Tweeting from a funeral?

Tweeting from a funeral? Is it OK or is it in bad taste?

When I worked as a reporter, I covered more than my share of funerals. One was for a 7-year-old who had his head cut off with a box cutter after a home invasion. Another was for a family of two young sisters and their grandmother who all died in a fire while the mother/daughter was in prison on drug charges. The mother recieved special dispensation from Gov. Rowland to attend the funeral.

Both were high profile stories that appeared on the front page of the newspaper. Both were heartbreaking.
The funerals were heartbreaking, too. I remember staying way in the back, watching scenes play themselves out, and taking notes as discreetly as possible with my pen and my notebook.

Would punching out my notes on my mobile phone in 140-character sentences and sending them out to the public live on my Twitter feed during the service be essentially the same thing in this day and age?

I don’t know.

I remember taking the time after both of these funerals to be very thoughful and respectful with the words and information I delivered to the public in my story.

Maybe that’s my problem: Can you be thoughtful and meaningful on Twitter?

Maybe you can. But such immediacy leaves lots of room for thoughtlessness, too.

Twittering for a news organization during the funeral service of a private citizen is not necessarily unethical, but it feels disrespectful. Aren’t the deceased and their grieving family entitled to the full attention of everyone attending funeral services, including the press? Even the PGA forces spectators to turn off their cell phones at golf tournaments.

If you are constantly connected and communicating, you are only giving partial attention to the event at hand.

Has the public’s appetite for information become so insatiable that we’ve come to require play-by-play commentary during funeral services? Can’t the public wait until it’s over?

Or does the intense pressure on media outlets to be “first” in today’s highly competitive information climate mean that funerals are fair game for tweets too?

Writing short, well

Writing for the web demands writing short. You are crafting content for an audience with a very limited attention span. And most people don’t read online. They scan.

So here are 25 tips for writing short by Roy Peter Clarke, the writing coach at Poynter Institute.

My short list of Clarke’s best tips:

• #6. Beware: The infinite space on the Internet creates aerated prose.
• #7. The shorter the passage, the greater the value of each word.
• #12. Imagine a short piece from the get-go. Conceive a sonnet, not an epic.
• #17. Read, study, and collect great examples of short writing, everything from the diaries of Samuel Pepys to the Tweets of your favorite Twits.
• #18. The best place for an important word in a short passage is at the END.
• #22. Obey Mark Twain: You may need more time, not less, to write something good and short.
• #25. Treat all short forms of journalism – headline, caption, blurb, blog post – as literary genres.

Why Print Journos Should Willingly Learn Web Skills

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”
— Gen. Eric Shinseki

“The future belongs to people who see possibilities before they become obvious.”
— Ted Levitt

News Biz in Crisis

- What Should Journalism Professors Tell Their Students?

- Technology Is Newspapers Undoing

Mobile Impact: Citizen Journalism

Advances in mobile technology and the continued proliferation of mobile devices will mean a greater boon for citizen journalism. The idea behind citizen journalism, also known participatory journalism, is that individuals with no professional journalism training play an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information. Mobile technology is opening up more channels of participation for people (aka citizens) who have been marginalized for lack of access to a public media sphere.  

Mobile phone subscriptions in the world are estimated to reach four billion by the end of 2008. Mobile communication hardware is growing cheaper, smaller, and more portable. Mobile technology is offering users hand-held technological convergence. The masses now have access to communication devices that can record a live broadcast, photograph or videotape an event, conduct interviews, write articles or conduct a survey or poll, all of which can immediately published to a global audience. .

The power to collect and distribute information used to belong only to media companies – a rigid, expensive and profitable information system of “one-to-many.” Mobile technology has broken down those barriers, giving all users read/write access to the larger information world – an affordable, open information system of “many-to-many.” 

So if “many to many” is the new model, citizen journalism backed by the power of mobile technology will continue to challenge the traditional structure and function of news organizations. The type of news being published by citizens ranges from highly personalized content, to groundbreaking news stories or pictures and video, as well as information neglected by mainstream media. Individuals with mobile devices are capturing ‘news’ in real or close-to-real time, often faster than professional journalists. This will continue to happen with greater frequency. For many people in the world, short message service (SMS) is their main news delivery channel, both for receiving information as well as live reporting of information.

Mobile phones are also being used by activists as tools to engage, organize, mobilize, and inform people in advocacy and social action campaigns. For example in 2001, when Philippine President Joseph Estrada was forced from office, he bitterly complained that the popular uprising against him was a “coup de text.” Protests once publicized on coffeehouse bulletin boards can now be organized entirely through text-messaging networks that can reach vast numbers of people in a matter of minutes.

Increased collaboration between traditional news companies and mobile citizen news gatherers can lead to better news coverage overall and ideally, a more informed public. Successful companies will learn to be inclusive. For example, the news content of the successful Northwest Voice newspaper and website in Bakersfield, California comes from its citizens. “We are a better community newspaper for having thousands of readers who serve as the eyes and ears for the Voice, rather than having everything filtered through the views of a small group of reporters and editors,” said Mary Lou Fulton, the publisher.

