X-box, Wii, I-pod and more.
7. It's a conversation. Leverage the wisdom of the crowd and make sure the audience is participating.

What scares him -- or what inspires him? Facebook. (I had some satisfaction that our Philadelphia Sports News Feed group on Facebook, after one week, is up to about 120 members.) In the afternoon, Rob paid our own Jennifer Musser-Metz a great compliment. He said he was a new reporter when he first found Black Hawk Down on The Inquirer's website -- with source documents, bios on the people in the story, reader comments, multimedia. "This is journalism on steroids," Rob remembers thinking. That was when he decided to become an online journalist. We had a chance to applaud Jennifer again for making all that happen.

Beyond Red Bull, how is Rob's work powered? One force is internology -- the power of committed, hard-working paid interns, including Amanda. Who calls 300 restaurants to ask each of them 20 questions (children's menu? hours you serve meals? vegetarian choices?) Who shoots dozens of digital stills? Who covers the county fair? The permanent Curley staff is five full-time editors-producers-developers. Amanda is one of about 11 interns on the Curley team at Washington Post-Newsweek Interactive. Her training, from Cabrini College in Radnor, Pa., is on display in this student project on war.

And the tech power? In Kansas, in Florida and in Washington, Curley uses Ellington CMS. Here's the person to contact: Dean Royal toll-free at 866-454-5774 or [email protected].

Special thanks to Adrian!

Curley, Loudon Extra, and HuffPo comments

Welcome to Rob Curley's latest project: Loudon Extra, a hyper-local feature of the Washington Post. It's hyper local only in contrast to the huge reach of the mother paper. Loudon County is not one small community with one stop light and one high school. It's diverse and spread across a vast area. But the Extra project is meant to bring local search and local information to users and to involve users in keeping the site current. The ratio of pro content to am content is expected to start at about 99:1, but that could change. Right now data is at the core. From the welcome page:

We are currently building searchable databases of building permits, homes sales, and many other publicly available records. We also will be covering high school sports like this area has never seen.

I like the house of worship lookup and the web cams. The section's story about the launch reviews Curley's history increasing page views at other publication and asks a core question about the Post effort:

Curley's revamping of the Lawrence site gained national attention because of the audience it attracted. In 2000 -- before remaking its site -- the Lawrence paper got 14 million page views, said Ralph Gage, chief operating officer of the World Co., which owns the paper. In 2006, that number had grown to 247 million, and the site booked about $2 million in revenue. The population of Lawrence is about 80,000, and the Journal's circulation is 20,000.

Page views at the Naples Web site are up 17 percent in the first six months of this year compared with 2006, when the site was revamped, said editor Phil Lewis, with unique monthly users up 26 percent. The Web site is responsible for more than 10 percent revenue, Lewis said, which is above the industry average.

The question has always been whether a major metropolitan newspaper can successfully run a hyperlocal site like this, and how both local and national advertisers will react.

Those examples of page view increases can be enticing. More from the business story (on the data example 07newsroom discussed in this February post):

In December, Gannett Co.'s Asbury Park (N.J.) Press dumped three huge public-record databases onto its Web site: local property sales and ownership, and state employees' salaries. By May, the paper had added searchable databases for local crime, school test scores, state deaths and public school employees.

In December, the paper's Web site recorded 1.5 million page views. By May, the site was averaging more than 5 million page views per month, according to data from a Newspaper Association of America study, with a high of more than 9 million page views in April.

Curley is also known for welcoming user-generated content. More from the Loudon Extra welcome page:

We also will be adding a powerful community-publishing section to the site, allowing readers to share their stories, photos and videos.

No sign yet that the material shared -- or posted -- by readers will be filtered, tagged or rated by readers, too. Various models exist for this, including the Digg model (users can add one positive -- or negative vote), the Plime model (users can increase their own rating, and thus their own voting power), and -- starting today -- the HuffingtonPost model. [update Freedom Interactive will go live next month with their own version, with SiteLife software from Pluck.] Paul Berry, the chief tech officer of HuffPo, explains all:

We've added a commenter profile page which includes your bio and lists all comments you've posted. To add a bio, simply click on the Your Account link on the upper right hand corner of every page.

We also have a new I'm A Fan Of feature which lets you vote for your favorite commenters. They can also vote for you. Your fans will be listed on your profile page. We'll soon be able to alert you when your fans comment on stories and when your favorite bloggers post on the site.

But we're most excited to announce a new initiative where we will choose one commenter a month to become a featured blogger at HuffPost. Yes, a blogger! Reading through the comments on our site, we realized that our readers are an underutilized resource – smart and opinionated. Our decisions will be based on how many fans a commenter has, how often their comment is selected as a favorite and our moderators' favorites.

Even Paul's dad is "a blogger!" Now Paul is making it possible for others to try their hand. Who wouldn't be excited? The wisdom of the crowds, unleashed. And for the crowds in Loudon County, the power of local journalism has also been given free rein. May success blossom in many gardens.