Lessons from Beat Blogging - by David Cohn on Wednesday, February 20, 2008 6:34 - View Comments
Brad Wolverton: Beat Blogger Gets A Promotion – But Will Take His Network With Him
I wish I could say that Brad Wolverton at the Chronicle of Higher Education got his new promotion/beat solely because of his experience beat blogging. The truth is, Brad is a great reporter. And lucky for us – he was the quickest out of the gate to start building a network with Google Group. So although he is moving on, he has plenty to share – and he will continue beat blogging again soon around a new topic.
I debriefed Brad on what he’s learned so far and as it turns out – the experiment has been an all around success.
The beat(s): Brad’s beat WAS sports in higher education and the money issues related therein. His new beat is higher education in total and the finance issues therein – (a step up from sports, which is a small section of a larger issue). The good news: Brad is going to continue his Google Group which will continue to inform his reporting and he has already invited another reporter into the group who will slowly take over his beat in the sports sector.
The group: Brad set up a Google Group and invited just over 50 college athletic directors, coaches, etc and has an active group of about 40 members. I’ve been quietly watching the conversation too – and I’m happy to say that Brad is not the only active member of the group. On a regular basis different members will bring up questions or issues and a conversation will ensue.
“I can sit here and describe a number of reasons how this has been
beneficial. This has created a dialog and made a lot of people who are
already leaders of college sports and in the know feel like a part of a community
and many have come up to me and thanked me for setting this up
and that they feel honored to be in it. For me it’s a place to
learn things and bounce ideas off people and to kind of listen in to
the discussions that I may eventually write about.”
beneficial. This has created a dialog and made a lot of people who are
already leaders of college sports and in the know feel like a part of a community
and many have come up to me and thanked me for setting this up
and that they feel honored to be in it. For me it’s a place to
learn things and bounce ideas off people and to kind of listen in to
the discussions that I may eventually write about.”
According to Brad he has used it to get quotes: “It was a nice easy way to caste a wide net and I got five responses one of which got into a story today.” But it also is used for networking – higher education is a surprisingly small world – people know each other and can refer me to other people who know what’s going on.
Downsides: I have been trying to encourage people and I’ve seen folks use it on their own, but often they come to me with an email and I have to encourage them to put it to the entire group. Funny enough, those end up being the most discussed issues with 15-20 responses. That conversation might be dry for most people – but for me (covering sports in higher education) it’s filled with lots of nuggets and story ideas.
Another downside: People don’t respond right away. I don’t worry about that anymore, but I know that I can’t use this on deadline. Sometimes a response won’t come for four days. A lot of people are not taking this as a straight email, but getting a digest or daily note. That’s a bit of a drawback.
Finally: Google Groups aren’t the most intuitive. If you invite too many people at once – you get put on hold to ensure you aren’t a spammer. If you don’t have a gmail account, then you can’t go online to view the comment thread.
What’s Next: Brad is going to have a brown bag lunch at the Chronicle of Higher Education to share what he has learned during this experiment into Google Groups. It is his hope that the practice will spread throughout the newsroom. The group he has already started will remain active. It will continue to inform his reporting on the wider beat of higher education finances – but Brad is going to build a new group that will include administrators, deans, people who oversee the budgets, etc. Meanwhile a new reporter is going to move in and use Brad’s college sports group.
Pitching this to a new group of sources will be a bit more difficult. Brad doesn’t have the luxuery of already having a lot of sources – which he did when he launched the first Google Group. But he wants to use his early success to pitch it to new sources – to show what is possible and the benefits of being connected with other people who are living and breathing higher education finances.
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