I am teaching a weeklong class on visual communication at the University of Iowa this summer, and in doing a little research for the class I discovered that the UI journalism school has a new director – David D. Perlmutter.
What’s perhaps most impressive about him is that he has appeared on The Daily Show.
Sure, it’s [...]
OK, maybe we don’t have it all figured out quite yet.
It’s difficult to remember every possible tool you can use when news breaks, which is why we have a breaking new checklist to follow at DesMoinesRegister.com.
We don’t do everything on the list in every situation, but it’s a good reminder of the many tools that are available, both to promote the news and to enhance the reader experience around the news.
Here’s a list to help you start your own breaking news checklist:
Promote the news
- Post to Twitter
- Send breaking news text alert
- Send breaking news e-mail alert
- Post to Facebook
- Send update to Facebook fans
- Send a message to MySpace friends
- Create a widget so others can add news to their site
- Send to Drudge
- Post to Reddit
- Post to Digg
- Send to Fark
- Post to del.icio.us
- Post to Newsvine
Tools to use on your site
- Start a discussion forum
- Create a poll
- Start a breaking news blog
- Should any of your staff bloggers promote on their blog?
- Are there community members who can blog about this topic?
- Link to blogs outside your site
- Ask readers to submit photos
- Create a live chat
- Create a hastag for Twitter/Flickr/etc.
- Ask readers for YouTube videos
- Add a Google locator map
- Create a Google map that allows readers to add content
- Create a searchable database
- Q&A with reporter or editor or source
- Ask Twitter followers for feedback or help
- Add links to more coverage elsewhere on the web
- Create a site that captures social media conversation on the topic
Download this list as a PDF document.
What other tools should be on this list? Please share them in the comments area.
Photo credit: hyperscholar on Flickr
Have you been sitting on the sidelines, waiting for someone to grab your hand and pull you into the new digital world of journalism? Well, wait no more. Here are 15 ways you can jump in right now.
1. Read Chris Brogan’s blog.
2. Read this one post by Rob Curley.
3. Read Mashable. You don’t have to read every post, but skim the headlines and see if anything catches your eye.
4. Stop talking about why you’re not going to join Twitter. And join Twitter.
5. Go to Wordpress or Blogger and start a blog. About anything – your family, your love of puppies, how much you hate blogs (just make sure you are passionate about the topic).
6. Start using an RSS reader. Here are feeds from Chris Brogan, Rob Curley and Mashable to get you started.
7. Start clicking around the SND toolkit page. Any of those seem useful?
8. Buy a URL (try GoDaddy or FatCow). Use the free sitebuilding tools to get your site up and running. Or better yet, use a program such as Dreamweaver or iWeb to create your site.
9. Start doing these tutorials.
10. Shoot a movie with your digital camera, edit it in whatever free movie editing program came with your computer (iMovie or Movie Maker, perhaps), and post to YouTube.
11. Go through this HTML tutorial.
12. Start following these new media blogs:
13. Set up a Google alert so that you are e-mailed anytime someone posts your name (or your companys name) online.
14. Create a Google map of everywhere you ever lived (click on “My Maps” and “Create new map.”)
15. Create a delicious account and start saving interesting stories you find online. Start following other feeds as well. (Here’s mine.)
Hopefully this video makes you want to dive headfirst into some new technology.
And good news, there was still a newspaper in this video! But I don’t think it required a printing press to make.
Here’s a fun little interactive that the Indy Star put together for the Big Ten men’s basketball tournament.
It’s a good idea for any city that hosts some sort of post-season basketball tournament.
I’m sure you’ve heard stories about Twitter beating traditional news media on breaking news. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that traditional news media have certain standards for verifying news.
But another factor is that we still feel the need to post a full story. Instead, we should get in the habit of posting just a headline quickly – and adding more details as they develop. Here’s a good example from chicagobreakingnews.com. Notice they started with the most basic of info and grew from there.
If you work for a newspaper, please take the time to watch this:
Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.
Obviously the Rocky was in a different situation than most newspapers (being in a two-newspaper town). But I hope this opens a few more eyes to the fact we have to adapt to survive.
The way people consume information is changing. And so we must change. It’s as simple as that.
Or be prepared for more videos like the one above.
I just got a call from someone in Omaha asking me if I had see this:
Apparently Hearst TV sites are pulling in headlines from other sources and adding those headlines to their site (rather prominently, I might add). I have no problem with this. I think it’s a great idea.
Except for one little thing: When you click on the headlines, it doesn’t take you directly to the source web site. You get a popup window with the headline, a summary, and an ad.
Yikes. It seems that they are monetizing someone else’s content.
What do you think? Genius? Or Evil Genius?
Need some online inspiration? Just take a stroll through some other web sites and learn from what others are doing. With that in mind, here are five ideas that could benefit almost any news web site out there:
The azcentral.com live module. Nothing complicated here. Just a continuous stream of reader comments as they come into the site. Another great way to get people into the conversation.
NewsOK’s live page. A one-stop shop for current live videos and chats. All in one place, so I always know where to look.
The Miami Herald’s news grid. A clever (and straightforward) way to show the top news in several categories at a glance.
The Austin American-Statesman’s Twitter page. Sure, this promotes the Statesman’s many Twitter accounts, but the best part is that it promotes local Twitter users worth following.
The Des Moines Register’s business blog aggregator. Instead of trying to get the best local business bloggers to post using your blog tools, simply add links to their latest blogs and make them a part of your local blogger network.
