On the surface – an easy answer is yes. You can always make your site more useful to an individual by providing them a login and giving them personalized information. Extrapolate out from that – you can almost always figure out a way to make your site useful to a group of users by allowing them to share their preferences with each other, and building a community from there is a logical extension.

But what exactly should your network consist of? In-depth user profiles like Facebook? Or cursory ‘following you, we’re not friends’ á la Twitter?

Confronted with this question in my own redesign process, I took a step back and created a series of framework questions.

1. What value can you provide to the individual by giving them user preferences?

2. What value can users gain from each other – on a one-to-one level?

3. What can value can an individual gain from a social organism?

Thinking through these questions, keeping your content and your audience in mind – determine what kind of social network is best suited for your site.

[This article was originally published on web.aan.org, a publication of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies]

During the UNconference “Blogging for Journalists” during the Portland 2007 AAN Convention, I sketched two flow charts that later turned into this presentation. (Thanks to participants for the healthy discussion!)

Last week’s presentation posited the following:

1. The production process for creating online content for newspapers is, for the most part, extremely convoluted and cumbersome, inhibiting what newsroom staffers are able to accomplish online.

2. Setting up a blog is ridiculously easy. Since anyone can do it, everyone has. Many newsroom-produced blogs do not use the medium well; creating illogical editing/production workflows, or giving folks better suited to column-writing blogs of their own.

3. Let’s not waste time critiquing the flaws of existing newspaper-produced blogs. Instead, let’s consider blog software a storytelling tool – how can we employ this tool to further our journalism?

We then went around the room, positing scenarios, and brainstorming possible uses of blog software for journalism.

Is your newsroom considering starting a blog? You might find “Conversation Bullet Points for Starting a Newsroom Blog” helpful.

[This article was originally published on web.aan.org, a publication of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies]

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]

Newspapers like the New York Times have been using Twitter to send updates to their followers on the network, following the 2.0 Mantra of Web Publishing: “Get Your Content Out to Your Audience – Wherever They Are.”

But, no denying it, it can be time-consuming to “tweet” every update to your site.

Enter Twitterfeed.com.

Twitterfeed allows you to submit any RSS feed, and select how often it will send updates to your Twitter account.

Admittedly, papers who publish 100+ articles on a weekly basis won’t find Twitterfeed that useful, as it can only send out 5 updates per refresh cycle. And the automagic-posting means you’ll lose a little flexibility on the formatting side:

I think this service could be a good match for papers who update their content periodically throughout the day, or those seeking a new distribution/publication mechanism for their papers’ blogs.

Of course, Twitter can only drive traffic to your site if you have a network of folks receiving updates.

To see how it works, sign up for an account, and add AAN as your friend at Twitter.com/altweeklies.

[NERD NOTE: Pownce is poised to become the new Twitter; it combines short messages with events and file-sharing. Pownce is currently in beta mode, but once it's open to the public I'll write it up. if you're on it, add me as a friend. ]

This was the topic of a session I led at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg Florida on June 29, 2007 for the 2007 Summer Fellowship for Young Journalists. View the Slideshow here.

ACTIONS YOU MUST TAKE

• Buy your domain name
  

  (e.g. LauraFries.com). If it’s taken – figure out a variant for your branding.

• Pick your byline/brand and stick to it – across all social networks and websites.
  

  “I started blogging at Journerdism and linking my ‘network’ and brand as Will Sullivan and Journerdism. It took a long time, but eventually I rose in google ranks and now am the #1 spot, and peppered throughout the rest of the list.”

• Set up a portfolio site.
  

  This is a must. Even a Blogger-powered site is better than having no online presence at all. Keep it updated with a current version of your résumé, and an archive of all the work you’d like employers to see. Make sure you have clear, permanent contact information near the top of your site. Link heavily to online examples of your work and mentions of you in the press. Be the definitive resource on who you are professionally.

• Google yourself – and set up Google Alerts
  

  You wanna know what people are saying about you – set up a Google Alert with your name so you’ll always know.

MANTRAS TO LIVE BY: Never Work Invisibly (Digital Resumes)

• Think permalink.
  

  My résumé is always at http://www.laurafries.com/about/resume, my worksamples are always at http://www.laurafries.com/about/work-samples/. This way, an employer who stumbles on the link *years* later will still have access to my most recent stuff.

