online-first newsroom - Michael Becker on Diigo

30 Nov 09

Online first? Four ways to show you mean it

Michele McLellan at the Knight Digital Media Center lists four ways newsrooms can show they are dedicated to being "online first."

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online online-first newsroom Michele McLellan Knight Digital Media Center

15 Oct 09

Guardian to become 24/7 Web-first newspaper

The Guardian's guidelines for being a Web-first newspaper. These are from 2007.

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guideline Jeff Jarvis Guardian web online-first newsroom Alan Rusbridger

If we don’t update our site continuously readers will go elsewhere.
It means publishing more of our news according to the demands of the web rather than the rhythms and expectations of a newspaper
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- Our production processes must reflect the needs of the web (e.g. the use of web-friendly headlines as well as newspaper headlines, links, tagging, key wording and so on.)

05 Oct 09

Five phrases to outlaw in newsrooms

Journalist and Web 2.0 enthusiast Alison Gow lists a few of the things she never wants to hear in a newsroom again.

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online-first newsroom web journalism Alison Gow

Whether the issue is reporters speaking up, or news editors listening to them, or editors being clear on what the agenda is, it's not an insurmountable problem.
Blogging isn't a mystery, but why some people in a newsroom view it as a chore to be avoided it at every opportunity is. The internet isn't going away and advertisers are not going to start hurling money at newspapers like they used to; this means that anyone planning on staying in journalism should want to be learning new skills - not only do these open up whole new ways of story-telling, but they make sense from a point of self-interest.
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- Don't wait to be asked - think! Plan ahead in the same way you marshal your questions in advance for a planned interview, and if it's a breaking news story then the scope for instant digital journalism is even greater - tweet, post photos of what's happening to your own or your newspaper's Twitter stream, livestream action using Qik or Bambuser, and be proactive. Text is the least creative part of any news story; ultimately, no matter how well-written your colleagues tell you it is, it's simply 350-plus words to fill a space in a news page. If you supplement your text with still and moving images, a podcast, an interactive Q&A, or a liveblog, how much more dynamic and memorable will your complete package be? How much more valuable will it be to the audience? The answer is simple: A lot.
- The Don'ts and the Won'ts usually revert to Stress, Morose or Baffled mode when asked to do something vaguely digital, and then don't do it, citing various problems, from technical to time. The main problem, of course, is that their chosen industry has evolved, and they haven't, yet.
- Any journalists who use the phrase "Digital doesn't make money", or its evil twin "Print is where the money is" when questioning (aloud or as part of an inner debate) the value of a newspaper's website need to stop and consider this question: Why does suddenly this matter to you?
  
  Someone raised an interesting point with me recently by asking why newspaper journalists - who have always viewed themselves as above the sordid business of making money - have suddenly started wielding digital income statistics like a shield.

18 Sep 09

What's an online-first newsroom?

Gina Chen discusses six attributes that she says form the foundation of an online-first newsroom.

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newsroom digital Gina Chen journalism online-first newsroom

Newspapers have struggled for decades with the idea that they have the story, but they can’t tell it until the next morning (or afternoon.) So now we have the Web. Use it. Don’t wait.
Every print story should have a Web element that’s meaningful, not just thrown in because, “you, know, we need that Web thing.”
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- Our job is no longer reporting the news. It becomes aggregating, making meaningful, providing context, explaining, grouping together, updating, all the type of things that a museum curator does

13 Sep 09

WordPress, Twitter, the Elks Club: 10 new routines at a news startup

Michael Anderson at Nieman Journalism Lab looks at the day-to-day operation of the Web-based Ann Arbor Chronicle. It's a lot of work.

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Michael Andersen online-first newsroom online-only Nieman Journalism Lab Ann Arbor Chronicle

how will tomorrow’s hyperlocal news professionals structure their day?

15 May 09

J-Schools Play Catchup

The New York Times' Brian Stelter looks at how journalism schools are adapting to the world of new media and the new technologies that drive print in the Web world.

