Journalism is collecting information, filtering information and distributing information.

The Internet can transform all three. That’s exactly what this
experiment is designed to figure out:  Can social networking help
reporters so do a better job in collecting, filtering and distributing
information on their particular beats?  If they can, this might be one
way to adapt beat reporting to the Internet’s strengths.

In this blog we have sought out lessons from reporters who are
already experimenting in this sphere, looked at tools of the trade,
followed the story of the 13 volunteer guinea pig reporters and also
began following affiliate beat bloggers.  This is a list we hope to grow
and soon incorporate into the discussion that the 13 “Beat Bloggers”
are having behind the scenes.  The truth is this is a new practice and
the people who are figuring it out are out there, scattered around the
Net.  If you’re one, contact me (david.newassignment AT gmail dot Com).

We launched with an announcement in mid-November. Our approach was
not to tell any of the reporters what to do, but to offer support and
help along the way.  Now it’s time to take a quick look at where some
of our 13 beat reporters are and where we hope to be in the coming
months.

San Jose Mercury News:

Reporter Matt Nauman is off and
running with his social network which has been set up on Ning. It is a
public network, but Matt has final say over who can join and help him
cover green technology.

Matt’s efforts might have been subject to a slight stall as the San
Jose Mercury News went through public downsizing. I bring this up
because Matt’s beat blogging efforts, like others which will be
mentioned below, have been shaped a little by market forces outside
their control– namely the ongoing contraction in the newspaper
industry.

Now that the network is up and growing, there is some concern about
how to actually get traction out of it. Right now Matt has a feeling of
spinning his wheels. On the other hand he has wheels.

From Matt: “Many
outside forces — layoffs, buyouts, new publisher, executive editor, business
editor and assistant business editor (my direct supervisor), plus some changes
to our online and technical folks — all played a role in this….I’m hoping to sit down with Katherine Fong and my new
editor…and sort of
re-assess Green Tech Beat. I think we focused so much on the technical details
of getting it started — the platform, the name, registering it all, etc., etc.,
etc. — that we didn’t really put as much energy as needed into figuring out
what we hoped to get from this, and how much time/effort we were willing to
spend on it.”

Patriot-News:

Reporter Daniel Victor, who has also built a public, but invite
only, Ning network “The Hershey Home,” has probably incorporated his
social network the most into his work routine. It’s interesting to note
that so far it is the upload pictures aspect of this site that his
network has tapped the most. Daniel continues to use the network to get
new story ideas or discuss issues in the town of Hershey, but he is
sitting on his network too, waiting for its use in a breaking story. He
would say he is bidding his time.

Daniel also started a personal blog, which might help him voice his
concerns as a beat blogger and get feedback from the larger journalism
community. 

Daniel has
had to quell one un-constructive back-and-forth conversation between
two members of his network so far, but he did so without any real
backlash. His next big step: “I haven’t had a great story to test the
network on yet. It’ll help greatly when I can point to a line in a
story and say, “Look, Sandy brought up this point that I would have
never otherwise known, and it made it into the paper.”

Chronicle of Higher Ed

Reporter Brad Wolverton was the first
out of the gate to start a network. He followed the internal mantra of
KISS (keep it simple stupid). A simple Google Group filled with 40 of
his most trusted sources – which is still active (I’m also observing).
His most common use of the group is to bring up one of his or other
articles that have been recently published and asking what the groups
thoughts are.

That might sound simple enough – but the key is the quality of
people that are in this Google Group. His beat at the time was college
athletics, and somehow Brad managed to get a wide variety of sources,
from athletic directors to coaches from major universities around the
country. That he had established himself in this beat so well made the transition to a constructive group discussion very easy.

Recently Brad has moved to a new beat his old network will be
slowly handed over to a new beat reporter and Brad is currently getting
a feel for his next beat, where he intends to repeat the process of
creating a Google Group discussion.

Wired:

Reporter Eliot Van Buskirk has built a small and
totally private Ning site. The launch is fairly new – with about 25
members right now. So far his network shows the most activity,
especially in terms of filling in their profile and uploading profile
photos. This could be representative of the type of source that fits in
his beat, digital music.

Eliot has been smart so far about how he uses the network. He has a
big disclosure that anything on the network can be blogged by him and
asks that nobody else blog about it anywhere else.  In the early uses
category: the network helped him prep for an NPR show where he was a
guest speaker.

