My first piece as a backpack journalist for NBC

I added an extra project to my list of 'things to do this summer.'

And I'm happy to say it's done - so I can focus on the final stretch for both summer classes.

But I thought some of you might enjoy seeing it.

Just so you know, I am planning to use this tape as part of my capstone final project. But since I'd already gathered the footage, I pitched the story to NBC and they said they would be happy to take a package on it. But they did not pay me for the piece. (note: I had to take vacation days to shoot it, and traveled on my own dime.) This was free content for NBC - other then a few script sessions with a producer in New York. But I do, now, have a package with my name and voice - not to mention tape I shot and edited - on the NBC website. So that's the trade off. It's not a sustainable financial set up. (No kidding!) But OK for now.

The piece was posted on the NBC website last Friday - July 17th, 2009.

Please click here to see it.

take care -

Sheila

Retooling IG website - answering the 7 questions

Jul 9, 2009

Seven questions for tonight

1. Who is our target audience (hint: Don't try to be all things to all people)

1^st - Media and congress are main focus.

2^nd- But general public – taxpayers are the secondary focus. Which includes

Interior Dept workers could be part of our target audience.

2. What is the competitive landscape? (hint: Sites that do it well)

GAO does it better. They have well defined list of recent reports – new technologies like Twitter – links for congress and media clearly labeled.

3. How do we differentiate ourselves? (hint: Secret sauce)

Create an IG home page that reflects the many projects that the office has investigated and issued reports on. Using visuals – still pictures and video. With summaries that are easy to read and link you to full reports.

One element of this - MAP of the U-S to highlight investigations. List topics to right on map. This could be a small icon on the main front page – when you click on it pops up and can be interactive.

4. How do we create our site? (hint: Staff and schedule)

Have a core of editors – two people – who write synopsis of the project. And organize the front page. Public Relations person have to Twitter info about latest reports. And IT person will execute the act of putting new items on website. Independent contractor already hired to redesign the site. Create template that others can implement.

5. How do we get our content? (hint: Pre-built, manual, automatic, updated)

From investigations, audits, evaluations, inspections and assessments. Many of these, already conducted by IG employees, have video and still pictures as part of their reports. These investigators already are use to doing two versions of their reports – one for the pubic and one for internal files.

6. How do we market our site? (hint: Spread the word)

Get list of media outlets and have PR person get email lists of names to alert them to the report. Send a press release – highlighting there are visuals - and link to report on website. Also note main website address.

Twitter, facebook, YouTube look at what GAO is doing

http://www.gao.gov/press/gao_enlists_new_technologies2009jul07.pdf

There is an exisiting campaign marketing the hotline complaint line. Needs to be updated and include website address. And link website to recovery.gov – and on the recovery.gov site have a link to IG site.

Change the website address to InteriorIG.gov – easier to market then the current – doioig – (dept of interior office of inspector general).

7. How do we sustain the site? (hint: Show me the $$$)

Federal appropriations – and employees already on the payroll. President Obama has already said he wants to make the federal government more interactive. So

Elevator (short) pitch for project Idea

More than 10-thousand print reporters either retired or were laid off so far this year (in 2009). But the newsrooms are still open and trying to figure out how they can interact with readers &/or customers while operating with smaller staffs. I say we design a program to help these newsrooms bring some of the online digital tools to their websites  - so they are more interactive. Once the program is up and running we can start a consulting business to travel to various newsrooms (or national conventions and conduct sample training seminars) and train the news managers and staffers on how to incorporate these skills into their daily routines.  

How do you build communities on line?

I don't really belong to any on line communities. So I started this week's assignment blog with the question posed above. And found a wonderful site that talks about it. Here is a clip from her webpage - 

Conclusion: what makes a successful online community? A single, easy-to-use feature. Click here to participate. Do only this one thing. After you get your participants “addicted,” go ahead and add another thing. Most of us are too busy to learn how to use all the features of a full-featured online community. 

That line totally speaks to me. She lists some sites that are trying to build communities, as well. 

If you'd like to read more about her approach - click on this link.

Another site I found talks about the tools one can use to build a community. From that post I cut and pasted this: 

How do you add community?

There is no tried and true method to encourage community spirit and feeling on the Web, but there are some tools to help encourage community.

Bulletin Boards and Online Forums
Bulletin boards are a great way to create an online community. Most forum software allows people to browse through the postings before logging in, and once they feel comfortable they can set up an alias and submit their own posts.

For example, my bulletin board allows you to read and post about HTML related topics. There are currently nearly 100 different topics, with many more responses and information.

This bulletin board uses Delphi forum software.

For more info from the "about.com" page - click here.

The above page says if you regularly visit a site you are in that "community". So on second thought, maybe I am a member of some on line communities and just didn't know it.

Strengthening my straw man

Thank you Matthew and Elizabeth for your thoughts. 

Training journalists is a tough road - I understand that. And because newspapers (and small TV stations) are LOSING revenue from advertising to the internet, getting them to put money up for this is going to be a challenge. I think there is a possibility that we could get seed money from a newspaper of broadcasting foundation to help develop the program. 
And I think the instructors need to be people who are doing this now. We could videotape them doing their work routine so you could see how the workflow happens. And have a better idea of how to incorporate these skills into your (small and medium newspapers and TV) routines and your websites.