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New York Times journalism education digital online-first newsroom training Brian Stelter

The changes are forcing colleges and universities to rethink what a journalism education should look like. The perennial debate about journalism programs — theoretical teaching versus professional skill building — has been displaced by more urgent questions: How can you help students find sustainable business models, while introducing the formerly verboten subject of the business side? What are the implications for the craft of journalism in the shift to digital? And how do you position students for an uncertain future in the media?
The new forward-thinking approach is to bracket traditional journalistic values withWeb classes and an entrepreneurial spirit. Take the weekly entrepreneurship course at Arizona State taught by Dan Gillmor, a former columnist for The San Jose Mercury News, in which students create products for news consumers — last fall, a team built a site for local filmmakers. The purpose of the course, Mr. Gillmor says, is to learn to “invent your own jobs.” (Because they may have to.) Mr. Gillmor also runs the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, a catalyst for the student projects; that the center even exists is a testament to the changes that are afoot within journalism education.
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- The earthquake underfoot, as Mr. McGuire put it, is enough to leave an observer wondering: Why would any college student choose to study journalism today?
- “With the advances of technology over time, the way we write has evolved and changed, but for me, it is still exciting to be involved with the print process,” she says. Ms. Riel was blissfully unaware of the newspaper business’s hardships until she enrolled in her first classes. “I wish I had known,” she says, but still she does not waver. She considers herself to be a pioneer, kindling a notion of new media as the Wild West. “It’s exciting to help decide how news will get to the public” in the future, she says.
- Training students to fill the profession’s holes requires a different kind of education. The Cronkite School, named for the CBS anchor, in whose honor an endowment was set up 25 years ago, underwent a comprehensive curriculum revision in 2007, and appears to be predicated on the notion that tomorrow’s journalists will have more career options but in a much more complicated environment. “All-platform journalists,” in the new lexicon, should be able to shoot a video, narrate an audio clip, and put up a Web site as well as write an article and blog about it.
- J-schools have always offered writing and editing exercises and real-world experiences in combination with, to varying degrees, courses on ethics and theory in which the underpinnings of a free press or the implications of bias are given their due. Some believe that more intellectual substance is needed in the classroom, leaving skill-building and “delivery systems” for on the job.
- Fundamentally, J-schools are about teaching students how to be storytellers, says Tom Fiedler, the dean of the College of Communication at Boston University. He subscribes to the philosophy that “it’s the soup and not the bowl that provides the nourishment we need.” He adds: “We want to teach our students to make a great soup. What they serve it in matters little.”
- Mr. Beckman would beg to differ. The new media, he says, have required professors to revise their classes on media ethics and law. Multimedia reporters must know how to edit audio and video without taking quotes out of context, and to abide bycopyright law when incorporating music. In updating a blog post, they must recognize when a formal correction is warranted. They are called upon to alternate between objectivity and self-expression — a new New Journalism enabled by the Web, for a generation raised on Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly.

26 Mar 09

2020 vision: What's next for news

Dan Conover guides us through a pretty reasonable tour of what he thinks the next decade of journalism is going to look like, and you know what? The Internet is a big deal. Shocking.

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Dan Conover journalism Internet Web2.0 Web3.0 api online-first newsroom optimism future of journalism predictions xark media business opensource

the first meaningful test won't come until a major American city
loses its only metro daily. So wait.
Newspapers may be failing, but most do a passable job of limiting serious competition in their markets. What succeeds in the shadow of an established metro, therefore, may not be what ultimately winds up contending for the market positions vacated by Old Media giants.
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- while most cities will generate enough
  revenue to support a professional press, watch for a wave of
  cooperative agreements between competing media companies and the
  popularization of the term “our broadcast partners.”

25 Mar 09

How to get your local online news site off the ground, in seven steps

Joe Murphy delivers a business plan in seven sentences. Sounds easy... Too easy.

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journalism entrepreneurship business Joe Murphy online-first newsroom blogging

16 Feb 09

A typical day in an online-first newsroom

Gina Chen takes a look at what a typical day in an online-first newsroom might look like.

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Gina Chen online-first newsroom newsroom journalism workflow

You still need to engage readers through more traditional means — going to a school board meeting to meet officials and parents if you cover schools or having an informal coffee with sources.
And of course, you’ll still need to interview folks, do research and write stories.
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- I firmly believe that journalist bloggers need to blog pretty much every day.

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