Serious competition from anyone armed with a decent cell phone and an Internet connection will also force also professional journalists to make better use of mobile technology. The “mobile journalism toolkit” that Reuters and Nokia tested in 2007 should not be a one-time experiment. Mobile phones with cameras, keyboards, small tripods and solar chargers should be required for every professional journalist. If not, how can today’s journalists expect to remain relevant in this new mobile news environment?

 

SOURCES

Bowman, S. and Willis, C. “We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information.” The Media Center at the American Press Institute: 2003. http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php

Jordan, Mary. “Going Mobile: Text Messages Guide Filipino Protesters.” Washington Post: August 25, 2006. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/24/AR2006082401379.html

Verclas, Katrin. “A Mobile Voice: The Use of Mobile Phones in Citizen Media.” MobileActive.org: November 2008. http://mobileactive.org/mobile-voice-use-mobile-phones-citizen-media

Wikipedia: Citizen Journalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism

Timeline: Citizen Journalism & Mobile Devices

September 11, 2001. According to the Pew Internet Project, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, generated the most traffic to traditional news sites in the history of the Web. The immense demand for immediate news had people turning  to e-mail, weblogs and forums “as conduits for information, commentary, and action related to 9/11 events.” The response on the Internet gave rise to a new proliferation of “do-it-yourself journalism” including eyewitness accounts, photo galleries, commentary and personal storytelling.

February 2, 2003. Following the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, news and government organizations, including NASA and the Dallas Morning News, called upon the public to submit eyewitness accounts and photographs that might lead to clues to the cause of the spacecraft’s disintegration.

February 18, 2003. In response to the massive worldwide demonstration organized to protest the start of the Iraq war, BBC News asked readers to send in images of the anti-war demonstrations around the world. The news organization asked specifically for images taken with digital cameras and cell phones with built-in cameras. It published the best photos on its Web site.

Sunday, December 26, 2004. A 9.1-magnitude underwater earthquake caused a huge tsunami in Banda Aceh Indonesia. More than 225,000 people in 11 countries died as a result. News footage taken by witnesses with mobile recording devices was widely disseminated, stirring a worldwide humanitarian effort.

May 27, 2005. ‘American Idol’ TV watchers sent 41 million text messages. Americans are getting more comfortable sending SMS.

July 7, 2005.  Terrorists blew up three underground trains and a double-decker bus in London, killing scores and injuring hundreds. The use of camera and video phones by passengers provided the only on-scene news photos of the events.

May 2006. ‘American Idol’ sets another SMS record, generating 64.5 million SMS messages on Cingular and breaking the previous record of 41.5 million messages.

March 9-18, 2007. Twitter gets attention from news organizations during the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas. The service was named the best blogging tool by attendees to share news and opinion, and to arrange meet ups at parties. 

April 16, 2007. The Virginia Tech massacre. The perpetrator, Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 people and wounded many others before committing suicide. A student named Jamal Albarghouti shot video on his cell phone camera of the shootings in progress and sent them to CNN’s iReport citizen journalism website. The video clips were then broadcast widely by CNN and other media.

August 1, 2007. Minneapolis Bridge Collapse. Citizen journalists using mobile devices captured some of the first images of the devastation and posted them to CNN’s iReport website, which were then broadcast widely. These citizen journalist witnesses also helped to describe the disaster to CNN anchors on air.

September 2007. Citizen protests in Burma were largely reported to the world through photos and video captured on mobile phones. Images of monks marching peacefully in protest and being attacked in Burma reached a global online public in a matter of hours, rather than days, quickly moving the world to action.

October 2007. California wildfires. News outlets solicited, and subsequently used, submissions from people capturing news with cell phone cameras and posting them on blogs, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc.. Multimedia platform Veeker, which signed a deal with NBC to handle viewer uploads in 10 major cities, said that NBC San Diego recieved over 2000 submissions of pictures and video related to the wildfires.

October 2007. Nokia and Reuters announced that they had partnered to create the ‘Mobile Journalism Toolkit,’ which teams a Nokia N95 cell phone with a keyboard, small tripod, and solar charger — technologies often used by amateurs to capture local news. The toolkit was deployed to select Reuters journalists to help them file stories from the field and use the cell phone’s camera to take photos and videos of news events. “By running on handheld devices, rather than on bulkier laptop computers, the mobile journalism application enables us to create complete stories and file them for distribution, without leaving the scene,” said Nic Fulton, Chief Scientist at Reuters.

May 2008. AT&T announced the company has shattered its text messaging record of 64.5 million by generating more than 78 million messages for the latest season of ‘American Idol’ — the most popular show on television. Some argue that the ”American Idol” voting has significantly helped the adoption of SMS among the masses in the United States.