• Create living résumés
  

  Update your résumé as you work, linking to your newest projects.
  ex. Laura Fries’ Work Samples

• Stymied? Ethical Quandry?
  

  If you’re doing high-level journalistic decision making – document it. Treat it as an opportunity to answer one of those dreaded interview questions on your own time. When the question comes up in real life, you’ll be able to answer cogently since you’ve thought through your answer – and you’ll be able to send the link out to the interviewer later as a followup. Even if you made the “wrong” decision, employers like to hire folks who can think.
  ex. Blogging the AltWeeklies.com Redesign; Sketches of AltWeeklies.com Redesign
  ex. Best of 2005 sketches & site mocks

• Have a great idea that you can’t implement?
  

  Story package not realistic on deadline? Editor kill your idea? Turn your idea into an “ideas for journalists” essay. Take the energy you could have wasted bitching at the bar, and use it to enhance your digital résumé. ex. “Podbop” for alt papers

• Count on websites failing
  

  Save hard copies of your work; re-post in full your story text, images, video. Newspapers do not respect permalinks – many archive or password protect your work. Never assume because you can link to something today that it will still be there when you want a potential employer to see it. Screenshots are your new best friend.

• But still, keep links to your work
  

  ClaimID is a great resource for aggregating links of your work.

MANTRAS TO LIVE BY: NetworkED, not Networking

• Maintain top-of-mind-presence
  

  What is this business card you hand me? The old-skool Rolodex is cool, but it doesn’t keep you in constant contact with folks. Interact where they are online and off.

• Create and use presences on multiple social networks to create top of mind presence
  

  Bill Couch added me as a friend on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Vimeo, LinkedIN, Flickr, and probably a few others I’m not remembering. When I interact on these networks, I’m likely to get updates on Bill’s work – maintaining top of mind presence or brand ubiquity.

• Meet people in real life – solidify acquaintances with digital connection.
  

  Go to unconferences, meetups, anything that will let you shake a hand with someone. Invite people to these events via your social networks.

• Think micro-contact
  

  Micro-contact makes it much easier to send the big email – “Have a job for me?”

  ex. I read this article I thought would interest you. I just wrote up something or other, what do you think of it? Or, the all powerful – I read about what you’re doing/what’s happening at your paper – followed by a pertinent question.

• Participate in forums
  

  Whatever your focus is – typography, photography, education reporting – find online communities of relevance to your work and participate in them. Build a name for yourself – create an audience for your work; create a communication loop between you and potential sources.

MANTRAS TO LIVE BY: Be available

• Communicate permanent contact info
  

  Is that first job your last? Yeah, didn’t think so. Make sure people have a permanent way to get ahold of you.

• Email signatures – make ‘em work for ya.
  

  Give folks multiple means of contacting you.

• Volunteer for journalism organizations
  

  As a reporter/blogger for conventions, a judge in contest, an organizer of Meetups. You will meet people, learn skills, and get job offers.

• Don’t be afraid of non-paying opportunities
  

  Sometimes, the experience and connections you’d gain is worth more than a check.

MANTRAS TO LIVE BY: Use your Journalistic Curiousity to Keep Learning Bout the Web

• Web users are fickle creatures
  

  Online communities shift rapidly to sites with better functionality (utility) for them. Pay attention to user trends; and figure out how you can incorporate the latest technology into your journalism.

DIGITAL ETIQUETTE

Digital is Forever: There are no right or wrong actions. You are simply establishing a brand/professional persona – make sure it helps get you to your goals.

• Communicate permanent contact information
• Don’t send editable documents like Word or InDesign files – only PDFs
• When emailing headshots, send reasonably sized files unless specifically asked for high-res (400 wide max, 72 dpi is a decent size). If possible, check out the context that the headshot will be running in, and size the image accordingly.
• Use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to your advantage. Sites with a lot of traffic (like Poynter.org) will always show up, make sure your contact info is up to date on those.
• Email etiquette – Don’t ever send an attachment without a message; don’t ever send an email without a subject; don’t ever send an email without a signature line demarcating clear contact info; don’t send attachments without a file extension.
• Emails are forever. Be careful who you talk shit about; always be professional.
• Don’t assume that your sensitive content is safe. Drunk Facebook pictures and bitchy MySpace emails can find their way outside of the password-protect realm.

