I‘ve been pondering that titular mantra for while now. I’ve got to the point where I’m wondering whether my focus on the idea that the web will not just simply cough up a story is really about a broader shift in mindset that journalists need to make or more about me getting my head around the process.
So I’m posting this to get it out of my head.
It got in my head again at the end of last week as I found myself eavesdropping on a group of students sat at their computers.
“I need to do a search for a story for my portfolio assignment” says one student who then proceeds to fire up a collection of news sites including the BBC and a number of different local news providers.
Frustrating as I find this behaviour sometimes, I know it’s not limited to students.
Reverse engineering stories - finding an article online and then unpicking the threads - is more common than I think any of us a prepared to admit. Is that a bad thing? Maybe not, but it happens. But that’s not finding a story, it’s just (re)reporting the story for your audience. It’s also a mono-media approach to the journalistic process. Everything is geared towards servicing an article at a publication point.
Web 2.0 journalism
Working the ‘Web 2.0′ way approaches the story from a different direction. It builds a critical mass of content through the appropriate application of digital technologies. Web searches, crowdsourcing, alerts and all the other good stuff can be weaved in to the ‘traditional‘ journalistic process to serve the increasingly voracious content machine.
But does that process really address where stories come from?
What you will find on the web is data and information. But they are not stories. They can help develop and support a story but they are meaningless without context. You need to know the story you are trying to tell before they become useful. You still need the story.
People make stories
Ultimately, stories come from people. They come from the collective experiences, social contexts and relevence of communities. To find a story and know why it’s a astory, you have to be part of or active in those communities. That’s something that ‘traditional’ journalism is supposed to be good at. Understanding the communities/audience they serve. Being relevant through the intimate knowledge of a patch. Having the ‘in’ at the ground floor of a story.
Of course the web will get you next to people, sometimes in the most direct and immediate way. But the web still won’t give up that story unless you approach those people in the same way you would in real life. That means going to the places where people gather and inhabiting them.
The thing to remember is that people don’t gather in the same place and, more importantly, you cannot force them to. So even though RSS feeds and alerts will allow you to monitor the conversations effectivley (and if you arent using these tools then you should be) you need to get out there.
Platforms are places for conversation
Web 2.0 is all about platforms. Sites that enable people to do things are real honeypots. But the really successful web2.0 sites are the ones that encourage conversation between users. We have thise platforms in real life. People will go to the post office to send a letter or the pub to get a drink. But the conversation in those places could be about anything. The same thing happens online.
Take a look at Pistonheads - a site about motoring. The site has some very popular forums
Over 2 million posts in the online 'pub'
Lots of good stuff about cars (in minute detail) but take a look at the Pie and Piston (general chat areas in forums are often called the pub, bar or take pub names). 2,401,820 posts. Over 2 million posts and the majority are not about motoring.
Push not pull
The thing I recognise more and more is that’s a challenge in a journalistic environment where strategy and staffing is defined by pull rather than push; the idea that you can bring everything to your desktop could be one of the reasons more journalist find themeselve effectivly desk bound.
But we can still exhibit a bit of that push behaviour when it comes to communities even if it is just virtual. Think of the platform as a place - a shop, a pub or a street corner.
Hang around long enough and someone will give you a story.
Here’s my contribution to this weekend’s Carnival of Journalism, on the theme of practical tips for changing newsrooms for a new media age:
1. Set up your systems so that journalists get emails when someone comments on their stories. Nothing kills a conversation like someone who doesn’t listen.
2. Make an effort to meet social media users in your community/beat in person at least once a month (it helps if you set up a meeting or join one that exists). Failing that, have a video conversation. Both strengthen community more than just text. Jo Geary does this brilliantly in Birmingham.
3. Make 30 minutes every week to think about how you do your job, identify problems or frustrations, and blog about it, inviting suggestions on how you can do it better, or asking if others can help.
4. Try a new toy every fortnight - online services like Seesmic, Twitter, blogging, Ning, social bookmarking, Dipity, Yahoo Pipes, Shozu; hardware like the Zoom H2, Flip camcorder, and N95. IF you don’t have any ideas check out TechCrunch.
