Wanted: Vision for community engagement

One of the exciting things about my new job is that we’re going to try some things that haven’t been done before. We’re going to try some things that haven’t been done before on the scale we’re doing them. We’re going to try different ways of doing things journalists have been doing for years.

So when I hire people to work on my community engagement team, I am as interested in the possibilities they see as the experience they bring. To the extent that I care about experience, I want to know how a job candidate has blazed new trails more than hearing about traditional newsroom experience.

Advertisement

Read Full Post »

User experience is the key to success

User experience is critical to the success of a business.

As I work on community engagement plans for a startup Washington metro news operation, I know that the user experience we provide will determine our success. We need to give users the news they want. We need to help users engage with us and each other in meaningful and fun ways. They need to enjoy spending time with us and tell their friends they should spend time with us.

If they don’t enjoy spending time with us and don’t find our content useful, or if they find their time with us annoying or unpleasant, no amount of excuses or rules will make that experience right.

As if to underscore the importance of user experience, Mimi and I have been having some horrible user experiences lately with United Airlines and the U.S. Postal Service.

Read Full Post »

Anonymity or identity: Which is the best way to handle comments?

I was too busy yesterday enjoying beautiful spring weather, a beautiful baby granddaughter and exciting NCAA basketball to join a lively Twitter discussion of anonymous comments.

One of the primary discussants (it wasn’t combat, but it was pretty vigorous) was Mathew Ingram of GigaOm, who blogged about the topic (and has a link to a search string that pulls much of the discussion together). Steve Yelvington also blogged on the topic, noting that an ounce of leadership is worth a pound of management.

They summarize the issue well in detail, so I will summarize more broadly (and, admittedly, oversimplify) here:

One side (led on Twitter yesterday by Howard Owens) argues that anonymous comments inevitably become ugly and you have a more civil, responsible online discussion if you require people to participate by their real, verified names, as newspapers have always done in letters to the editor.

The other side (led by Ingram) embraces the freewheeling discussion of the anonymous comments, noting that responsible moderation of and engagement with the conversation can rein in (or remove) the ugliest exchanges, while keeping debate lively and honest. Without anonymity, whistleblowers are less likely to join the discussion, they rightly note (and the other side will rightly note that the anonymous bigots way outnumber the anonymous whistleblowers in story and blog comments). And besides, don’t we sometimes want to know how ugly people can be?

Read Full Post »

Leading your colleagues toward prosperity

This is the handout I prepared for a newsroom leadership workshop for the Maynard Academy today at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University. Here are my slides for the presentation.

The business models that have supported traditional media for decades are breaking down. Some critical elements of the economic crisis:

• Newspaper circulation was 31% of U.S. population in 1940, 13% today.
• Newspaper advertising has dropped vs. previous year 13 straight quarters (7 straight over 10%, 3 straight over 20%).
• Magazine advertising revenue in 2009 fell 17% from previous year.
• Local broadcast TV ad revenue fell 22% in 2009.
• The problem is not giving content away free online (we never supported content operations with circulation revenue; that pays for production & distribution).

The Complete Community Connection

To remain relevant for the future, journalists and media organizations need to master digital and social media and develop new revenue streams. My Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection proposes a new business model for community media companies. The core goals:

Read Full Post »

Preparing and delivering workshops and presentations

This is the handout for a workshop I am presenting for the Maynard Academy Thursday at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University. This is an updated version of a handout I have used (and posted online) before.

However well you know a topic, you need to master presentation skills if you want to teach colleagues about the topic, summarize something complicated or make your case for a position or proposal. These tips were originally developed to help journalists train their colleagues in workshops, but they can be helpful in making other presentations as well.

Read Full Post »

Thoughts on redirecting and rejuvenating a career

I knew a lot about journalism in 1997. I was 26 years into an exciting career, enjoying a rewarding run as a reporter following success as an editor. But I’ve redirected and rejuvenated my career twice since then. Those efforts led me to opportunities and success I could not have imagined 13 years ago.

From 1997 to 2005, I consciously developed my skills, experience, connections and reputation in the field of journalism training, eventually getting a full-time job in the field. I was always interested in innovation and took steps in the mid-1990s to learn digital skills. Starting in 2006, I made digital innovation my primary pursuit and have consciously developed my digital skills, experience, connections and reputation (I still have a lot that I need to do). That pursuit led to two new jobs, first as editor of The Gazette and gazetteonline and now I’ve left the newspaper business to join a digital local news operation in the Washington metro area.

Read Full Post »

Resources for journalists using Twitter

Journalism professor Julie Posetti has compiled a helpful analysis of the use of Twitter by political journalists in Australia, The #Spill Effect: Twitter Hashtags and Australian Political Journalism.

I highly recommend reading it and will deliberately not quote or summarize it extensively here because you should just read it. I will. though, note her summary of the various ways political journalists in Australia are using Twitter:

Read Full Post »