Denver Post social media use delivers on mountain lion vs. kitty story

I’m learning lessons about social media nearly every day. But I learned long ago that few things touch people like photos of animals. The two types of learning come together in this story of a mountain lion, a Maine coon cat and some smart journalists at the Denver Post using an array of social media tools.

In a couple of recent meetings, I have met and discussed community engagement with Post colleagues, gaining respect for their smart use of social media. We will be working together much more closely as the Journal Register Co. partnership with MediaNews progresses. In our initial meetings, I have seen multiple ways we could benefit from sharing our ideas and insights in both directions.

I’ll start that by sharing, through this post, a great example of using social media in multiple ways to bring some fun content into the site and then to bring attention to that content. What’s interesting is that the photo in question actually was submitted initially to a TV station’s website, and the station wasn’t making full use of it. Then the Post journalists tracked down the photographer, got more pictures from her, and multimedia magic ensued.

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Time for me to stop syncing Facebook with Twitter

I need to make better use of Facebook.

When I started using Facebook almost four years ago, I understood the basic idea: connecting and reconnecting with friends. I enjoyed some of that right away, finding an old college friend I hadn’t seen or heard from in years and staying in better touch with lots of other friends.

But I didn’t understand other things: For instance, I found it annoying when a friend wanted to compare favorite movies. I didn’t want to annoy the friend by not playing, but I didn’t really care to find out if I was “soulmates” with a casual friend (as one game suggested about a friend with similar favorite movies). Somehow, I don’t think soulmate is defined as someone you drift out of touch with until a computer program finds the person.

As I was trying to figure out Facebook, I started using Twitter, which was even more confusing at first (fewer friends were using, and I didn’t understand the 140-character limit). But as I started to understand Twitter and use it more, it quickly soared past Facebook in my understanding, appreciation and use.

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Social media (mostly Twitter) resources for journalists

Here are resources to help journalists using Twitter and other social media.

For the last few months, as I’ve been visiting Journal Register Co. newsrooms and blogging more tips for journalists using social media, I have been meaning to update my Twitter resources for journalists (now more than a year old). After today’s news that a new Journal Register subsidiary, Digital First Media, will start managing MediaNews Group, I suddenly got messages that I was being followed by lots of MediaNews journalists, particularly from the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

I don’t know yet what my specific role will be in working with MediaNews, but I think it’s safe to say I will remain a leader in social media news for JRC, with likely roles in leading social media use for Digital First and/or MediaNews. So maybe I should introduce myself to my new colleagues with a list of resources for journalists using social media.

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I applaud Washington Post conversations about social media and digital publishing

Update: I’m going to re-use (and expand) on a line I used today in a private email exchange about the Washington Post Digital Publishing Guidelines: The Post’s 2009 social media policy was like a red light to Post journalists using social media. The new guidelines are more like a flashing yellow light. I would prefer a green light with a “drive safely” sign. But I welcome the improvement from red to yellow. Now here’s the original post, published earlier today.

Two years ago, I blogged that the Washington Post needed thoughtful conversations about smart use of social media, rather than a restrictive policy.

So I applaud that the Post is now having those conversations and sharing them with the public. I applaud without for a minute suggesting that my criticism was any part of the reason.

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Social media and reporting workshop for Portuguese journalists

I will be presenting a full-day workshop today for the Committee of Concerned Journalists and Georgetown University for a group of visiting Portuguese journalists. We’ll be talking about social media and reporting.

I will be discussing points made in several earlier blog posts:

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JRC journalists use social media to cover earthquake and hurricane

I’ve curated Journal Register newsrooms’ use of social media in covering Hurricane Irene and last week’s earthquake. I’m not sure why I can’t get this to publish to my blog (I’ve done that several times with Storify), but you can read it at the link above.

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Advice for building engagement through newsroom Twitter accounts

Like many institutional Twitter accounts, Journal Register Co. newsroom accounts need to be more engaging and conversational.

We tweet a lot of links to our content. But we’re not very personable. In the coming months, I will be working with JRC colleagues to strengthen engagement on newsroom Twitter accounts. I’ll start by sharing some best practices here. I’ll blog later about using Facebook. I’ve already shared some advice for individual journalists using Twitter. Today I focus on branded newsroom accounts (whether that’s the lead newsroom account or a niche account focusing on a topic such as sports or a beat).

The specific practices start with some guiding principles in use of social media: Use good sense. Practice good journalism. Be creative, aggressive, accurate and ethical.

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Trentonian uses Google+ and other tools to cover apartment shooting

The Trentonian used Twitter, Facebook, community bloggers and the newest big-name social tool for journalists, Google+, to cover a shooting at an apartment building Thursday.