September 2008 – The Associated Press broke a story videos taken by mobile phones about Afghan children killed by US military forces. Similar stories were reported from Kashmir where hundreds of people, touted by the BBC as “Kashmir’s mobile phone chroniclers’, used their mobile phones to document atrocities during recent demonstrations that were then posted on YouTube.

U.S. Presidential Election | 2008 – Thousands of individuals, as well as major news organizations, post 160-character news updates and opinion using the social networking service Twitter. Journalists and others use their mobile devices and Twitter to “microblog.”

Where we are now:  The idea behind citizen journalism or “participatory journalism” is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution capabilities of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others.  Mobile phones are transforming the process of reporting, putting power in the hands of the public. Individuals with mobile devices are able to capture ‘news’ in real or close-to-real time, often faster than professional journalists. Knowing this, it has become commonplace for mainstream news organizations to soliticit audience participation, specifically photos or video footage captured from personal mobile cameras. 

—————

SOURCES:

Anti-war protest photo gallery. BBC News: February 18,  2003. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/2763101.stm

AT&T Announces FOX’s ‘American Idol’ Seventh Season Breaks All-Time Record for Text Messaging. May 22, 2008. http://www.fiercewireless.com/press-releases/t-announces-foxs-american-idol-seventh-season-breaks-all-time-record-text-messaging?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal&cmp-id=EMC-NL-upda&dest=FW

Bowman, S. and Willis, C. “We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information.” 2003, The Media Center at the American Press Institute.

Catone, Josh. Online Citizen Journalism Now Undeniably Mainstream. Oct. 26, 2007. Read Write Web. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/online_citizen_journalism_mainstream.php

Douglas, Torin. Shaping the media with mobiles. BBC News: August 4, 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4745767.stm

Hamilton, Anita. “Why Everyone’s Talking about Twitter.” Time – Business & Tech: March 27, 2007. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1603637,00.html

Outing, Steve. “Stop the Presses: Photo Phones Portend Visual Revolution. Editor&Publisher.com: March 12, 2003.

Rainie, Lee. One Year Later: September 11 and the Internet. Pew Intenret & American Life Project: September 5, 2002.  http://www.pewinternet.org/report_display.asp?r=69

Schwartz, John. “With Aid of Amateurs, NASA Builds Mosaic of a Disaster.” The New York Times: April 22, 2003. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9802E7DF103AF931A15757C0A9659C8B63

Tragedy Over Texas. The Dallas Morning News: Feb. 2, 2003. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spe/2008/columbia/

Verclas, Katrin. A Mobile Voice: The Use of Mobile Phones in Citizen Media. MobileActive.org: November 2008. http://mobileactive.org/mobile-voice-use-mobile-phones-citizen-media

Videos Show Afghan Children Casualties. Associated Press: September 8, 2008. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/07/terror/main4423942.shtml

Wagner, Mitch. “CNN Creates Citizen Journalism Channels On Web, In Second Life.” The Information Week Blog: March 24, 2008.
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/03/cnn_creates_cit.html

Podcast: Creative Cooking With Kids

My first attempt at a podcast and posting it on iTunes.

Creative Cooking With Kids

Got a young picky eater at home? Make mealtime less stressful and more fun with creative recipes you and your child can make together. In this episode, we offer a quick, delicious recipe for Snake Pizza.

Mobile News: New York Times, WTNH-TV

The following is an examination of  mobile products offered by two traditional news organizations.

The New York Times Mobile

The New York Times is the benchmark for news media organizations in terms of depth of content, audience reach, and elegance of design. The newspaper’s mobile products are no different.  The Times’ mobile site drew 500,000 page views in January 2007, grew to 10 million hits by December 2007 and then rocketed to 19 million views in May 2008.

Among the offerings:

•  Headlines or full text of all articles from today’s newspaper, as well as the Sunday New York Times magazine.
• Stock quotes, market indices and charts
• Local movie show times and movie reviews
• Search for articles and Real Estate listings
• Personalized news alerts
• Share articles with friends feature via email or SMS
• Save articles to a personal “Times File”
• Podcasts by favorite New York Times journalists (also available on iTunes) – http://www.nytimes.com/ref/multimedia/podcasts.html
• NYT Crossword puzzle

The Times’ iPhone application is even more comprehensive. It provides all of the standard mobile site offerings, as well as: 

• Offline reading
• Photo view, where users can browse the news in pictures and link to the related articles
• Customization options – select four favorite sections of The Times for one-touch access.

 According to Robert Samuels, the Times’ director of mobile products, the most popular content items are business and politics news, blogs and most-emailed stories.  Text messaging applications continue to grow for specific uses, such as stock listings or weather forecasts, he said.

In a nice example of convergence, the Times’ also connects its different mobile products to each other. For example, text message alerts allow users to easily link to related full text stories on the Times’ mobile site.

