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.

I debriefed Brad on what he’s learned so far and as it turns out – the experiment has been an all around success.

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.

He set up a Google Group invited some of his most trusted sources and so far has 46 members that have joined. Google Groups (or Yahoo Groups) are brilliant in their simplicity. While it lacks some of the bells and whistles of a Facebook page, which can be more personal, the conversation is taken right to where people already are: Their e-mail inbox!

My public advice to Brad, which comes from some of the lessons from reporters: Find a way to keep the group engaged. A Google Group (like all social networks) is a shark – if it stops moving forward, it can die. Perhaps build a new page, an overlooked function of Google Groups, and use that to collect a few surveys you would like the social network to take.

The update from Brad:

Things are going really well. I’ve used the group several times to
help my reporting on stories, so it’s already been very successful in
my mind. I’ve also gotten a handful of people to raise discussion
topics on their own. And I just ran into probably 20 of the members at
a conference this past weekend, and they all appreciated being invited
and have enjoyed the level of conversation. I see this as a great
legacy for the beat I’m covering (meaning that I’m sure it will live on
after I’m gone), and I’m planning to suggest that more reporters around
here set up discussion groups to help their reporting.

Google
Groups is working OK. I don’t think the people in my crowd are
necessarily the kind to spend much time beyond the intellectual banter
getting to know other people online, so the technology isn’t getting in
the way of things. But I was disappointed with some of the problems I
had in setting up the group. I think I mentioned that Google flagged a
bunch of my invitations as possible spam, and I had to add people
directly. Those folks haven’t been able to access the website where the
conversation threads are archived unless they’re gmail users.

I’ve had conversations with all 12 of our beat bloggers (number 13 is TBA and will have catching up to do) and wanted to give an update on the first four now. The remaining eight will be highlighted in subsequent posts.

Click to read more.

News org: Dallas Morning News
Reporter: Kent Fisher: Spoke with on Monday November 20th

Current status: Kent is in the early stages of thinking about
how he can build an active social network considering some of the
unique challenges he faces covering the Dallas public school district.
He knows the general approach he wants to use, which is to use the
social network as a megaphone to broadcast out to his sources. But also
to connect folks that he’s not currently talking to.

He contrasted it with the explanation Jeff Jarvis envisioned here: “But
now the role of the reporter can and should be different: as a
moderator, vetter, enabler, encourager.” After I sent that link out,
Kent explained that what he wants is a way to keep in touch with
everyone to inform his reporting. If it creates a side discussion that
leads to change, he is happy with it, but his goal is still going to be
to get better reporting.

Still to come: As a result of the special concerns below, Kent
plans on doing some shoe-leather social networking first. He has to
present his case to the right people to get them online and part of his
network. Off in the distance Kent has the idea of creating online
forums for all 227 schools. A district water cooler where people can
congregate online. One concern is that 227 different forums will be too
fragmented and people will end up in chat rooms by themselves. Another
means of organizing them into larger forum groups is under
consideration.

Special concerns: When Kent approached an administrator at the
school district the reply was “that’s a great idea, but it’ll never
work in Dallas.”

The school district in Dallas is amid serious reform, so principles are
overworked. The district is largely poor and minority, so many parents
don’t have online access. Tens of thousands more don’t even speak
English. Yet, those parents are the sources that Kent wants to reach,
because that’s where the story behind Dallas’ public school system is.
There is also the question of anonymity. “The Dallas district has a
long history of punishing people who don’t tow the party line,” said
Kent. Several teachers Kent has asked to participate were excited about
the idea, but they feared they’d get in trouble for speaking their mind
on a public blog.

Finally there is the concern about what will happen to the blog and his
sources during the summer break. With a few weeks of slow news, will
they come back to the network after summer vacation?

Big Unknowns: The biggest unknown is “who is going to be in the
network?” Kent wants to get people involved who he isn’t already
talking to. It’s the classic problem: How do we know the people we
don’t know? And how will we overcome the parental digital divide?

Tools under consideration: Right now there isn’t a blog for
Kent’s reporting, which appears in the paper. What Kent is working on
now is figuring out the best content management system that will allow
him to report on the blog and seamlessly broadcast out to his network
of sources. Moveable Type will probably be what they start with and
from there they will either add widgets or find a third party site to
build the network.

Where the excitement is: “Moving our beat coverage of a huge
school district to “real time” blog that will allow people to
communicate, share ideas and offer guidance as stories unfold.”

News Org: Chronicle of Higher Education
Reporter: Brad Wolverton. Spoke with on Wednesday Novemeber 22nd.

Current status: As mentioned above, Kent read the Jarvis post
and described his vision in contrast to it. Brad, on the other hand, is
singing a similar tune to Jarvis. His goal is to create a space where
discussion can take place and Brad will watch closely as the
conversation flies by. Brad is also the first beat blogger out of the
gate. He has gotten about 40 trusted sources to join a Google Group and
he may add another dozen or so in coming weeks, he says. His hope is
that he will broaden this network and tap into it in a deeper way.