Credits

The following rad journalists and web nerds helped contribute to this session.
Will Sullivan – Journerdism.com Nerd in Chief – PalmBeachPost.com Interactive Projects Editor
Olivia Cobiskey – www.cobiskey.com, Sauk Valley Newspapers, staff writer
David Cohn – (digidave.org)
Steve Shanafelt – Arts & Entertainment Editor, MountainXPress
Albert Franquiz – Director of Radness- Miami Herald
Larry Clow – Journalist extraordinaire

[The first three comments have been imported from web.aan.org.]

Blogs. Podcasts. Video-sharing sites. Social networks. Here’s a word of advice for companies scrambling to become a part of these conversations. It’s not enough to build a hub in Second Life or create a profile on MySpace.com. It’s time to shift your focus away from trying out every high-tech platform that comes across your inbox. Instead, home in on your customers. Almost every demographic group you can think of is engrossed in the Web these days, and users are getting smarter about their tools. It won’t take long to find the consumers who care about what you’re doing—and tune in to what they’re doing.

The penetration of these online activities skews much as I’d expect across generational cohorts. Without any background on the underlying data that’s being displayed in the charts or how it was gathered, I’d hesitate to draw any sweeping conclusions. But I think the user groups outlined above (creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and inactives) are useful categorizations when thinking about how social groups interact online.

[View graphic full-size]

Visit the 2007 AAN Convention blog at Portland2007.AAN.org for more on convention programming.

Overland and Chung walked the room through the job of a media buyer; the intermediary responsible for purchasing online ads to meet specific advertisers needs.

My background is editorial, so I found this an especially helpful approach for understanding media buyers and how alternative newspapers can structure their websites to deliver value to advertisers.

Understand the process of buying online ads from a professional media buyer’s perspective, and then use that understanding to guide smaller clients into lasting relationships.

A media buyer’s job is to deliver a certain numerical goal to their client – a certain number of pageviews for a promotional site, or a certain number of coupon-downloads. Online advertising is all about stats – everything is measured, nothing is guesswork.

It is all math.

The media buyer needs to deliver 1,500 coupon downloads to their client.

About 1 percent of your site audience will click through the ad to the promotional site featuring the coupon. About 3 percent of those folks will download the coupon (that’s called a site conversion rate). [These percentages are garnered from industry standards, and then tweaked accordingly.]

To get 1,500 coupon downloads, they’ll need 50,000 people to visit the promotional site with the coupon. And since only 1 percent of your audience will click through, they will need their ad to be seen 5 million times in order to deliver the promised 1,500 coupon downloads to their client.

So, they need their ad seen 5 million times. If you can deliver that amount of pageviews within the campaign timeframe (Chung and Overland stated an average campaign lasted an month or so), then the media buyer will spend their client’s money advertising on your site.

A media buyer wants to spend their money wisely, so they are willing to spend a little more for a targeted audience that is more likely to click through to their promotional site – great news for alts, who can deliver local audiences passionate about specific issues.

By creating sections of your website that feature deep-well interest content, you can garner targeted audiences that your sales reps can help connect with interested advertisers. Putting together an “environmental news” section, for example, would be a great way to appeal to advertisers trying to reach environmentally-minded consumers.

4 Keys to Successfully Selling Your Site

Slide 29, Overland & Chung presentation
1. Understand Your Advertiser/Buyer

• They need to maximize return and show results against quantifiable goals
• Go beyond selling inventory and “space” to selling solutions

2. Communicate Your Website’s Value

• Demonstrate your local, demographic and flexibility advantage
• Leverage your unique position to differentiate and deliver relevance

3. Plan by the Numbers

• Every dollar is accountable and ROI drives online advertising
• Use the ROI model to price your products; demand more for what converts higher and understand what is driving an advertiser’s price pressure

4. Measure Results to Drive Sucess

• Data is key to success during the campaign as well as for ongoing strategy and relationships
• Provide your advertisers with knowledge to improve their campaigns and results and they will come back

Pandemonium.

Lights flashing, a spiral of screaming, hysterical phone calls, a flash fire – combustible Columbia Heights – ignited.