When the Times conducted focus groups on what mobile readers wanted, most of the feedback the news organization received is that “users want to have access to everything – specifically what interests them, with the least amount of clicks,” Samuels said.

——–

mobilewtnh.com

This is the mobile version of WTNH-TV Channel 8 in New Haven. The mobile site is created by LSN, Inc – http://www.lsnmobile.com/.  The site is spare, yet functional. The design is hardly engaging, but the content is useful to someone in Connecticut with a mobile device.

Among the offerings:

• Updated news and sports headlines which lead to full text articles from WTNH.com. The articles include small thumbnail images, adding some visual interest, the ability to text message the story to a friend, and a link to the next headline. Many of the articles are from the Associated Press, which tend to be available from dozens of other sources.
• Local weather. Doppler radar and satellite images,  8 day forecasts, and the ability to search by town name or zip code. All nice features.
• I-95 Traffic Cams with updated images. Very useful.
• Storm Team 8 Delays and Closings. This is an excellent offering for a mobile product.
• Connecticut parents can access this information from wherever they are. Although, it seems out of place since it’s not snow season. The same goes for the ski report, which isn’t relevant all year long. They should take it down in the off season.
• Local movie listings, searchable by zip code, and TV listings, although it offers only what’s on WTNH, not other channels (limited value).
• Flight tracker for travelers, including departures & arrivals from Bradley International Airport and Tweed-New Haven Airport (good local content)
•  Connecticut Lottery Results
• Send news tips
• Horoscopes
• Lastly, users can search for cheap gas prices by zip code. This is a super-useful application for Connecticut drivers on the go who want to save a few bucks on gas and need to find a cheap gas station nearby. I might start looking at WTNH mobile now that I know it has this feature.

SOURCES

Chainon, Jean Yves. “US: Mobile news market nearing maturity, according to NYT.” The Editor’s Weblog: August 14, 2008. Retrieved on 9/3/2008 from http://www.editorsweblog.org/analysis/2008/08/us_mobile_news_market_to_be_ripe.php

Emmett, Arielle. “Handheld Headlines.” American Journalism Review: August/September 2008.  Retrieved on 10/17/2008 from http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4582

The YouTube Shift

Just before the end of 2005, programmers Chad Hurley and Steve Chen launched a simple, social website that allowed anyone with an Internet connection to upload video clips and share them. Within a matter of months, YouTube.com had become a phenomenon–recognized as one of the fastest-growing websites in the world. Some 100 million video clips were being viewed daily on YouTube by summer 2006, with 65,000 videos being uploaded onto the site every 24 hours. [1] Further acknowledging YouTube as the medium of the moment, Time Magazine named “You” (referencing YouTube) as the Person of the Year for 2006.[2]

YouTube’s exponential growth in popularity serves as evidence of a revolutionary shift in the media landscape: consumers have become producers. YouTube’s user-friendly interface and social networking elements invited people to create their own communications and distribute it for free to a wide audience. People accepted the invitation en masse.

The videos posted on YouTube include home videos and remixes, personal rants, television excerpts, music videos, movie trailers, commercials and highlights from television history. Most clips are posted by users and increasingly, by producers and networks themselves.

Now, much of the content available on YouTube is frivolous. But some videos are serious, including clips of incidents that have political consequences or document important trends, reveal truths, or spread disinformation, propaganda and lies. The weighty stuff has caused some scholars to question whether video sharing sites like YouTube have the power to bring greater accountability and transparency to governments around the world. “International news operations may have thousands of professional journalists, but they will never be as omnipresent as millions of people carrying phones that record video,” argued Moisés Naím in a January 2007 article in Foreign Policy. [3]

The media business traditionally has been defined by three characteristics: information production and distribution is expensive, arduous, and usually outside of the control of ‘ordinary’ citizens. YouTube has broken that mold. Video sharing sites open doors for democratic participation, both in terms of entertainment production and political communication. And open access/sharing websites like YouTube allow for forms of expression to be distributed that might not otherwise be available to a broader audience. [4]

“The YouTube motto (‘Broadcast Yourself) is indicative of the idea that the system is designed to allow members of the general public to engage in an activity (‘broadcasting’) that was traditionally the domain of large, powerful media corporations,” wrote Christian Christensen, a new media scholar at Karlstad University in Sweden. “The importance of distribution in the media process is often overlooked, yet it is perhaps almost as important as the actual media product itself. What YouTube and other video-sharing websites do is eliminate the need for attracting the interest of the narrow number of distribution companies from the media mix and allow media producers to self-distribute by simply uploading their films straight onto the web.”