But I still think there needs to be some element of on site training. At least for me, it helps to be sitting in the room with the people who are so enthusiastic on a topic. Not just learning from watching on a computer screen. (Maybe that's just me?)
I am actually pitching this already to some foundations to let me do an internship this fall and try and develop something like this. I JUST got a HD digital camcorder and heading out to do my first shoot as a backpack journalist this coming weekend. So that would solve some of the problems like - who will shoot the tape and edit it. I can do those two things.
I realize it needs some focus but I think these news groups need help to bring websites up to par when it comes to interacting with customers. I am not as familiar with how to make websites interactive. So that's where I would need to team up with someone or a news organization that is already doing this - so I can videotape them about how they do it and get them to show me some of the skills involved.
There may be a better way to bring this idea into reality. But I think it's safe to say the need is truly there.

June 25, 2009 8:20 AM 

Crafted Project Pitch - from Sheila

Before I give you my ‘pitch’, I want to lay some statistics on you:

How many newspaper journalists have lost their jobs in 2009?

 (either through being laid off or through buyouts) 

Answer: more than 10-thousand. (source of info click here)

Another statistic:

U-S metropolitan dailies that have closed since this site was created in March, 2007

             Tucson Citizen


               Rocky Mountain News


               Baltimore Examiner


               Kentucky Post


               Cincinnati Post


               King County Journal


               Union City Register-Tribune


               Halifax Daily News


               Albuquerque Tribune


               South Idaho Press


               San Juan Star


Works In Progress: Former print dailies that have adopted hybrid online/print or online-only models.

              Seattle Post-Intelligencer


              Capital Times


              Detroit News/Detroit Free Press


              Christian Science Monitor


              East Valley Tribune


              Ann Arbor News


              Flint Journal;         

              Bay City Times;  Saginaw News


               Catskill Daily Mail/Hudson Register-Star


Source: Newspaper Deathwatch web site

Gent who writes this site is also a potential competitor for my idea – he’s a link to his “pitch page”.

Here’s my idea:

I say we design a program to help small and medium sized newspapers (do we add TV newsrooms?) develop a training program to do what we’re trying to do in our class: bring more of the Internet resources into helping these smaller newsrooms figure out how to use the new journalism tools to bring in more “customers, readers and/or viewers” – with their ever dwindling staffs.

There are a couple of ways I’ve found to do this – but you may know of more:

 This is a link to an article about a site that is promoting journalists to become their own “brand” on the web. The saying “you’re only as good as your name” comes into play here.  Maybe they would let you direct your “reporters pieces” to your newspaper or TV newsroom site.

Here’s an article that talks about a program at Northwestern that combines journalism students and computer science students to develop new ideas for online journalism.  Ideas include a plug in system that allows reporters to fact check while they are writing so they don’t have to bounce back to websites or search engines. Other ideas involve sites like Twitter.

But a concept that more and more newsrooms will need to adopt is the idea of turning all reporters into “mojo’s” – short for mobile journalists. Week before last, I attended a "Backpack Journalism" seminar at the Poynter Institute in Florida. And they were teaching many of these skills to a small group of perhaps 20 journalists from print, online, radio & TV.  Here’s a blog entry from a journalism professor that has a nice wrap on one version of what the job entails.

Reporters are losing jobs and those sticking with it are finding new skills are needed or retraining is required. I think we can help out these smaller newsrooms that have to grow their online presence. While at the same time help steer how our industry moves into the new age of journalism. And the changing picture of what customers WANT out of news sites.

I think we might get seed money for this from outfits like – the Newspapers Association of America;  National Council of Journalism organizations; The Newspaper Guild; American Society of Newspaper Editors; Pew Foundation – just to name a few.

Then we develop either a series of web videos or a consulting program where we take this knowledge to the newsrooms that need help. Can we make money on this?

Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks –

Sheila 

Politico 44 - Some Thoughts

I had never looked at the site before. And was amazed that anyone would read a "Living Diary of the Obama Presidency". (That title - or subtitle - seemed a bit too much to me.) But the layout is easy to follow. The high use of video helps give consumers of the site a break from reading copy. And I like the series of two columns of boxes with headlines on individual stories. The color scheme is easy on the eyes. And not too busy.

I realize they need to make money on the site. So the advertisement at the top of the page doesn't bother me. But the one in the upper right corner - LOOKS like it could be a news story - when in reality it's an ad. I think that should be more clearly labeled. But I'm sure the client in that space likes having a lot of people clicking on it.   

From an editorial point of view, it seems like this is a promotion for the White House and it's projects and speeches and events. Not until you toward the bottom half of the page do you see a square labeled things the W.H. hopes you don't see...

 In the true spirit of balancing news and information, I'd like to see this item get a bit higher play on the page.

I like the WHITEBOARD item at the top that gives you the latest on where the president is in his day and the headline from his speech. Easy to see if you just want to jump on the site to see if he's spoken. But you are not near a TV with 24 hour news on it. (Or don't monitor websites that operate on the same principal.)

The squares on the side of the screen look like they should be interactive. The ones that say the president's schedule or his cabinet members appointments for the day. I thought they would jump to an insert or another screen - showing you who was meeting with whom or some other info about the events listed. But it was just a visually interesting way of doing a calendar list of today's events.  Making it a widget that you can add to your site or computer - is VERY smart. Good idea. It gets politico in your visual world. Good idea.

Just some thoughts. 

Sheila