Trying is a prerequisite of innovation

Joe Ruiz is the nightside Web editor for KSAT.com in San Antonio, Texas. You can find him on Twitter or at his blog. He is currently working as one of the new media track leaders for the upcoming National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention scheduled for June in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

With a smaller staff at my news organization, we’re at a disadvantage when it comes to covering some stories the way they deserve, but one of the strengths of our newsroom has been breaking news coverage. I have a few people who’ve taken to using social media tools for our work, and it’s actually helped us do our jobs better. One of our reporters and a few of our video journalists have started using Twitter and Qik to provide news coverage faster than our counterparts.

It’s been fairly simple with the technology and even more so because my coworkers believe it’s to our benefit as a news organization. Let’s face facts: No matter what technology is available, if you don’t have people willing to try, it means nothing. We’ve been lucky since more and more people in our newsroom have been willing to accept the benefits — or at the very least, try them out — of social media and its strengths.

One of my favorite examples has been our recent coverage of an apartment fire . One of our VJs carries a jailbroken iPhone loaded with Qik (he’s one of five VJs with Qik installed). Once the fire call came out, Sam Lerma headed to the scene and immediately began streaming with his iPhone. He had some extra scene video as well as an interview with the fire department spokesman. But here’s where we did better than every other news organization in town: We had it live. Using Qik’s embed code and adding it to our story, we streamed Sam’s interview and had promotion from our breaking news coverage to give us a nice boost on our page views and time spent on our site.

Of course, our story’s no Hudson River plane ditching, but it’s one of the ways we bring breaking news to our readers. I know we’ve done a good job because when news breaks, our numbers spike. We’ve earned the respect of our readers by offering them another way to get news as fast as we can provide. One of our reporters keeps his iPhone ready to do video and send photos so we can show images without having to wait for videos to be fed.

While most of our guys have iPhones, two have Samsung phones that also work with Qik, so it’s not necessarily that you need the latest, most expensive technology. You have to be, however, willing to try with whatever you have or can afford. Social media is a wonderful tool when used correctly, but as I wrote above, you have to be willing to try what’s available.

The best tools mean nothing if you’re not willing to try.