LJ World makes big push into beat blogging
The Lawrence-Journal World, often considered one of the most innovative U.S. newspapers, has made a company-wide to beat blog.
Many papers have at least a beat blog or two. Some have several but the LJ World is experimenting with beat blogs for a wide range of beats. One of the biggest reasons that the LJ World added beat blogs was because they wanted to tap into a broader network of sources.
“Clearly a community of 100,000 will know more than a newsroom of 50 ever will,” online editor Jonathan Kealing said.
One of the blogs that embodies that philosophy is Chad Lawhorn’s Town talk blog about the city of Lawrence, Kansas. The blog is billed as, “Blurbs and bites from newsmakers and your neighbor.” Kealing said it’s the kind of journalism that the LJ World could not do without a blog, especially in print.
Another successful beat blog is Heard on the Hill. This blog about Kansas University owes much of its success to its ability to harness the strengths of the Web.
“It’s short form,” Kealing said. “It’s videos. It’s giving people information in different ways.”
Alex Parker, an education reporter for the LJ World, recently launched a beat blog with fellow reporter Lindsey Slater called Schoolhouse talk. While Parker works for the LJ World, Slater works for a TV affiliate. The two bring different styles and strengths to the blog.
“The idea was to have an alternative method of interacting with our community,” Parker said. ”Ultimately we want to use the blog as just another way to disseminate news. A way that is a little less formal, a way to link out to other sites, embed videos, link to documents.”
Parker is hoping to get more comments on his beat blog. He believes that will be a big part of the blog’s success or failings, and so far he isn’t satisfied with the amount of traffic to his blog or the amount of comments on it. Schoolhouse talk is only a few months old, and the jury is still out, but typically it takes at least several months for a beat blog to build a loyal base of readers.
“It hasn’t become a destination for people yet,” Parker said. “We’re still trying to figure it out.”
Parker also reiterated Kealing’s thoughts on the crowd being wiser than them.
“You can bet your house that there are tons of people out there who know more about our beats than we do,” he said. “There is a whole wealth of information out there. We’re comfortable knowing that sometimes our audience does more than us.”
The LJ World hasn’t been beat blogging that long, but Kealing said they have learned several lessons.
- Not every beat is as well suited to blogging as others — For Kealing, this doesn’t mean not trying blogging with certain beats, but it does mean having reasonable expectations for each beat. The crime beat is immensely popular, while the health beat is less so. The LJ World doesn’t expect those two beats to have the same amounts of traffic or comments. Still, this might mean that a beat blog won’t for some beats.
- Timing is everything — I’ve mentioned this several times before on here. Kealing has noticed the same phenomenon. Basically, when big events happen, jump all over them. Cover them well. Nobody is looking for dated coverage, and beat blogging allows news organizations to be extremely current with information. Beat blogging also allows reporters to report more in-depth and link to important documents and other Web sites.
- Headlines are very important — SEO is a big part of this, but it goes deeper than that according to Kealing. ”That headline has to do a lot to draw people in,” he said. “A lot of times reporters are interested in over-arching headlines that don’t really say anything. You have to be pretty explicit, otherwise people are going to ignore it.” On the Web, being ignored is a death sentence. There are countless Web sites to grab users attention. Don’t give users a reason to go searching for something more interesting. The quality of a headline can be the difference between success or failure for a blog post.
Beat blogging lessons from ONA 08
There were not any beat blogging-specific sessions at ONA, but there were several valuable lessons I learned that are applicable for beat bloggers.
Comment moderation
- This idea that if you do any comment moderation you are liable for anything that is written within your comments section is false. Very false.
- Write this down: You can moderate your comments for profanity, spam, banality, etc and still have libel protections for anything you miss or don’t realize is libelous.
- The idea that moderating comments makes us libel is based off of old case law that has since been superseded. I strongly encourage you to read what the Electronic Frontier Foundation has to say about Section 230, which provides protections against libel on the Internet.