5. Regularly distribute information internally to all reporters and editors about what is happening on the website - popular stories, most commented on, bookmarked, old stories getting new interest, most visited on mobile, what times most accessed, where traffic is coming from, what search terms are most popular, what stories are getting a ‘long tail’ of small but consistent traffic.
6.If the online side of things seems like ‘extra work’ find out ways to make it less onerous and more automatic - explore Firefox extensions, bookmarking buttons, shortcuts; using ‘downtime’ to update via text or mobile web; and how to syndicate an RSS feed from one place to another (e.g. Twitter’s feed or Delicious feed to your blog).
7. If you are lucky enough to spend most of your time away from a desk and computer, work to keep it that way. A good mobile phone and Shozu may come in useful.
I’d welcome your ideas and reactions.
(Posted from my mobile, so apologies for no links)
Related posts:
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
A couple of recent emails have brought home to me just how many people are being taught the ‘News Diamond’ model I first proposed as part of my Model for a 21st Century Newsroom series.
So I’d love to know - are you teaching this? What has the reaction been like? Or are you a student learning about it? What do you think?
When I first blogged it I was disappointed by the lack of critical reaction. Come on people, add to it, pick it apart, remix it! Comments please.
Related posts:
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
(This entry was originally posted by Dave Lee on jBlog)
A few days ago on this blog, Paul Bradshaw wrote what he called one of the most important posts he’s ever made. Here it is.
In it he describes how the era of the awkward, socially backward geek is nearly behind us. They’re not geeks, he says, they’re early adopters. And you’d better listen to them if you want to stay a step ahead of the game.
What Paul didn’t mention in his post, and what I feel is worth pointing out, is that as well as being early adopters, geeks are also early rejectors too.
In other words, listen to the geeks. If they use something for a long time, then it’ll slowly become mainstream. If they ditch it, then you should ditch it too.
This theory stacks up for almost any example I can think of. Except one: RSS.
Really Simple Syndication. Now, you and I know it’s brilliantly simple, but for some reason it has yet to hit the mainstream.
So why hasn’t it taken off? I’ll offer up some reasons for debate:
Why can’t feeds just be called ’stories’? Why don’t we ‘follow’ stories instead of subscribe to them?
Why are we relying on explanations like this to educate readers?
Newspapers need to make and market their own RSS readers.
Think about it. Make an RSS reader, and invite people to sign up. Once set up, offer a huge array of simple one-click subscribes, sorry, follows. You could even make this follow list user generated — if you find a lot of people are manually adding feeds, then these can be added to the simple one-click list.
And if you’re wondering how it makes money, then think of it this way: “Hello Mr Website Owner, for £loadsa-wonga we’ll add you to our list of feeds,” you say.
“Wow! Great! Now I have thousands of new readers clicking on my ads!” say they.
What’s more, just think of the hits. Now that your readers don’t need to go to each of their favourite sites to read new stuff, they’ll spend more time on your site. And with all those reading habits you’ll be able to target adverts like never before, right down to knowing if Bob from Newquay keeps making the type bigger. Maybe he wants some new reading glasses?
It solves all the problems I’ve described in this post. First, you’ll have a nice new budget to advertise your ‘Story Follow’ service, thus people will know what it is. Second, because you’ve made the technology you can strip out all the horrible terms like feed and subscribe and replace them with friendlier ones. Words that makes sense. And finally… users will feel at home using a website from a brand they trust.
Everybody wins.
The New York Times is launching the public beta of its TimesPeople social network this evening, an offering we first reviewed earlier this summer.
In the morning, readers of the NYTimes.com will see a new toolbar at the top of the home page and most NYTimes pages. They’ll be able to register and join TimesPeople for free and start sharing recommendations and comments with fellow Times readers immediately. They’ll also be able to view public activities of other members.
