Thanks to Ryan Sholin I was introduced to Matt King, a reporter in Warwick Florida Warwick, NY (thanks Ryan, and Yoni) who has started his own beat blogging project. Like three of our beat bloggers Matt has decided to use Ning to set up his own social network.

His beat is closest to Daniel Victor’s, at the Patriot-News, covering the issues of a small town. Matt is doing this experiment on his own, so if you have any advice for him – I’m sure he is all ears.

I applaud his honesty and insight in the following, edited, conversation.

How did you get started?
I launched my projects this week, mostly by e-mailing the blog and social network links to 150 or so sources. The blog is  and and the ning site is. Five people
have joined the network and I’ve sent them messages asking them to
enlist friends and colleagues.

So what are your initial thoughts about beat blogging?
I envision the network as a way for me to float stories I’m
working on, ask for feedback, hear what people want covered, work my
way into some corners and crannies, etc. I’m going to reach out to some
high school kids I know, try to set something up school-wise.

But here’s the thing with social networks. Either I have to
persuade a lot of people who know nothing about them to join up and use
it, or, with the kids, find a reason for them to use mine when they
probably already belong to two or seven others.

As I mentioned last time, I don’t cover a tech-hungry area. I
don’t know the exact demographics of our readership, but I’m under the
impression that,  even more than most papers, we have an audience full
of, what’s the best euphemism, never adopters. I combed my beat for
Tweeters and found one. The first post after I followed her was an announcement of her impending move to Albany.

When I came across beatblogging.org  I was sad to not be
covering education at the Santa Cruz Sentinel anymore. I miss the beat and it strikes me as the perfect
habitat to beatblog and social network in.

I have serious doubts about getting it to work here (I cover a
multitude of little and littler municipalities with an older population
and my paper is generally regarded as a print product). I’ve found no
hits on Twitter; one of my villages doesn’t even have a Web site and a
school superintendent last night asked me "what’s a blog?"

Doing this without support?

I’m doing what I’m doing on my own (though
my boss knows about it) and flying 80 percent blind. I’m now trying to
manage a social network, but I’ve never used one. Not having my project
tied directly to my paper’s site has already raised about a million
logistical problems, and a reader I reached out to described this as
"not kosher."

Ideas for the future?
I think with a lot of updates, good reporting, doing more of
the little community things online I’d never write about in the paper,
I can drive readership and participation, especially if I can build a
good pipeline for people to post news than I can then report on more
fully.

I guess the theory is a lot of extra work upfront for weeks
and months will pay off with a lot of citizen participation and ease my
burden. My communities will get more coverage and I’ll be so well
educated my reporting will improve dramatically and I’ll have time to
do bigger-picture stuff. But sometimes I feel like I’m paying more
attention to bell and whistles than I am to reporting (which to me is
the great untalked about issue in journalism – seems too many people
think delivery method is all that matters now).

Biggest problems/issue?
Not doing this on my paper’s site
has raised a batch of problems. If I break news on my blog (and I’m
talking small news, turns of the wheel, nothing my paper would post
immediately) I can’t link to my paper’s site bc there’s nothing there.
I’m asking readers to visit multiple sites to get their local news and
when I start getting 15,000 hits a day and ask for a 25 percent raise,
my editors may claim its my personal musings that drawing traffic, not
my work product.