The histories of communication technologies have shown time and again that audiences rarely adopt and use media in the ways they were originally envisioned. YouTube was developed by two 20-somethings who wrote code. The audience decided how to use it. “Everyone wants to consume their media the way they want to consume it. You can’t control that,” acknowledged Stefanie Henning, a senior vice president at Fox Television Studios. [5]

YouTube is also unique in that it didn’t rely on traditional multi-million-dollar marketing campaigns to gain popularity. People learned about the site through electronic word of mouth – forwarded email links, blogs, embedding and MySpace profiles. [6] “Users want to be passionate about what their interests are. The habit of sharing them has become a cultural phenomenon,” said Richard Rosenblatt, founder and former chairman of MySpace. [7]

YouTube’s success has been attributed in large part to its easy-to-use, straightforward interface. Users do not need to log-in to view clips, or need to worry about software compatiblity, downloading files or even clicking a play button. Videos begin streaming as soon as the webpage loads, and relational videos are offered to users in a scrollable sidebar, so users can click from one clip to another without doing multiple searches. [8]

Another primary draw of YouTube is its vastness. The more users contribute to YouTube, the more value it acquires. And to be sure, consumers like YouTube because watching and/or participating is free.

Others attest that YouTube exploded into a cultural and business phenomenon over many other video-sharing websites because no other site was as willing to turn a blind eye to illegal content. “What turned it into the world’s most popular video-sharer was a series of widely watched videos that the uploaders didn’t have the legal right to put on the web,” wrote Jaime J. Weinman in MacLean’s magazine in November 2006.

The first “illegal” clip was of the Saturday Night Live sketch “Lazy Sunday.” It became a viral online phenomenon. NBC eventually demanded the skit be removed in February 2006. But by then, an estimated 5 million people had viewed the clip on YouTube, helping the site to become part of the cultural zeitgeist. [9]

The rise of YouTube has contributed to the culture of “the clip.” Specific moments that users want to watch can be searched and accessed without having to watch live broadcasts, make recordings, or wait through commercial breaks. The instantaneity of YouTube panders to the immediacy desires of modern media consumers. [10]

YouTube does have a policy of taking down a copyrighted video if the owner complains. But YouTube does not prescreen videos to make sure they’re not in violation of copyright. It allows any video to be immediately processed and distributed. By the time the owner has it taken down for violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the site has already gotten lots of exposure. And though entertainment companies like Universal have entered into agreements with YouTube to post authorized TV and movieclips, they’re still outweighed by the hundreds of other users still posting unauthorized clips every day. [11]

“You write YouTube a letter and the content gets removed within eight hours,” explained Alan Bell, a Paramount Studios’ executive. “But the site is so vast that the next day it’s up on the platform again, posted by another user.” [12]

Now YouTube’s premise–a website where people freely upload and view video of all sorts–has nothing to do with traditional journalism, but it is teaching mainstream journalists a few things about modern media consumers.[13] Audiences today are part of a networked society, and members of that network want to produce, publish and share their own content. If traditional media companies want to remain relevant, they need to become active members of the network and offer users the opportunity to create and contribute.

One positive for journalists: the YouTube shift is creating a strong demand for reliable guides – individuals, institutions, and technologies that people can trust to help sort through the morass of content and distinguish the good stuff from the bad stuff, the facts from the lies. [14]

References:

1, 4, Christian Christensen, “You Tube: The Evolution of Media?” Screen Education; 2007, Issue 45, 36-40.

2, 6, 8, 10, Lucas Hilderbrand “YouTube: Where Cultural Memory And Copyright Converge.” Film Quarterly 61, no. 1 (October 1, 2007): 48-57.

3, 14. Moisés Naím “The YouTube Effect.” Foreign Policy no. 158 (January 1, 2007): 104,103.

5, 7, 12. Michael Goldstein, “If You Can’t Beat ‘Em…” MediaWeek, vol. 17, Issue 21, (May 21, 2007)

9. Wendy N. Davis, “Downloading a File of Copyright Woes.” ABA Journal 93, (March 1, 2007): 10-11.

11. Jaime J. Weinman “Say hello to the YouTube losers.” Maclean’s, November 6, 2006, 70.

13. Francis Pisani, “Journalism and Web 2.0.” Nieman Reports 60, no. 4 (December 1, 2006): 42-44. http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/06-4NRwinter/p42-0604-pisani.html

*Note: This essay was written by Marie K. Shanahan for a graduate level course at Quinnipiac University in Spring 2008. A collaboratively-edited version of this essay is included in a Wiki called “The New Communication Professional” at http://newcompro.halavais.net.

Blogs and Journalism

“The invention of the Weblog has shoved journalism into a reformation, perhaps a revolution,” wrote Joseph Rago, an assistant editorial features editor at the Wall Street Journal[1].

The majority of blogs on the Internet are simply personal web sites — sites that exist because blogging software is free, readily available, and automates much of the HTML coding needed for web publication[2]. But for many of these “bloggers,” the motivation to use these tools is frustration with the traditional media. Now that the publishing tools are at the people’s disposal, blogs are “giving voice to those who, in the pre-Internet era, may have felt voiceless” [3].