Still to come: Brad is using Google Groups as a home base for
now, but is looking into other options. To begin, since these are his
sources – he is having them do short introductions to each other, so
they can get to know each other.

Special concerns: So far Brad seems to be the most gung-ho to be
as open as possible. The question is, how open should he be? He has
even been contacted by another reporter, not necessarily a competitor,
but someone close to his beat, who wants to join. Brad is considering
it. He also seemed very aware that starting up the conversation will
require some goading in the beginning on his end, and is figuring out
how exactly he can increase participation.

He will also face the immediate challenge of the holidays. Since he has
already contacted lots of sources, there will be a week or two of
general radio silence over Christmas and he’ll have to removitate
people post-holiday-mortem.

Big Unknowns: How open is Brad going to let this be? Can anyone
join? Will it be private, but his sources can invite their friends? Is
he willing to lose the “scoop” in order to be at the helm of the
conversation in this network? Right now Brad seems to be guided by the
mantra that open is better – but we are both unsure where this will
lead. He will still want to control the ebb and flow of the
conversation, but doesn’t want to do it in a top-down manner. Brad will
have to work on his finesse with the sources.

Tools: Right now Brad is using Google Groups. The biggest
problem with this tool is that it lacks a sense of getting to know the
personality of other participants. Google groups is mainly used as a
list-serve. But if he wants to get a conversation going, Brad will need
to provide more than just a group email. To help in this early stage
Brad is having a round of introductions, but soon he may need to find a
more concrete way for the people in his network to really get a sense
of one another.

Where the excitement is: Brad has a purely experimental attitude
towards this.  He says: “I’ve gotten a tremendous amount of interest in
this experiment, with one person even describing it as college sports’
version of the Pugwash Conference. While nuclear disarmament isn’t our
goal, some participants think our discussions could lead to ways for
big-time athletic departments to curb their massive spending. I’m sure
that’ll never happen, but I’m encouraged that people see a higher
purpose to these discussions than just feeding me tips. My publication
is in the throes of redesigning the architecture of our website. I
decided not to wait for that to happen, and just set up a Google group
to get a dialogue going. I suspect I’ll move the group into a more
interactive setting at some point, but for now I’m anxious to start.
I’ll keep you posted on the kind of feedback I get to my first few
discussion topics, which I hope to tee up in the next couple of days.
But my long-term goal here may be a bit different than a lot of
peoples’. I want to build a strong (and private) discussion forum that
stays a fairly manageable size, at least for now. Eventually I could
see gravitating this group into a public setting, or creating another
more public group with a similar bent. I also want to start tapping
some of the people in my group to post things to a blog I’m planning to
start early next year, giving them posting privileges similar to what I
have. I’m sure the idea will evolve, and I’m anxious to hear what
others are doing.”

News org: Houston Chronicle
Reporter: Eric Berger, Spoke with on November 20th

Current status: Still in the early stages. Getting a strong idea
for what he wants to achieve, which is unqiue from the other beat
bloggers. His vision is to turn his networked sources into regular
bloggers. Very ambitious and will require extra motiviation.

Future Plans: The idea is to create nine sub-blogs under his
general science blog. Each blog, on a specific science subject will be
run by two scientists and an enthusiastic laymen. He will link back to
these blogs as they pertain to the most important news of the day.

Special concerns:  Keeping people motivated and trying to get
scientists involved on a long term basis. He’s actually tried something
similar before. The difficulty is keeping people active for longer
periods of time. Everyone likes the idea — but after two months the
scientists might wonder why they are managing these sub-blogs.

Eric also wants to find the right people who will cultivate a community
of their own. He has had expeience with science blogs turning into
politically biased shouting matches, and the fear here is that the
heads of these blogs will also need to have moderating skills.

Big Unknowns: The biggest unkown is how he will keep the space
active and constantly moving forward. This means finding a way to
recognize his contributors and give credit where it is due. There is
also the question of how this will be structured. The website is
currently run on Moveable type and Eric wants to find a way to turn his
single blog into a blog ring with individual spaces for the people he
brings in.

Tools: Eric intends on building sub-blogs with the tech support
from the Houston Chronicle. The question is, how will they be
represented on the main page? Eric is currently looking into options
for his blog that will allow him to actively highlight and interact
with the other blogs. There was also talk of holding physical meetings
in the Houston Texas area inviting scientsits from all over the region
- a kind of CafeScientifique.

