Donald O'Mahony's Comm 361 class blog

As professor Klein always says, the news wants to be free. This chapter says that news now wants to be analyzed, shared and commented on. It is becoming more of a conversation. This is a good thing for journalism, but the chapter raises three questions.

• How do journalists participate in the conversation without sacrificing their objectivity or credibility?
• What about legal and ethical issues now that everyone can publish anything they want on a professional news site?

• What happens when you really want the audience to participate, but they don’t?

A conversation can be found on almost any modern news website. Look no further than the comments section. Journalists will have to deal with the offensive comments that are sure to show up,  but that is just part of the business now. Learn to sort through the mess and find the useful comments.

Image courtesy of Newton High School Blog

Kelly McBride is the ethics group leader for The Poynter Institute. She gave some suggestions for using social media:

• Use social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook because familiarity with the tools is important
• Be mindful that you represent more than just yourself. Even if you are an individual journalist, the stakes are higher than with other professions
• Presume your tweets, status updates or other content on these sites will go further in terms of reach than you intend for them to go
• Ask your boss to follow you on Twitter because it’s a good accountability measure

The chapter says the the link is the primary building block of the digital age because it connects one piece of information to another. The secondary building block is comments or contribution. People contribute more to online news than just comments, including photos, video, message board posts and blog posts. This is a good way to make the story better.

Bradley Horowitz came up with the 1-10-100 rule while  working as a senior director at Yahoo. The rule states:

• 1 percent of the user community, including the journalists on news sites, actually create content
• 10 percent of the user community will “synthesize” the content by posting a comment, e-mailing a link to a friend, authoring a blog post on a separate site and linking back to it, voting it up or down, etc.
• 100 percent of the user community will benefit from the actions of the first two groups

It would be smart to use these ideas as advice. Social networking is a good way to build a following and find sources. Just make sure to keep control of the conversation as much as possible. Set guidelines for participants, monitor offensive postings, know your legal responsibilities and correct errors. These steps will bring you better credibility.

In 1970, Phil Meyer wrote that “they are raising the ante on what it takes to be a journalist.” This statement has never been more true than it is today. This chapter talks about how a journalist can break through the barriers between themselves and their readers.

The chapter focuses on three different reporting methods that are becoming more popular in modern journalism. The first is crowdsourcing, which basically uses groups of people to assist with the work of one

 person.

The book gives an example of encyclopedias. The online version of Encyclopaedia Britannica can’t update pages as quickly as Wikipediabecause Wikipedia is updated by many volunteers instead of a select few employees.

The second method in the chapter is open-source reporting. The objective here is to become more collaborative with the reader. Instead of keeping stories secret until publishing, some outlets now release story ideas to the public and have people assist with the reporting. Instead of asking for specific help like in crowdsourcing, this method lets readers help in whatever way they can. This allows reporters to seem less biased because their readers are having an input on the story.

Blogging is great, but microblogging is an effective tool if you just want to make a quick point or comment. It is usually limited to 140 characters or less, which makes it popular because it is both easy to publish and consume. This chapter gives you the tools you need to be an effective microblogger.

Some popular microblogging sites are Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Status updates, quick announcements and small thoughts have made microblogging incredibly popular without people even realizing they were doing it at all. News outlets now use microblogging as a way to release breaking news before there is an opportunity to release a full story.

Rob Quigley, online editor of the Austin American-Statesman, gave these tips on the power of Twitter for journalism:

• Every tweet you send should have personality. Quality over quantity
• Ask for story tips from your followers. Pass them to reporters.
• Keep control over the account. Don’t turn the automatic feed back on.

Learning the basics of twitter is a necessity for a young journalist in this era. It is useful for growing a following as well as creating sources and story ideas.

• Post — 140 words or less
• Reply — put the @ symbol in front of the username of the person you are commenting on, or just click the arrow on their tweet
• Direct Message — click the direct  messages link and select the person you wish to contact. This is a way of keeping the message private.

After you get the basics down, it is time to start tweeting. Post about what you are reading, thinking and doing. You can also tweet questions or answers to other peoples questions. Make sure to follow what others are tweeting and make comments. This will help to build your following.

Twitter can also be used from many mobile phones. This makes it possible to tweet where ever you are instead of waiting to get to a computer. Many reporters are using smartphones to release breaking news on twitter while at news conferences, local sporting events and other events not covered on tv