Week 11: SEMESTER REVIEW

Digital journalism tenet #1

NEWS IS SOCIAL

News Is Social

“News is becoming a shared social experience, with people swapping

links in emails, posting on social networks, ‘retweeting’ news stories

and haggling over the meaning of events in discussion threads.”

Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2010

Digital journalism

How does news being “social” change your job

as journalists?

News Is Social

IT DOESN’T.

Profile of the New Journalist

WHAT DOES BEING SOCIAL MEAN FOR A

JOURNALIST?

BUILDING A COMMUNTIY

Follow and be followed

Interact

reply and engage with audience members

facilitate conversations

Give and getting credibility

You all launched blogs:

Why blogs?

You officially became bloggers

• What have ou learned about producing blogs?

• Are there do’s and don’ts?

• Do you mostly do the do’s and avoid the dont’s?

KISS

• KISS: Keep It Short and Simple

• get to the point quickly

• readers are curious…and busy

• too much info and too little time

• one idea per paragraph

• straightforward language

Writing for blogs and social media

How is it different fromwriting off-line?

YOU’RE NOT JUST WRITING TO REPORT, YOU’RE WRITING TO

CONNECT

WRITE FOR YOUR MEDIUM

Write for your medium as well as for youraudience.

• think about the way it will be consumed

• think about structuring the information for optimal consumption/sharing

– Ex: Write Facebook posts as ledes or blurbs.

– Write tweets as headlines.

– Headline your blog posts strategically.

It’s about telling the samestories in many different

ways

Twitter

The indispensable news tool?

What Twitter Does Best

• It creates connections through common interestsrather than friends

• It’s fully public and fully searchable

• It amplifies the news (does not reliably break it)

• Generally a quicker way to do all the things youcan do on other social media too (find sources, get questions answered, crowdsource content, push out news blasts, take the temperature of a community, etc)

What exactly is being social about?

Blogging, Tweeting, live-Tweeting, live-blogging, Facebooking, Tumblringand Instagramming – among othersocial media – are the new tools of

the social news industry.

What does being social really mean?

BEING SOCIAL = SHARING

How is sharing todaydifferent from sharing

before?

It’s an open market.

Many consumers and producers, consumers who are producers, fewer and fewer gatekeepers,

rapidly evolving rules, and total transparency.

MANAGING YOUR BRAND

Make sure your content on every

platform is a reflection of your brand: think through every tweet, blog post, Facebook,

Tumblr or Pinterest post before you publish

think before you reply on any platform

think about what the content you share says about you

think about what you don’t say

PERSONAL BRAND

You aren’t just a reporter/writer/producer anymore.

You are a brand. Is the new model of journalism

personal brand journalism?

CASE STUDY: Die Nieuwe Pers(Dutch online news platform)

DNP: where’s the money?

• an online platform for freelance journalists

• For €1.79 a month, readers can subscribe exclusively to a journalist and his/her work

• For €4.49 a month, access to all content on its app or website.

• Pay model: Until the end of 2013, journalists receivedthe full revenue generated by their channels. Then DNP started collecting a 25% commission. They already takea quarter from the collective subscriptions, with the rest of the money divided among the individualcontributors.

DNP’s real revenue

• the company managed to sell some of the technology they developed

• goal is further « product development ».

DNP set to introduce thematic bundles and a bundle of bundles (i.e. your own customizednewspaper). Currently expanding their pool of journalists to cover more themes.

DNP: Dutch online news platform

“News has become more personal. People are interested in the opinions, the beliefs, the

revelations of a certain journalist they know and trust, much more than an anonymousperson who writes for a large publication.”

-Alain van der Horst, editor in chief of De Nieuwe Pers

But it didn’t work out.

CASE STUDY: Blendle

Blendle, the model:

Concept: a Dutch news startup where readers pay by the article

• Blendle launched last May

• the site has over 130,000 registered users

• Publishers set the prices for how much each of theirarticles cost, and keep 70 percent of the revenue generated from those stories. Blendle takes the other 30 percent.

• In October, the NYT and Axel Springer invested $3.7 million

• Plans: expand into other markets and other languages.

Are we all heading toward this model?

The star journalist becomes a brand and then a business?

But then after two years of being independent, he burned out.

Will more and more writersbe going out on their own?

What sis the new model of media?

And of the journalist?

Case study: MEDIUM

CASE STUDY: Chalkbeat

Case Study: Pro Publica

CASE STUDY: Quartz

CASE STUDY: Quartz

1. Mobile and tablet-first focus

2. Elite audience

3. No more “beats,” obsessions instead

4. Free, with ads and sponsored content, or branded content

And what about branded content?

http://efranfilms.com/women-in-prison/

CONCLUSION: What’s a journalist today?

« Well, it’s far more than making phone calls, writing a story and going home. We’re betting on the individual, and that means the individual must accept more accountability. They need to write the story, the headline, publish, market and promote themselvesacross the social Web and engage one-on-one withtheir readers. Yes, a reporter needs to respond to comments. They also need to understand the data thattells them who’s reading what they write and why. They need to find their information ecosystem and wade into it to build an audience. »

- Louis D’Vorkin, Chief Product Officer of Forbes Media