It was a war zone, ground zero – not a neighborhood, not even anything physical – hate.rage.fear.heat, low hanging, oppressive smoldering chemicals, waiting for the spark, flash point fire.

I got off the metro at the Columbia Heights stop at around 8:30pm June 19, 2007.

The explosion was before me: complete chaos, nearly 25 cop cars, blocking 14th St. NW, lights blazing, satanic disco, and everywhere people screaming: into cell phones, at cops, at each other.

Sirens, screams, and DC’s inescapable heat.

Near me, a woman screamed the story into a phone; she was shaking, near hysterical: Two teenage girls had been fighting, the cops had arrived to bust things up, and then [allegedly] taken the arm of a bystander – a teenage girl, a ‘chile’ – and busted her head against a car and started roughing her up.

From there it had exploded; everyone screaming at everyone.

I whipped out my camera, shaky from the 4 hours of sleep I’d managed to snag on my way back from Portland, through Phoenix, Vegas and finally DC.

Get that the fuck out of here! Get on with yourself! Don’t point that at me! screamed one woman – I’m not! I’m taking pictures of the cops! ((I’m on your side! – I didn’t say – I’m press! – I didn’t say!!)) – Keep walking! Keep walking! she screamed, and I did, because I was tired, and this was not my fight.

I could have circulated, taking notes, more pictures, trying to get the story, but I knew she was right. The story was what that woman was screaming into her phone – not my transcription of it. People talk about citizen journalism, and they talk mostly of the elites – white soccer moms contributing play by plays of their children, pictures and videos galore; lawyers posting nuanced descriptions of the latest city council development.

But this – sweat, fear, alleged police brutality, raw emotion, a neighborhood terrorized by gunshots and intermittent police presence that now was as frightening as the drive-bys murdering 13 year olds – this is the stuff that “citizen journalism” should be made of, not yuppies posting restaurant reviews.

A search of Google News turns up nothing about last night – a terrifying night in Columbia Heights – my community message board has nothing.

Background on the Columbia Heights violence:

• Columbia Heights Shootings Cause Alarm, WashingtonPost.com
• Three Shot, One Killed, Columbia Heights, LauraFries.com
• In Face of Losses, A Fight to Save Area, WashingtonPost.com
• ‘Ghetto sun’ burns bright, Columbia Heights, LauraFries.com
• Teen Charged in Youth’s Slaying in ‘Shooting Melee’, WashingtonPost.com

The Washington Post has written some amazing pieces about Columbia Heights violence recently, but it’s impossible for one reporter to capture everything – and never with the intensity of last night, with women screaming the story into their phones and the muggy night air.

This is the story of the summer.

If I was the editor of a local publication, with reporters at my disposal, this is what I’d do.

I’d send my people out into the community for the summer. It would be their job to make friends with trusted community leaders, in the churches, community services, and schools. It would be their job to comb every source: every community newsletter, bulletin board, barber shop, church social and blog where citizens were spreading the news themselves. It would be the reporter’s job to earn trust and build sources.

From there, I’d ask them to deputize community voices – precocious writing students, the empassioned families of shooting victims. Give people the means of telling their own stories. Give people hope – that when something truly horrible happens in their community, that they have the means to document it; that [alleged] police brutality doesn’t begin and end with a rough shove onto sizzling summer concrete.

I’d set up easy ways for citizens to contribute their stories – a voice mail box where they could tell the story as it happened, an easy way to email the pictures that nearly everyone was snapping on their cell phones last night.

I’d have my reporters perform a number of roles – soliciting content from their community, while creating it themselves. Reporters would weave together pictures from the fight, combined with user-contributed audio accounts of the brawl, into slideshows for the website. They would interview community members while encouraging them to contribute content themselves; in effect turning interview subjects into viral marketers for the publication.

And because the community I was trying to serve would have limited access to the web, I’d be sure to create a print-product that my reporters and trusted community members could circulate as they did their jobs of reporting and source-gathering. Even something as simple as a 8.5×11 newsletter that others could photocopy and distribute themselves would serve multiple purposes: 1) reporting the news in a medium that was accessible to the community it was serving, 2) soliciting user contributions, and 3) creating a feedback loop between community and publication.