So mainstream journalists and their traditional news organizations can hardly ignore the exponential proliferation of blogs. Blogs are challenging the news industry to embrace new ways of practicing journalism, one that places value on collaboration as a way to re-establish credibility with readers.

There is a line to be drawn between the short-form, diary-type information presented in the average blog and “journalism.” Most weblogs do not provide verifiable sources or original reporting. Most weblogs do not present news of interest to the broader public or adhere to an ideal of objectivity and fairness. Rather, the typical blog is personal, laced with a tone of informality, aimed at a niche audience and deeply opinionated.

“We rarely encounter sustained or systematic blog thought – instead panics and manias, endless rehearsings of arguments put forward elsewhere; and a tendencies to substitute ideology for cognition,” criticized Rago of Wall Street Journal[1].

But despite the news industry’s displeasure with blogs and typical bloggers, almost all major news organizations now feature professional journalist-driven blogs of their own. Seasoned journalists are using blogs to expand their own writing repertoire in the days of shrinking news hole. Others use the self-serve publication software to expand on their regular news stories, provide live ‘breaking news’ updates or eyewitness accounts, to express opinions, start conversations, and, for those who know how to blog well, build community.

Blogs are able to break down many of the existing barriers between journalists and the public because they propel journalists into a larger community where “a posting is picked up and passed from one blogger to the next, each adding community and expanding the discussion”[4]. Instead of following the highly-structured narrative of print journalism, blog writing style is more informal and approachable, inviting the reader to participate [5].

Hyperlinking is a fundamental aspect of blogging, and it is being done by journalist bloggers. Good journalists weave together information from many sources to make a bigger whole and to provide perspective. Hyperlinking allows journalist bloggers to directly link to online resources. Linking to numerous primary sources allows writers to give context to complex stories. Hyperlinking provides a level of transparency that is impossible with a printed news story. Willing readers can determine for themselves whether the subject matter has been accurately represented[6].

According to Rebecca Blood, author of “The Weblog Handbook,” “Bloggers who reference, but do not link material that might, in its entirety, undermine their conclusions, are intellectually dishonest.” Not surprisingly, blogs serve as a corrective mechanism for bad journalism. Sloppy reporting and mistakes are likely to be quickly publicized and passed around the blogosphere. The ever-watchful eye of the blogosphere is nudging the print media to pursue more balanced sourcing outside the traditional halls of government and corporations[7].

“By widening the disclosure circle through information sharing, Weblogs along with other Internet mechanism, have contributed to the truth-finding process,” observed Paul Andrews, a columnist and blogger at the Seattle Times[8].

Journalist bloggers are also taking on the role of “conversation leaders.” A blog entry is a “stub for conversation,” according to Vincent J. Maher, lecturer in new media studies at Rhodes Univ., S. Africa. News reports, generally, also start a lot of conversations. Blogging allows that conversation leader role to become more explicit. Because they offer instant interactivity, blogs engendering dialogue and exchanges[9]. Journalist bloggers can guide their conversations by being active in the dialog, linking to additional sources, sifting through new information, aggregating, encouraging good contributions, discouraging bad ones, and highlighting smart ideas from the public. What the public has to say about what’s being written on a blog is regarded as just as important as what the professional journalist wrote. Readers opinions, posted publicly, add value to the blog as a whole.

“Journalists bloggers can essentially work with citizen journalists to enrich news stories with the perspectives of “everyday Joes and Janes, who offer more voices, more texture to public debate,” wrote Jose Vargas in a Nov. 2007 article in the Washington Post.

Some mainstream journalists have even used blogs to “float” story ideas before the public and get reader input on how to pursue them[10]. Andrews, the Seattle Times blogger, observed that “in the sense that many minds contribute to greater understanding, blogs are helping journalism expand from a centralized, top-down, one-way publication processes to the many-hands, perpetual feedback loop of online communications”[11].

Journalistic blogging is taking on new forms, too, such as microblogging. Some mainstream news organizations are now using a social networking website called Twitter to text message 140-character-maximum reporting ‘updates’ from the field.

“One of the things were are supposed to do a journalists is take people where they can’t go,” John Dickerson, chief political correspondent for the online magazine Slate, told the New York Times[12]. “[Microblogging] is much more authentic, because it is really from inside the room.”

Microblogging often amounts to about two sentences of information, presented with typos and incomplete sentences. But it has been called “genuine” and at times “enlightening” because it takes advantage of the immediacy of the web and mobile information and communications technology (ICT), and taps into the curiosity and impatience of modern information consumers [13].

But blogging by professional journalists does not come without problems, and risks. Bloggers can’t help but thrive on their opinions and the medium is fast and furious. Less rigorous editing, if any at all, is the norm because of the web’s immediacy. Readers will not perceive a difference between a news organization’s online blog post and a story that is printed. Weblogs maintained and written by professional journalists at traditional news organizations will be judged as “journalism” if they uphold the same standards as the entire organization[14].