Users will also be able to share ratings and reviews of movies, Broadway shows, restaurants and more. Here’s the member’s home page where you will see a live feed of activities by TimesPeople members and what they’re sharing and saying:
All members will have profile pages which will show their public activities as well as the activities of other network members and lists of people they follow and those that follow them just like on Twitter. They’ll also be able to sign up for RSS feeds with the latest activities of other users and sync their updates to their Facebook news feed through a TimesPeople application. There’s even a Digg-like section on the home page that shows all of the top NYTimes news items as voted by fellow TimesPeople members.
Naturally some people will be concerned about security and privacy matters regarding their activities on the NYTimes website. The good news is that TimesPeople will NOT monitor standard site activity such as reading articles, clicking links, or viewing graphics. These activities as well as e-mailing articles or videos will remain private.
Over all, TimesPeople is a well-designed service for loyal NYTimes readers who want to use social networking features. While the concept and execution are on point, one gets the feeling that a better idea would be to have a social network for newspapers that wasn’t dedicated to just one source, in this case the well-respected NYTimes. Perhaps users would be better served if they could subscribe to other newspaper sites much as they can with RSS readers and share comments and stories that way. Maybe call it The PaperBoy? In any event, if you love the NYTimes then you should enjoy TimesPeople.
---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
The New York Times (Tries) Getting More Social
NYT Pushing Back at WSJ With Boost to Business Coverage
“If there is one problem that plagues all web applications, it’s the problem of getting people to sign-up.” If a Web 2.0 Expo NYC seminar is introduced with such a sentence, a blogger should know its place. Maybe he thinks other things are more interesting, like hanging around with start-ups. But when he reads about a problem the whole entrepreneurial part of his readership faces, he knows what to do. Go to the seminar, listen to user interface designer Joshua Porter how to fix it, and write about it on your blog.
It’s not (all) about filling in formsPorter kicked off with discussing some sign-up forms and shared some lessons on how to improve them. Like explaining why people should fill in specific text-fields and resisting the temptation of gaining info that’s only relevant for advertisers. He also addressed a problem you might recognize: the captcha’s which keep becoming increasingly difficult. Porter: “In a few months, it will be a square box with just colors and you’ll have to make the letters up”.
But then Porter quickly switched to the REAL problem. As it’s not about the simplicity of signing up, because - Porter quoted the inventor of the mouse - “if ease of use were the only requirement, we would all be riding tricycles.”.
Are people motivated enough to care?The real problem is best explained as a hurdle between “interested” and “signing up”. Porter: “You need to convince people your start-up is worth their time, energy, and change of their behavior”. That requires another way of thinking. Porter addressed an article by John T. Goodville, which states that people tend to overvalue the software they’re currently using, software makers tend to overvalue the software they offer. “Why would I use a better calendar tool if I’m already happy with iCal?”, Porter said. People tend to love stuff they already own more.
Three types of visitorsTherefore, start-ups should adopt another mindset, namely the good old “what’s in it for the customer”. If you want people to sign up, design your page for three different visitor types:
Porter continued with elaborating on three strategies that will help you to design the best sign-up page possible.
1. Immediate engagement!
Show visitors the experience before they sign up. Fine examples of this are Geni and Netvibes. Signing up on Geni equals filling in the first branch of your family tree and when visiting Netvibes for the first time, you can immediately start building your start page. Want to save it for later? Sign up please.
2. Provide levels of description
To address the needs of the tree different types of visitors, build a start page that contains different levels of information. Like Freshbooks did on their “almost perfect” welcoming page.
3. Leverage social influence
Show your first-time visitors that other people love you. So put up some testimonials and press reviews and, when possible, show a graph of user activity. If it works for other people, the service might also work for themselves.
Basecamp has around 90 testimonials on their site, some of which are depicted on the frontpage. Porter: “After reading the fifteenth testimonial it’s really hard to get away with not being positive about it”.
Jaiku shows a cool graph of their users all around the world. When you visit this page for the first time, you instantly get an idea of how active the community is:
Twitter has a cool way of showing press reviews. They depict them as if they were written as tweets:
The inspiration for Porter’s presentation came from his book Designing for the Social Web. So you might want to buy that if you liked this post.