Where the excitement is….Eric is really reaching out to find a
way to engage these sources. He isn’t just going to rely on them to
inform him, he is going to ask them to become ambitious contributors
who write for these blogs. If you look at the growing communities of
ScienceBlogs and now SCIAM’s community site – it’s easy to see that
science blogging is on the rise, or at least, interest in it is. Eric
thinks he can better serve his readers if he invites scientists to
directly post under his blog, giving them a direct voice.
Eric says:……….”The goal is to maximize participation by working
scientists who want to engage the public, and to keep the discussions
friendly and on point. The initial target audience is Texans, but
eventually it could become recognized as a national meeting place for
those interested in science. The unique thing here is a place that
encourages direct interaction between scientists and the interested
public. So it’s not a blog for scientists, and not a blog for the
public. It’s a neutral meeting place for both.”

News Org: Patriot-News
Daniel Victor. Spoke with on November 27th

Current status: Daniel has a fairly good picture in his head of
what the network should look like with a few holes. He has been trying
to get those clearly articulated to address them. He also has started
writing his “pitch” letter to the people he will want to participate in
the network. Once it’s coherent enough to send out to an initial group,
the networking will begin.

Still to come: Daniel has a uniuqe beat in this project because
he is cover the communit at large including development, schools, the
chocolate factory (Hersheys’) and the theme park. His initial plan is
to invite a small group of trusted residents. From there the network
will grow.

Special concerns: One of my concerns has been how to translate
the content gathered in the acebook group, or whatever it is, into blog
format. My biggest concern is that there’s somewhat of a culture of
fear here…people are convinced if they speak out about the school
district, their kids will be punished. So the biggest question is: does
he invite school board members, a township supervisor or a spokesman
for the chocolate company? Or would that just serve to stifle the
discussion?

Big Unknowns: How big should the network be? That’s one of the
key questions he has been wrestling with and he may just leave it up to
the community to make the final decision. Daniel is also afraid that he
is “foolishly optimistic” in his ability to effectively moderate the
discussion, which he could reasonably see beecoming a problem down the
road. Some forums on the web site have turned into mud throwing with
very little accomplished.

Tools: Ning, Facebook, on a blog using widgets? Daniel is still
looking into where he wants the network to live. Facebook is being
thrown around, especially by other people in the newsroom as a
potential home, but Daniel isn’t 100 percent sold. Ning is another
option which he will look into. It’s looking like Daniel will use a
third party host site to get started and will incporate widgets in his
blog to tie the two together.

Where the excitement is: “I’m hoping that all the discussions
that usually happen at soccer games and e-mails between parents will
instead happen within my earshot. Those parents wouldn’t normally think
of e-mailing me but most of the time, they’d be surprised how
interesting I’d find that information.
I see this as a way to more effectively gather story ideas and when I
do have those story ideas, I’ll be able to pack them with more context
than I might have otherwise been able to quickly assemble, itseems like
everything in this town has a long, long back story.”

“For me the key word in all this is “connecting.” Reaching out to people is obviously the hallmark of great beat reporting. But if we don’t provide a forum for our sources and readers to connect to each other, we’re missing a valuable opportunity.”

The Beat: The business of college sports, nationwide.

The Reporter: Brad Wolverton, staff reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education

Description: Scott Smallwood, new media editor writes….

We’d like to participate in your social networking beat reporting
project. Our idea is to have Brad Wolverton, the senior editor of our
Athletics section and also our principle Athletics reporter, create a
network around his new beat of the business of college sports.

After covering athletics for several years, Brad has been looking
for ways to delve deeper into the subject and to get more diverse
voices into our coverage. College sports obviously gets plenty of
attention in the media, but our hope is to focus more on the money:
where’s it’s coming from and where it’s going to.

We’re still developing our plan for how this social network would
work on the site and how we would make use of the network in any
editorial content. We’ll be creating a new blog for Brad’s beat that
will be the home for the project, but we’re also very interested in
using other Web-based tools to create this network and give its members
a way to communicate to each other and our audience.

The Chronicle of Higher Education Team: (1. Jeff Selingo, editor
(2. Scott Smallwood, new media editor
(3. Brad Wolverton, reporter

More: Brad Wolverton writes….

In covering the beat the past few years I’ve developed
plenty of trusted sources, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about
how to use the web to build more of a community around my coverage.

My goal is to create an online social network where a few dozen
experts can begin connecting regularly on the key issues of the day. I
want this to be a place where they share ideas and learn from each
other as much as inform my coverage.

We’re also going to create a blog focused on the issues and money
behind the games, a place where all our readers will be able to turn to
delve into what’s happening off the field.

My hope is that many of the ideas from the social network will
gravitate to the blog, where the experts will play a leading role in
shaping the conversations taking place there.

For me the key word in all this is “connecting.” Reaching out to
people is obviously the hallmark of great beat reporting. But if we
don’t provide a forum for our sources and readers to connect to each
other, we’re missing a valuable opportunity.

Kudos to you for the outstanding idea, and I look forward to working with you on this project.