‘Behaving in a manner that safeguards the integrity of the news institution and avoids real or perceived conflicts of interest is central to the compact between a journalist and his employer,” wrote Brian Toolan, former editor of The Hartford Courant[15]. “Journalists should operate in ways that don’t display bias or predisposition. These are ethical considerations, not legal ones, but they are central to the conduct of journalism.”

References:

1. Rago, Joseph. The Blog Mob. Wall Street Journal, (December 20, 2006). Eastern Edition.

2. Andrews, Paul. Is Blogging Journalism? Nieman Reports. Vol. 57. No. 3 (Fall 2003): 63-64.

3. Vargas, Jose Antonio. Storming the News Gatekeepers; On the Internet, Citizen Journalists Raise Their Voices. The Washington Post. (November 27, 2007).

4, 5, 10. Grabowicz, Paul. Weblogs Bring Journalists Into A Larger Community. Nieman Reports. Vol. 57. No. 3: 74-76.

6. Blood, Rebecca. Weblogs and Journalism: Do They Connect? Nieman Reports. Vol. 57. No. 3 (Fall 2003): 61-63.

7. 8, 9, 11. Andrews, Paul. Is Blogging Journalism? Nieman Reports. Vol. 57. No. 3 (Fall 2003): 63-64.

12, 13. Cohen, Noam. Campaign Reporting in Under 140 Taps. New York Times. Jan. 21, 2008, Late Edition. C3.

14. Howell, Deborah. A Blog’s Blast Damage. The Washington Post, (February 11, 2007). Final Edition. http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed February 2, 2008).

15. Toolan, Brian. An Editor Acts to Limit a Staffer’s Weblog. Nieman Reports. .Vol. 57. No. 3 (Fall 2003): 92-93

*Note: This essay was written by Marie K. Shanahan for a graduate level course at Quinnipiac University in Spring 2008. A collaboratively-edited version of this essay is included in a Wiki called “The New Communication Professional” at http://newcompro.halavais.net.

State of the News Media 2008

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

“The state of the American news media in 2008 is more troubled than a year ago.

And the problems, increasingly, appear to be different than many experts have predicted.

Critics have tended to see technology democratizing the media and traditional journalism in decline. Audiences, they say, are fragmenting across new information sources, breaking the grip of media elites. Some people even advocate the notion of “The Long Tail,” the idea that, with the Web’s infinite potential for depth, millions of niche markets could be bigger than the old mass market dominated by large companies and producers.1

The reality, increasingly, appears more complex….”

– http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org

Marketing to the Long Tail

A powerful new model has emerged within the economics of e-commerce, observed Chris Anderson in his 2004 Wired magazine article, “The Long Tail.” [1] Today’s consumers have highly-individualized tastes that include more than just mainstream fare. With the help of foresighted, all-inclusive online retailers, people are getting what they want: offbeat movie rentals from Netflix, obscure books from Amazon.com, indie music downloads from iTunes, and outrageously specific auctions from eBay.

The long tail theory asserts that consumers are willing to seek out those niche products that appeal to their innermost sense of self. [2] Long tail retailers are first attracting people with their prominent mainstream offerings, and then keeping them clicking and buying with the obscure. These online purveyors combine infinite shelf space and unlimited selection with real-time information about buying trends and public opinion. Recommendations – generated by either human editors or genre databases – drive demand deeper into vast catalogs of choices.

“Everyone’s taste departs from mainstream somewhere, and the more we explore alternatives, the more we’re drawn to them,” Anderson wrote.

Niche markets have become big business. Where marketers once ignored the “tail” because they did not have the means to make obscure products available to their audiences, the internet is allowing companies to reach well-defined micro-markets. The limitations of distribution costs and shelf space have ceased to exist. Successful online retailers are now making just as much money from “esoteric” purchases as they are from mainstream “hits” [3].

Make everything available. “Almost anything is worth offering on the off chance it will find a buyer,” Anderson recommended.

But the more products retailers make available, the harder it can become for consumers to sift though the choices to find the product they want. People will be overwhelmed and less likely to buy if the catalog is poorly organized. So it is imperative that long tail retailers create user-friendly web sites with interfaces that are easily navigable and provide intiutive search tools to facilitate ’self-discovery’ of products [4].

There are three other long tail forces that have become prevalent. First, the tools of production have been open-sourced, giving the masses the ability to make their own products and media. Second, The tools of distribution have also been ‘democratized.’ EBay, for example, allows any user to reach millions of potential customers by listing a product on its web site. And third, supply and demand have been connected. Consumers can be introduced to new products and drive demand for them through recommendations, electronic word-of-mouth, blogs or customer reviews. [5]

Long tail success seems to boil down to a finely-tuned “open network of more.” So as consumer attitudes and expectations shift, so must marketing strategies. Marketers are dealing with a networked public. As such, the principles of the long tail must also be applied to the marketing of the long tail.

