I’ll add you as a Facebook friend just because we went to elementary school together, even if we don’t really have anything to talk about anymore.
I’ll add you as a Twitter friend just because we have something to talk about, even if I have no idea where you went to elementary school.
I saw a message on Twitter from Dave Cohn yesterday late in the afternoon that said he was set to interview Craig Newmark in 30 minutes. (Actually, I saw it 19 minutes after he posted it, so he was probably on the way out the door if not on the street when I replied.)
Today, Dave posted an explanation and a primer for journalists of all stripes who sometimes need quick questions along with quick answers.
It’s an introduction to microblogging, complete with a list of tools and how a reporter could use them to tap into the collective intelligence of his or her social network at the touch of a button.
If you still don’t *get* Twitter, start with Dave’s post, and then go read Jeremiah Owyang’s post that started something really fascinating this week, only substitute the word “journalism” for the word “marketing” and you’ll feel better about it, if that’s your thing.
Social media use around the world.
Global Neighbourhoods: Reposting Survey Part 3: Social Media by Region
Publish2, a social network for journalists, is now taking beta registrations. I highly recommend you, Journalist, go sign up right now.
For a brief explanation/exploration, check out the Beatblogging post where David Cohn puts it like this:
“Think of it as a Poynter 2.0: There is a core niche of journalism, but it is a space to connect to other people and share important ideas and information with them. It could have a tangible benefit to their work.”
It’s the “tangible benefit” part that excites me the most about this and inspired me to start drawing up plans for ReportingOn, which I envision as something closer to Twitter-for-journalists and Digg-for-readers rather than the Digg/Delicious sweet spot that Publish2 is trying to hit.
The thought of reporters strewn all over the city/state/country/world sharing notes on issues and building up context for local stories is The Right Idea; it’s what the Web is for.
This is a Ning network being run by a guy from Willow Glen. There’s 134 members. They seem to care. He’s not even looking to make any money doing this – all he did was set up a free Ning network.
A colleague looking for a few new ways to integrate free Web services into his newsroom asked me to chip in with a list of five, so here they are. A note to student journalists: These are all free and easy ways to get something new and different online, and they probably serve a need you have right now in your newsroom.
NING:
Instant social networking for a niche in your community. Need a high school football site? A way to let readers weigh in on a controversial issue without allowing too much anonymity? A place for school clubs to run groups, slideshows, video, blogs and forums? Done. This thing is plug and play. Move around the modules as you please, and promote the crap out of it on your news site. For 5 bucks a month, use your own URL. For $20 a month, run your own ads.
VUVOX:
Fun, inventive multimedia, with Zero Flash Knowledge required at the door. Heck, you don’t even need to know how to use an FTP program to get this to work. Play with images, audio, and video here, and embed the results on your own site. Check out this ScobleShow video of Richard Koci Hernandez from the San Jose Mercury News talking about using Vuvox.
TWITTERGRAM:
One of many projects on the plate of the guy who pretty much invented RSS and blogging and podcasting as we know it. The basic premise is that you call a phone number and record a short message. A link to the resulting mp3 file gets posted to your Twitter stream. Keep in mind that your Twitter stream has an RSS feed, as well, which increases the number of games you can play on the tail end of this. Think of it as live audio reporting that gets fed straight to the Web.
MOGULUS:
The latest in a short line of live video streaming startups. Also consider Kyte.tv. If you’re reporting with a laptop in your backpack hooked up to a webcam (or a more expensive miniDV camera, whatever floats your A/V boat), this is a way to broadcast live via the Web, whether you hook into wifi at the coffee shop or an EVDO card to get online.
YOUTUBE:
YouTube? What? How many different remixes of Soulja Boy can I watch involving Spongebob and/or kittens? Or, you could use your free video editing software (iMovie, Windows Movie Maker) to create video content (ahem), podcasts, or audio slideshows. No FTP access or Soundslides license? No problem: Edit your images and audio in iMovie and export it as a video file. Upload to YouTube, embed on your site, and voila, audio slideshow. Podcasting? Why not do the same trick with a few relevant photos over an audio track?