- “Courts have held that Section 230 prevents you from being held liable even if you exercise the usual prerogative of publishers to edit the material you publish. You may also delete entire posts. However, you may still be held responsible for information you provide in commentary or through editing.”
- A news organization or independent blogger is only liable for comments that become libelous because of editorial decisions. For instance, if someone wrote a comment that said, “Joe Smith is not an alcoholic,” and I edited out the “not,” I would have just made that comment libelous.
Supply and demand
- This is an issue facing journalism on the Web and not just beat bloggers. Right now, there is simply more supply of written content than there is of demand for it from advertisers. This means low CPMs for written content. It also means that text-only beat bloggers need to get a lot of page views to make a decent amount of revenue.
- On the other hand, there isn’t enough supply of video content on the Web to meet advertisers demands. Advertisers love video ads and pre-roll. They want to stick it on your content, but are having trouble finding enough content.
- I’m not suggesting that everyone jump to doing video, but diversifying content can help boost revenue. This could be a once-a-week podcast or vodcast with a few ads in it. It could mean shooting some video for your beat blog. But realize that video content can get a much higher ad rate than printed content can.
Did you learn any other valuable beat blogging tips fron ONA 08? Please share.
Using online comments in the print edition
When is it OK to use online comments left in the comment sections of news stories, blogs or forums in the print edition?
That depends on who you ask.
Kent Fischer of the Dallas Morning News does not use comments left on his blog in his print stories, because he and his paper usually does not print anonymous quotes, and almost all the comments on his blog are under anonymous handles. Only in rare, highly important situations would Fischer use an anonymous quote, and he would need his managing editor to sign off on it first.
Miriam Pereira said her paper, The News-Press, located in Ft. Myers, Florida, rarely uses online comments in print but has on occasion. In fact, a recent story was centered around an anonymous comment left on a story in February. The comment, about the death of 6-year-old Joshua Jenkins, sparked a Department of Children and Families investigation because it contained confidential information about the case. When the News-Press does run online comments they attribute them to the online handle used.
22nd Century Media runs online comments in print as a way to attract print readers to the Web, according to Kiyoshi Martinez. They only run comments, however, that are attached to real names, just like their letters to the editor policy.
The Daily Record of Morris County, New Jersey runs online comments once a week on Sundays in the opinion section, according to Kate McLoughlin. The Daily Record just uses online handles and doesn’t require "real names."
The Orlando Sentinel also runs online comments in the op-ed section, but does so daily, according to Etan Horowitz. Right underneath the letters to the editor section is a heading, "What you’re saying on the Web." The Sentinel posts full names, first names and online handles, depending on what is used online.
Horowitz said the Sentinel has also been known to use online comments with print stories:
For instance, we broke a
story on our Web site on Friday afternoon about a woman who took an envelope of
cash that another customer had left behind in the Wal-Mart check out
line. The story drew a lot of hits and comments online on Friday
afternoon, so for the print edition story on Saturday, they printed some
comments people had left about the case.
The Sentinel also accepts video letters to the editor, which is a pretty cool concept.
And then some papers have different policies for different sections of the print edition. Some papers do like to highlight online comments in special sections to send traffic to their Web products, but still don’t allow them to be used in individual stories as "man on the street quotes."
This is obviously an issue for beat bloggers as many have found that their blogs and online work attract some very good comments. But people tend to leave comments online anonymously, which makes verification difficult, unless a person leaves a valid e-mail address. Many beat bloggers still have to write for the print edition too, which can bring to a head this dilemma.
What is your paper’s policy and why? Can we even be sure that if someone gives us a "real" name that it is in fact real? The last question I have is whether the policies I have discussed above are logical for a 21st century media organization?
Maybe we need to get used to online handles like HelloKittyLove08. Is that really that much less reliable than me telling a print reporter my name is John Smith when I’m interviewed at the gas station? Or does my name change the quality of my comment?