I learned about the Trentonian’s excellent coverage while preparing for a Friday workshop at another Journal Register Co. newsroom, the News-Herald in Willoughby, Ohio. I quickly compiled an earlier version of this Storify account, pulling in tweets, news accounts and Facebook updates. But I didn’t know much about how the Trentonian staff did its outstanding work. I sent Interim Editor Joey Kulkin an email, asking him to send me a few paragraphs explaining how they had covered the story.

My workshop was about using social media in beat reporting and about curating social media content. In the questions during my presentation, a staff member asked how journalists could use Google+. I gave a pretty lame answer, saying that I had not had much time to dig into Plus and explore the possibilities. I said I had been impressed with Google Wave and saw considerable possibilities with it, especially after the Seattle Times used Wave in its Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the manhunt for a cop killer. I thought Google Buzz was lame from the first and never found it useful for journalists. I had played with Plus enough to think it would be useful, but not to talk knowledgeably yet about how you would use it.

Just four hours after my workshop, I learned that Google+ had actually been an essential tool in the Trentonian’s coverage of Thursday’s incident:

“Google+ is what gave us, and no one else, the key information,” Kulkin said in his email telling me how the Trentonian had covered the story.

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Guest post by Mimi Johnson, with social media advice for Bill Keller

As my wife, Mimi Johnson, and I were making plans to spend a few days in southeast Utah enjoying canyons and arches before I start my new job, she made a simple, but firm request: I needed to unplug. Yeah, I’m mostly wireless these days, but I knew what she meant: Put away the laptop, put away the iPhone (except to take photos). No blogging, no tweeting, no reading important or interesting links.

But yesterday morning before we left Salt Lake City, while I was leading the workshop that brought us to Utah, Bill Keller got Mimi all stirred up. And she hadn’t brought her laptop. She can’t post from her iPad to her blog (a really good blog; if you missed her post about me leaving newspapers last year, it’s worth catching up). She also can’t post to her blog from my laptop. So she commandeered my laptop last night (she knew I wasn’t going to be using it) to write a guest post for me. As you’ll see, she’s addressing an issue I might have written about anyway. Better that you get it from the best writer in our family:

It was with some reluctance yesterday that I pointed out Bill Keller’s latest column for the New York Times Magazine to my husband. I have been known to scold Steve for being too strident, especially when it comes to The Times’ paywall experiment and Mr. Keller’s opinions on social media. So I was relieved when Steve posted one amusing tweet on the column and then sighed, “I’ve written enough about Bill Keller.”

“Good,” I said. Good. And then I was the one who just couldn’t let it go. As my mother used to say, “I did not care for his tone.”

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The Buttry version of social media best practices for editors

Yesterday I criticized ASNE’s report on best practices in social media. Today I’m going to take a positive approach, suggesting alternatives. Here are my 10 best practices for social media (written for newsroom leaders; the list would vary for other journalists):

1. Smart and frequent conversations among newsroom leaders and their staff members are the best way to guide effective, ethical use of social media.

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ASNE offers good advice on social media, but too much fear and not really ‘best practices’

Update: I’ve added a response from Pam Fine, co-chair of the ASNE Ethics Committee at the end.

Editors are starting to accept social tools and understand their importance. But they remain afraid of social media. Their need to control remains an impediment to innovation.

That’s my quick take on the American Society of News Editors’ “10 Best Practices for Social Media.”

The report is a PDF, which indicates the group’s continuing print orientation. It would be much better as a blog, starting a conversation by inviting comments on each section. The structure is thoughtful, providing some discussion, a “teachable moment” and sample policies for each of the 10 points. An appendix of social media policies is helpful, even if the policies are far more fearful and restrictive than they should be.

For instance, this sentence wanders in entirely irrelevantly (it’s the first sentence in a discussion about whether to break news on Twitter):

Social media can become a gigantic time suck, distracting reporters from conducting traditional reporting or executing their job duties.

Insert “telephones,” “the Internet,” “your computer,” “your co-workers,” “your children,” “your spouse,” “your editor” or “most newsroom meetings” for “social media” and that sentence would still be true. But no editor would write it. But fear of social media is strong in newsrooms, especially among top leaders, so this document is loaded with unnecessary warnings and discouragement. The fact is that social media can also be excellent tools that help you beat journalists who are stuck in traditional reporting. And social media are essential now to executing your job duties (yes, for the top editors, too). Social media can also save you time. Someone needed to take a very traditional red pen to that sentence.

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Social media and community connection

Mandy Jenkins and I led a session, “Social Media and Community Connection” March 8 at the American Press Institute, part of a seminar, “The Battle for Community: Crowded, Competitive and Hyperlocal.”

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