Right now Eliot has been very cautious about who he lets into his
network. I think there is lots of potential to grow it out and
incorporate it into his daily work routine, which is admittedly hectic.
But so far, his network is working very well. In one instance Eliot
asked a question of the network, which of two bands was more
innovative” and it sparked a discussion that amassed 30+ responses.

Dallas Morning News:

Reporter Kent Fisher has, in four months, launched what is the
second most popular non-sports blog at the Dallas Morning News. His
blogging has become rhythmic and regularly gets comments. But it has
also added much more to his workload. The next step is to turn the
lights on around the community of readers that he has garnered. How can
he turn his readers into a network without overloading his workflow?

Still – considering we started at 0mph’s – we are now approaching
60mph. Taking a look at some of his more in-depth blog posts, you can
tell Kent is consciously trying to hone his readers around and have them inform his reporting.

Ed-Week (Digital Directions)

Reporter Michelle Davis has a
private Ning site ready to launch. It is perhaps the best designed Ning
site – one that could easily pass as part of the digital directions
branding. There has been a learning curve in setting up the site. We
started with basic html – and now the network has links, videos
uploaded and test forum discussions up and running.  There is great
infrastructure.

Next up for Michelle is to send her pitch letter out to sources and
gets the network going: What is most promising about her trial is that
it will have an editorial focus right away – to identify the top 10
issues facing technology in the classrooms and 10 solutions. There is a
strong possibility that this can drive the conversation.

News-Press

The Florida
News-Press has probably suffered the most from market forces which were
alluded to above. Their reporter left the industry the day before we
launched beatblogging.org. As a result, their beat blogging efforts were put on hold from the get-go, as they searched for a new reporter.

In the last two weeks, however, News-Press has moved over to a new
content management system called Pluck, which will enable social
networking to happen more easily on their site. They’ve decided to
forge ahead with a Child Welfare persona page that is overseen by an editor,
with several reporters contributing.  We will be watching how reporters
at the News-Press cover issues of child welfare aided by the social
networking capabilities provided by Pluck.  My contact will most likely
be an editor, until a beat reporter is hired.

Cinn. Enquirer:

Keith Reed at the Cincinnati Enquirer, another Gannet paper, is
also waiting for Pluck to be incorporated into the site. If Kent at the
Dallas Morning News started at 0mph, then Keith started without a car.
He was brand new to the city of Cincinnati and to his beat, covering Proctar and Gamble. Once Pluck is up and running, that’s when Keith will truly begin his trial.

This a quick sketch of where some of the reporters are one quarter in.

So what have we found so far and what do we hope to get in the coming months?

Beat blogging needs to be part of the work-flow.
The
biggest reason I’ve received as to why more progress hasn’t been made
by every single reporter comes down to a simple fact: Their work
schedules are already crammed. As an affiliate beat reporter put it to
me “One week I’ll try and set aside time to make headway, only to get
swamped, and then I have to ignore my efforts for a few weeks.”

I doubt any reporter would describe their job as providing ample
time. The question then is – how can reporters work smarter with the
web? How can they incorporate it into their daily work routine, like
checking email?

It’s still all about the people, not the tools.
The lessons from
reporters that were interviewed were many and varied. One lesson rang true
throughout most of the interviews: This is still about managing
relationships. Reporters are naturals at that – but not usually in an
online environment. A beat reporter needs to go where the people are,
meet them on their own turf, or provide a space where they can be
comfortable.

In the coming months:

In the longer scheme of things, we are
still just getting started. The beat reporters mentioned above will
continue to make headway in how to engage their growing networks. There
is lots to learn: How to initially engage a community or break the
ice.  How to moderate and what the aim of moderation is.  Pluck versus
Ning, versus Movable Type and Reddit (which are all in the works to aid
some of our other beat reporters).  What are the easiest, no-brainer
(once you see it) uses of a social network for reporting? These are
all questions that can only be answered through trial and error. By
pushing forward. That’s what this project is about.

I still stand by the motto: “It is cheaper, easier and more
effective to just dive in and experiment on the internet then it is to
have a bunch of meetings to decide whether or not to try an experiment.”

To that extent: We will also add affiliate beat bloggers. We have a
few already and will hopefully add more and bring them into the
conversation in a more meaningful and interactive way. In time, more
and more entrepreneurial reporters, whether they are the 13
highlighted, or sporadic throughout the web will meet in the sandbox of
beat blogging.