social journalism: community building through social networks
DESCRIPTION
A presentation to the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association Summit in Seattle on 10 ways to use social networks and social media to engage local readers. The 10 ideas for building local community: 1. Be first with breaking news 2. Leverage Twitter 3. Enable conversations 4. Get widget-happy! 5. Community video 6. Geocoding & citizen photography 7. Create local map mashups 8. Hook up with Facebook 9. Tap into sharing economy10. Study, borrow, stealTRANSCRIPT
JD Lasica President, [email protected]
Social journalism: Community building through social networksPacific Northwest Newspaper Association SummitSeattle, Sept. 17, 2009
Relax!
http://delicious.com/socialmediacamp/pnna
Flickr photo “relaxation, the maldivian way” by notsogoodphotography
(all sites in this talk have been tagged for later retrieval)
http://slideshare.net/jdlasica
Making sense of all the new terms
“Social media:Any online technology or practice that lets us share
(content, opinions, insights, experiences, media)and have a conversation about the ideas we care about.
”
http://socialbrite.org/glossary
Explosive uptake in social media About 200 million blogs
5 of top 10 websites are social media sites
57% have joined a social network
39% subscribe to an RSS feed
YouTube = 10% of all Internet traffic
Every time someone opens a computer, 60% of time it’s for social reasons
120,000 new blogs launched every day
1.5 million blog posts per day (17 per second)Sources: Universal McCann: Wave.3: Power to the People, 2008; various
Social networking and journalism
Cartoon courtesy of John Cole, The Times-Tribune, Scranton, Penn.
New metrics for participatory age
Old metrics: eyeballs, page views, stickiness
New metrics: engagement, participation, passion, interaction, comments, uploads
10 ideas for building community
1. Be first with breaking news 2. Leverage Twitter 3. Enable conversations 4. Get widget-happy! 5. Community video 6. Geocoding & citizen photography 7. Create local map mashups 8. Hook up with Facebook 9. Tap into sharing economy10. Study, borrow, steal
1. Be first with breaking news
SMS alerts
Twitter to break verified news
Live-blogging of public events
Moblogging to upload photos from mobile device
Latinos, African Americans > greater use of mobile devices
Best usage is to drive users to story on your site
Buzznet, Foneblog, Fotopages, mBlog, mlogs, phlog.net, Snap, Textamerica, Webshots. Cross-posting?
Several free useful tools
SMS alerts for niche news
• ImpreMedia: 20 alerts/day, 1 million impressions/month • Popular topics: general news, breaking news, New York, politics, entertainment, sports, Mexican futbol league
www.impre.com/alertas
Useful free tools: • CoverItLive.com • Scribblelive.com • Google Docs
Examples: Obama’s health care speech, Sonia Sotomayor hearings, Rod Blagojevich impeachment, NFL playoffs.
Use your site as acommunity forum!
Live-blogging to drive conversation
2. Leverage TwitterSan Diego wildfires: KPBS + USD
Red River flooding in North Dakota
Flight 1549 “Miracle on the Hudson”
BusinessWeek: 40 journalists on Twitter.
MuckRack.com: feed of Twitter posts by journalists
Make Twitter work for you
“Twitter is just amazing. It's the perfect tool for journalists.”— Arturo Duran, CEO, ImpreMedia Digital (El Diario, La Opinion, et al.)
Train your staff on how to use TwitterNot a broadcasting medium to distribute headlines
Start by listening & observing, but then:Be human, be conversational, not detatched
Unlearn the conventions of journalism
@ElDiarioNY: after 5 mo., 5% new traffic from Twitter#1 traffic driver: retweets
Don’t ghettoize social media
@dsarno Business reporter, LA Times
@jamesjanega General assignment reporter,Chicago Tribune
@kimpainter Health columnist,USA Today
Tweeting done right: 70-30 Rule
Omar GallagaAustin American Statesman
Twitter accounts page
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/standing/twitter.html
Austin American Statesman
3. Enable conversations
Avert registration fatigue & BugMeNot syndrome
Identify & engage influencers
Scope out Twitterers with large # followers. How do their interests intersect with your site’s?
Learn about how people in your community use social media
Connect with social media influencers through search.twitter.com, PlaceBlogger.com, etc.
Ask people around you (neighbors, students, young people in your newsroom) how they use social media
Use hash tags to join conversations
At left, widget found at: http://journchat.info
Find relevant hashtags through hashtags.org or Twitter Search
Join (but don’t spam) conversation threads
Start your own hashtag
Some hashtags to latch on to: #health #sports #latino #education #democracy #politics #Obama #news #media #journalism #journchat
4. Get widget-happy!
Highlightcommunity events Indy.com staffers pick the best local events to highlight on the site’s front page.