In collaboration with the community, my reporters would eventually be able to create a number of media products:

• Traditional reporting in a newspaper
• A rapidly-updated website, with professional and citizen content
• A micro-distribution newsletter

It’s a lot of work – no denying it. But if you lived, like I do, in Columbia Heights, afraid to walk home at night, distrustful of the police you [allegedly] see brutalizing teenage girls, hearing the gunshots that are kids killing kids, you’d be happy to find even a 8.5×11 piece of paper on your doorstep, telling you that at least somebody was paying attention, and you had the means to fight back.

Via email:

“As Alt-weeklies are moving towards the web, what do job descriptions for editorial-side web editors look like? Web editor being different from IT guy or webmaster/ programmer but an actual editorial role?”

Good question!

What is a web editor?

In the broadest terms, a web editor is responsible, just like a section editor, for the content of an alt’s website.

The key difference between an IT person/webmaster and a web editor is journalistic decision making. A web editor might perform production-related tasks, such as resizing and cropping images, but they should also take on a number of editorial roles.

What does a web editor do?

The boundaries of responsibility between print and web editors vary from institution to institution, but the duties of a web editor might include:

• Uploading stories to the website, or overseeing the folks who do
• Making decisions about the play of content on the site – what stories are given prominence on the homepage or section fronts (Ideally, these decisions are made independent of where stories are printed in the traditional print sections)
• Being a part of redesign teams and new product launches
• Monitoring and moderating comment forums and other user-generated content
• Working with writers, designers, and photographers to create web content, which could range from additional stories and photo galleries to video features
• Being a resource for best-practices web content, helping editorial staffs to learn new skills
• Making “in the heat of the moment” editorial decisions, such as when advertisers demand stories be removed from the site, or writers want to fix a mistake without adding an editors’ note.
  

  How should you handle making corrections to content that’s published online? Check our Editorial Policy.

• Planning, assigning, and editing web content
• Monitoring traffic stats (metrics) to give editorial folks insight into their web reading audience

What skills should a web editor have?

Ideally, a web editor should be comfortable with the web. Experience with blogs, social networking (MySpace, Facebook), popular web applications and a general knowledge of web users’ behavior are all desired, as well as a working knowledge of basic HTML, Photoshop, and content management systems (CMS). A strong sense of journalism ethics and the ability to think critically about emerging technologies are especially valuable.

But the great news is that anyone who is dedicated and hard working can pick this stuff up rather fast.

How can a new web editor improve their skills?

• Read! – this blog and others devoted to online journalism are great places to start – check our links section for recommended reading.
• Network! – Attend as many learning opportunities as possible, and be sure to stay in touch with your new friends so you can pick their brains.
• Experiment! – Teach yourself new technologies in trial batches. Whenever I stumble on a new technology or website, it stays top-of-mind until I find some way to use it. The more you engage with websites and their functionality, the more you will learn, and the more ideas you can steal.
• Watch! – Be a ‘trend sponge’ – pay attention to media trends that work, and think critically about how they can be altered to help your website.

  and of course …

• Question! – Ask lots and lots of questions – of each other via listservs, and emails, and certainly of web.aan.org!

A good read: Further Notes on the New Journalism Skillset

Have anything to add?

What is the role of web editor at your paper?

When Cute Site Names Go Wrong OR Why You Should Test Your Ideas with Broad Demographic Audiences

HuffingtonPost.com debuted a redesign earlier this week that incorporates a “Digg”-esque feature, where logged-in members can vote on stories, indicating if one is of interest to them. The most popular stories appear in a special section of the site.

This model works very well on websites; users like to know what others are reading.

But HuffingtonPost.com chose an unfortunate name for this new feature: “Huff It” (huffit.huffingtonpost.com).

“Huffing” is slang for inhaling intoxicants like glue, paint or aerosol products. Gasoline, lighter fluid, and paint thinner are other common items that get “huffed.” [wiki]

This unfortunately renders much of the new functionality on HuffingtonPost.com rather humorous: “Register or sign in below to start huffing!”

Screenshots

Take Home Message

Cutesy abbreviations for site functionality can confuse readers. In a worst-case scenario, you may unintentionally be incorporating slang into your redesign. Testing your designs out with a broad demographic group is one way to make sure this doesn’t happen to your latest site feature.

More web.aan.org on Arianna Huffington

Illustration by Ben Millen, arcticsounds.com