Take advantage of the free software and services that are out there: None of these will create compelling content for you or teach you how to be a better storyteller. What they will do is make it easy for you to deliver those stories to your audience in compelling and interactive ways.
danah boyd and co-author published this academic paper on social networks. And not a moment too soon: This is headed straight for the lit review in my new project proposal (for ReportingOn).
Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship – JCMC
My favorites on this list are the ones that combine geography and a topic, like the Dallas public schools beat reporter.
These Beat Reporters Will Try the Social Network Way – PressThink
To elaborate on the somewhat derisive one-liner (about Jay Rosen’s New Assignment plan for beat blogging with a social network) that I dropped into a post a couple days ago…
I think it’s a great idea. It will work. Good stories will come out of the project.
And that’s where I get off the bus, because I’m hoping for something that goes beyond a “project.”
I want a hunk of code that professional or amateur journalists can use to build social networks around their beat.
That’s my reservation about the plan as it stands right now: Leaving the technical choices of how to get this job done up to news organizations seems like it leaves a major step unfinished.
For me, that step is leaving behind software that a news organization can use to build more social networks around beats.
I have yet to work in a newsroom where its technical needs were caught up to its philosophy. For example, it is much easier to convince editors that presenting information in databases online is a good idea than it is to actually code up an application to make it easy for reporters or online staff untrained in MySQL and PHP to do it.
A few ways New Assignment could leave behind some useful code:
Then again, there’s a chance I’m just completely misinterpreting the mission of New Assignment, but I’d like to believe that part of it is to enable the Pros to collect and surface information from the Ams.
Am I way out in left field on this one?
The title of this post comes from AP CEO Tom Curley’s much blogged-about speech:
“I’ve been inside many major news organizations the last couple years, and, invariably, I hear the same refrain. We know what to do, but we can’t get it done. Or, sadly, we’re in worse shape than we were two years ago because we’re spending even more proportionately trying to keep the old model functioning.”
What I’m looking for are ways that those who have the tools to “get it done” can help those who “know what to do.”
It can’t be that hard.
I gave someone a bit more detail about my nascent ReportingOn concept via e-mail late last night. Talking these things out in public always helps, so here’s a fresh draft of what I’ve been mumbling about:
This post was the beginning of the idea.
In short, ReportingOn.com would be a social network for reporters looking for others on the same beat (in different towns).
Make it easy for everyone reporting on “sea lions” to find each other, perhaps as part of a larger group of people reporting on “science.”
It’s one thing for a reporter to subscribe to a listserv for environmental reporters; it’s quite another thing to be a reporter writing a story on a surge in sea lion deaths in Monterey Bay (I’m making this up – the windows are open and I can hear the sea lions 1+ miles away), and to quickly find a list of other journalists working on sea lion stories.
I’m at a point where I’m starting to learn Drupal, building a gray box mockup of the site, and sketching out what the relationships would ideally look like in the database. One of the next steps is getting a clear idea of how to use the functionality built into Drupal and its modules to surface the data the way I want to.
I briefly considered using this project as a focal point to learn Django around, but that just doesn’t seem to be the correct hammer for the job. I’ll get to Django eventually, I promise.
Before twelve people flame me talking about how this has nothing to do with networked journalism or citizen journalism and it just reinforces the barriers between professional journalists and people who don’t get paid to observe the world around them, rest assured that there is a second column to the idea, as I see it in my head, in which ‘readers’ can vote for the topics and categories they want to read more about.
Should there be groups just for readers, or should they be integrated into the Reporter groups?
The latter, I think. But I’m trying to keep this pretty lean: A social network for beat reporters. A backchannel for your beat.
A stream of short updates that answer the question “What are you reporting on?” leads to longer discussions about issues, sources, and beats.
There’s a Facebook group where you can start answering that question.