Tap into community conversations
Real-timeconversations
Tap into the conversations that are already taking place in your community: Widgets let you post tailored discussions — both by topic and by geographic location.
Create widgets for your business, opinion, politics, sports sections.
Promote community service
Left: AllforGood.org helps you find and share ways to do good in your community.
Right: UnitedWeServe: Bottom-up volunteer opportunities at http://serve.gov
5. Community video
Think of your site not just as a way to showcase your own journalism but as a platform to connect users with interesting events taking place in the community.
Streaming video tools include Kyte.com, Qik.com, Ustream.tv, Livestream.com and Youcaster.com.
Video + chat = engagement
This is the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, student journalism channel. http://www.kyte.tv/ch/109996-jmsnews
Live video streaming
ImpreMedia teamed up with the PBS NewsHour to live-stream the Sonia Sotomayor hearings. Went from 20,000 streams during 2008 campaign season to 45,000 streams this past spring. PBS provided the signal & video player, ImpreMedia provided the Spanish translations.
6. Geotagging & citizen photography
Visitors to Flickr could see photos of the 2007 disaster taken from multiple vantage points. Many new digital cameras and mobile devices, like the iPhone, come with geotagging enabled by default.
Minneapolis bridge collapse
Geotagging an art walk
An afternoonwith smart phonesDan Gillmor took a class of journalism students at Arizona State University out for a stroll and created a cool Flickr map with more than 120 photos captured with G1 smart phones.
“It was absurdly easy,” he says.
News organizations should enlist community members with geo-location capable devices to cover designated community events.
Community photo albums
NewWest.Net created a group pool on Flickr for readers to add photos to. People have added more than 16,000 photos. http://www.flickr.com/groups/newwest
NewWest.Net
7. Create local map mashupshttp://chicago.everyblock.com/crime/
AtlantaBoston
CharlotteChicagoDallasDetroitHouston
Los AngelesMiamiNew YorkPhiladelphiaSan Francisco
San JoseSeattleWashington, DC
Everyblock
Over the line?
An anonymous publisher compiled a mashup of public campaign donations records, including the donors’ street address, and published it.
8. Hook up with Facebookhttp://apps.facebook.com/mndaily/ http://www.mndaily.com/
Reward points
http://apps.facebook.com/mndaily/
Readers win points if they post a news story, share it, invite friends, send a letter to the editor, etc.
Top scorers win prizes like Twins tickets, T-shirts, a bag of goodies.
15,000+ additional monthly visits, greater # comments, revenue potential
Charlotte Observerhttp://apps.facebook.com/observerfacebook/
9. Tap into the sharing economy
• Rich source of free commercial material.
• Flickr: 15 million Attribution licenses
• Flickr: 10 million Attribution ShakeAlike licenses
creativecommons.org
flickr.com/creativecommons
socialbrite.org/sharing-center
Creative Commons
Don’t do all the heavy lifting
Partner with smart people. Use your community.Use free: Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, CCUse open source: WordPress (and its plug-ins),
Drupal, et al. Steal good ideas. Build on what’s come before.
Flickr photo by Jason Means
10. Study, borrow, stealStatesman.comMoms Charlotte charlotteobserver.com/moms
TechCrunch.com
MashableNewWest.Net
Politico.comProPublica.org
HuffingtonPost.com
BlogHer.comThemediaconsortium.org
The Local: http://maplewood.blogs.nytimes.comBaristanet.com
http://delicious.com/socialmediacamp/sites
InlandSocal.com
Hyperlocal
Partnerships with local businesses
Emphasis on dining, movies, music
User-submitted photos, video, content
Riverside Press-Enterprise
Indy.com
Periodismociudadano.com
Recent comments
Tags
Embedded video
Twitter lifestream
Pointers to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Blip.tv presence
Global Voices en Español
2-year horizon
Embrace change as an opportunityLaunch pilot projects, get a toeholdTalk with your users about what you’re planningGet top brass to use social mediaNew metrics: engagement, participation, comments
Flickr photo by jonrawlinson
Innovate!
Dare to fail. If you’re not failing at something, you’re doing something wrong. (“Fail often, fail fast.”)
“We have to change our entire corporate-industry behavior. We’ve got to stop overplanning and over-analyzing and turn
our battleship into a speedboat.” —J. Todd Foster, managing editor, Bristol (VA) Herald Courier
"Rocket Man" on Flickr by Dave-F
Resources
Socialbrite.org
Knight Citizen News Network: kcnn.org
Social Media Club: socialmediaclub.org
BeatBlogging.org & NewAssignment.net
Spot.us: crowd-funded reporting
CiiJ: ciij.org/resources
Thank you!
http://delicious.com/socialmediacamp/pnna
Image: Universal McCann: Wave.3 report, March 2008
twitter: @jdlasica