Create Digital Listening Posts Using RSS Feeds – It’s Easier Than It Sounds
Go to soccer games, Jan Leach recently urged a room full of students at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. You never know the stories you’ll overhear folks talking about.
Leach, former editor of the Akron Beacon Journal, spoke to the power of “having a life outside the newsroom” – being present in the community, and having one’s reporter ear constantly tuned for stories.
In a digital age, let’s expand upon that theory – let’s create Digital Listening Posts.
3 Steps To Creating Digital Listening Posts
1. Sign up for Netvibes.com.
2. Spend some time adding links to local sites and bloggers.
3. Check your account periodically to scan for story ideas.
Here’s more detail.
1. Netvibes.com is an RSS aggregator [wiki definition]. Think of it like TiVo for news – you add a feed, and the webpage automatically fetches updates for you. If you’ve visited Google News before, you’ve seen RSS feeds in action – that site is populated by feeds. [Oprah-style intro to RSS feeds]
Your “start page” on Netvibes will offer you some beginning options – little boxes (widgets) that allow you to search for content relevant to your beat.
For purposes of demonstration, I set up a “Columbia Heights, DC” page, which pulls information about my neighborhood. (It’s easier for me to evaluate newsworthiness in my own ‘hood than in a randomly selected city.)
2. Adding links to quality local bloggers will probably take an afternoon’s worth of your time. Treat local blogs much as you would a community newspaper – a place for story ideas, trend spotting, or source-finding. Use technorati.com, a blog search engine, to search for local blogs. Metropolitan-themed blogs tend to link to each other; look for a blogroll to find similar themed blogs.
3. Check your Netvibes page regularly to find story ideas.
What Story Ideas Did I Find?
Image Search
- Interior photos of an extremely nice renovated house in a rough neighborhood; potential sources for articles on gentrification, or an architectural feature.
- A DC Bilingual Public Charter School; which could be the beginning of a profile, or a piece on funding issues.
Adding Blogs, I found …
- DCCabbie.Blogspot.com is a veritable treasure trove of story ideas. This outspoken (and often profane) blogger writes about an underground bar called the BUNKER he’s been going to since “this Russian chick started the joint over ten years ago,” and Ethopian cab drivers who save up to buy mansions at home. Lots of story potential here.
- Mr. T in DC’s Live Journal reports a man in his neighborhood who walks around with a grocery cart, stealing Sunday papers. Does he resell them? Where, and why? That’s a feature I’d like to read. [Mr. T is also exceptionally active in the online Columbia Heights community, posting frequently to the community forum and moderating the neighborhood Flickr group; he would be a good source to cultivate.]
- A WMATA Riders’ Advisory Council Member (DC Metro/public transportation planning organization), keeps a blog of transit developments – a useful source for transit beat reporters.
- For more ideas on using YouTube to find local stories, see Cathy Resmer’s post Finding and Using Local Content on YouTube.
YouTube searches revealed …
- An ‘94 “Illuminati Pedophiles in Washington D.C.” video – good perhaps for a feature on the subject, or a larger piece on the second life YouTube can bring to archival documentaries.
That’s a quick look at the current info in my Netvibes. Like all story tips, it’ll take some old-fashioned shoe leather journalism to see if any pan out.
[This article was originally published on web.aan.org, a publication of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies]