Marketers should use all possible venues to get a message in front of the intended audience. Marketing is being made “viral” with the diffusion of information about a product and its adoption over the network.[6] Companies can find new opportunities for “customer retention” and “lifetime value” by applying the concepts of dialogue marketing and network-building. Traditionally, most companies have believed that 80 percent of their business came from 20 percent of their customers. However, by applying long tail relationship-building principles, companies can do a better job of retaining all customers, specifically those customers who are not in the top 20 percent of revenue-producers. [7]

Word-of-mouth marketing is especially notable in a long tail world. Word-of-mouth exchanges are no longer restricted to small-group interactions between individuals. Consumers are using the internet as a personal publishing tool and sharing their experiences and opinions regarding products and/or services with anyone and everyone through emails, message boards, reader recommendations and/or blogs.

Blogs are able to quickly spread information at the grassroots level. They are open to frequent widespread observation, and “offer an inexpensive opportunity to capture large volumes of information flows at the individual level.” And within the blogosphere, sharing discussion of a new and interesting topic with others in one’s immediate social circle may bring pleasure or even increased status to that individual. [8]

Marketing strategies for products and services can incorporate the all-inclusive nature of the long tail. Marketers are continuing to use traditional public relations methods, such as press releases and media kits sent to mainstream media journalists, as well as garnering the attention of influential people within a community who can really help boost the exposure of a product. Marketers should not abandon paid advertising in mainstream media – newspapers, radio, television, billboards, as well as in online media such as Google ads and banner ads on target-audience and genre-specific web sites. Any product or organization should also have its own web site, serving as its public face to the world.

But to tap the long tail audience, marketers have to expand upon what they’ve done in the past. Consumers are showing increasing resistance to traditional forms of advertising such as TV or newspaper ads. When it comes to niche products, using a traditional advertising approach is impractical and probably not very effective. Long tail marketing is more feasible because it exploits existing social networks by personalizing the experience for customers and encouraging them to share niche product information with their friends and the world-at-large. Targeted marketing at networked virtual communities is more advantageous both to the merchant and the consumer, who will benefit from learning about new products.[9]

Movies, for example, take advantage of this type of marketing. Movie trailers and film photo galleries are made available on the official movie web sites. The same marketing assets are also distributed to mainstream media groups such as newspapers, niche web sites such as IMDB.com, and social networking sites such as YouTube and MySpace. Fan web sites, particularly fan bloggers, also play a big part in the marketing. Marketers are tapping into a highly-captive audiences and allowing the network of fans to play a part in the development and release of films. This niche audience — a networked community — can build even more momentum and resonance for a product.

References:

Chris Anderson, “The Long Tail,” Wired Magazine 12, no. 10 (October, 2004).

Rick Ferguson, Kelly Hlavinka. “The long tail of loyalty: how personalized dialogue and customized rewards will change marketing forever.” The Journal of Consumer Marketing 23, no. 6 (September 20, 2006): 357-361. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0736-3761.htm

David Meerman Scott. “Chase the Long Tail to the Next Frontier.” EContent, September 1, 2006, 48. http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed February 28, 2008).

Erik Brynjolfsson, Yu Jeffrey Hu, Michael D. Smith “From Niches to Riches: Anatomy of the Long Tail.” MIT Sloan Management Review 47, no. 4 (July 1, 2006): 67-71. .

“PROFILE: What is the ‘long tail’?” Brand Strategy, March 12, 2007, 19.

Jure Leskovec , Lada A. Adamic , Bernardo A. Huberman, The dynamics of viral marketing, Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Electronic commerce, p.228-237, June 11-15, 2006, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Also, ACM Transactions on the Web, 1, 1 (May 2007). http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ladamic/papers/viral/viralTWeb.pdf (accessed February 28, 2008).

Rick Ferguson, Kelly Hlavinka. “The long tail of loyalty: how personalized dialogue and customized rewards will change marketing forever.” The Journal of Consumer Marketing 23, no. 6 (September 20, 2006): 357-361. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0736-3761.htm

Gruhl, D., Guha, R., Liben-Nowell, D., and Tomkins, A. “Information Diffusion Through Blogspace.” In Proceedings of the 13th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW’04), May 2004, pp. 491–501. http://people.csail.mit.edu/dln/papers/blogs/idib.pdf (accessed February 28, 2008).

Jure Leskovec , Lada A. Adamic , Bernardo A. Huberman, The dynamics of viral marketing, Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Electronic commerce, p.228-237, June 11-15, 2006, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA . Also, ACM Transactions on the Web, 1, 1 (May 2007). http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ladamic/papers/viral/viralTWeb.pdf (accessed February 28, 2008).

*Note: This essay was written by Marie K. Shanahan for a graduate level course at Quinnipiac University in Spring 2008. A collaboratively-edited version of this essay is included in a Wiki called “The New Communication Professional” at http://newcompro.halavais.net.