Leaderboard for week of 5-25-2009: Innovation with Twitter edition

This week’s Leaderboard features three beatbloggers who use Twitter in innovative ways.

Many journalists complain that more and more is being thrown at them, and that they simply don’t have enough time for everything: stories, posts, tweets, videos, etc. There are ways to integrate social media into journalism, however, that don’t take much time or even make journalists more efficient.

Twitter can simply be a great way to take notes and make them public, for instance.

Michelle De La Rosa | San Antonio Express-News

• De La Rosa is another strong education beatblogger (a trend is forming with education reporters here).
• De La Rosa’s tweeting is particularly strong, and she uses Twitter to live blog school board meetings. Using Twitter to live blog provides several advantages for reporters. First, reporters can post live updates for people who may not want to or be able to attend the meeting itself. But perhaps more importantly, live blogging a school board meeting doesn’t really take any extra time. De La Rosa would have to attend any important meetings anyway and take notes. Twitter can be a fantastic way to take notes, while producing a live product at the same time.
• In fact, many beatbloggers find Twitter to be a great way to take notes. Because each tweet is going live, beatbloggers are forced to make sure their notes are coherent and concise. There were many times when my notes were a big mess (especially the hand written ones). Twitter forces reporters to take good, concise and coherent notes.
• Many beatbloggers directly copy and paste many of their tweets into blog posts and news stories. Using Twitter to live blog events is one form of new media journalism that isn’t a huge time sink. It can help make reporters more efficient.
• De La Rosa also contributes to a group education beatblog.

Eric Berger | The Houston Chronicle

• Berger is one of the best at live chats, and we recognize him this week for his chat on the space shuttle Atlantis coming home. Berger and fellow science geeks got together to chat while Atlantis reentered orbit and made its way to Edwards Air Force base.
• Berger has done a lot of live chats before, but this time he integrated NASA’s official Twitter feed into his chat. Throughout the CoveritLive chat, tweets from NASA updating Atlanta’s progress or providing interesting tidbits would pop up. Messages like “The deorbit burn is complete, and Atalntis&the crew have begun their descent to California!” and “This will be the 53rd shuttle landing at Edwards. The first was STS-1 on April 14, 1981.”
• CoveritLive now allows Twitter feeds, searches and hashtags to be inserted into live chats. This takes CoveritLive to a whole new level, and makes live chats a lot more interesting and valuable during events like this.
• CoveritLive recognizes that Twitter integration could get out of control. After all, a lot of people were talking about Atlantis while it was coming home. Just adding every tweet with the #Atlantis hashtag would have been a nightmare. CoveritLive allows chat authors to moderate Twitter content. You can go in and simply select the Twitter content that you want displayed during your live chat.
• CoveritLive also allows unmoderated content to automatically appear during a live chat. The NASA Twitter feed, for instance, is trustworthy and not updated that often. There is no reason it needs to be moderated.

Andrew C. Revkin | The New York Times

• Revkin gets this nod again for his great use of linking. His posts are often thorough on their own, but Revkin links to a lot of good outside information. His posts are a jumping off point for delving deeper into a topic. Revkin asked, “Should Major Emitters Focus on the Sun?“
• What really makes this post shine, however, is Revkin’s YouTube slideshow on using solar energy. His slideshow shows several charts and graphs that illustrate how little the U.S. government spends on solar energy research compared to other energy technologies.
• His post, however, wasn’t just a random question, but rather ties in with this week’s U.S.-led meetings on climate change, known as the Forum on Energy and Climate. Revkin’s knowledgeable users engaged in a spirited back and forth about the merits of different energy technologies in the comments section. Revkin himself entered the fray to respond to one commenter comment on nuclear power (an expert on the subject at that) with, “Interesting thought. It’s important to note, in looking at the graphs showing rich-country investment in energy research, that nuclear (fusion and fission) have long gotten a much larger piece of the R&D pie than solar, so just wondering here if the solar component needs more respect (not that nuclear needs less).”
• A post like this makes sense considering Revkin’s users. His users are more knowledgeable than him on many topics. Rather than try to teach them about solar energy, he gathers facts and figures and gets his knowledgeable users to debate a topic. Once he gets these knowledgeable people talking, a lot of great information comes out. The comments after Revkin’s posts often look like debates between experts. Revkin can also use the comments section as a place to find new story ideas.
• Back to the linking aspect of this post. Revkin links to relevant Dot Earth posts from the past, WhiteHouse.Gov documents, Chinese news sources, an AFP story, a YouTube video, a Twitter search, GreenPeace.org and more. His blog post is a wrapper that makes all of these disparate pieces of information feel like one.
• Revkin’s use of Twitter searches in his blog post is also of note. If people are already talking about a topic, why not link to those thoughts on Twitter?
• Let’s not forget that this blog post was ultimately created to get people talking. The post title is itself a question. Revkin found some data, created a slideshow, linked to relevant content and put it all together into a coherent post that gets his knowledgeable readers talking about why so little money is spent on solar solar research.

The different styles of live blogging

Live blogging has helped transform how journalists — particularly print journalists who had to report yesterday’s news tomorrow — cover events and give commentary in real time.

A live blog is a live, online update of an event, via a microblogging service like Twitter or a dedicated live blogging service like CoveritLive. We’ve been researching live blogging habits and trends, and live blogs tend to cover standard fare: breaking news, politics, sports, entertainment and business events. Beyond that though, live blogs on the web are so varied that it’s hard to see them all as one style of journalism.

The differences in live blogs can be narrowed down to three main areas:

• Style
• Frequency and length of updates
• Level of interactivity with readers

A live blogger’s writing style can vary from straight-laced news reporter, to snarky know-it-all commentator or rapid-fire text messenger. When Kate Phillips covered the State of the Union for the New York Times, she did so as a straight-up reporter at the event, with knowledgeable entries that covered all the bases. When “Political Doctor” covered the same event from her TV, her writing went with a dose of sarcasm. Meanwhile, when covering the Independent Spirit Awards, Spout just sent in Twitter messages of 140 characters, essentially fun blips to her audience.

Live blogggers vary widely as to how often they check in during an event. While most announce major developments, some take it to the extreme: When FiredogLake covered the Scooter Libby trial, it read like a transcript of the entire trial. Their team of bloggers rotated simultaneous blogging in the courtroom and hardly missed a beat. On the other extreme, there are live bloggers who just contribute when they feel like it, regardless of the event, like this casual Oscar live blog from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Then there’s how the blogger uses the readers’ feedback. In that Oscar blog from Florida, comments were in their own separate section below the blog post. In other blogs, comments are mixed right in with the bloggers’ writing, which makes it more of a conversation than a report. Some bloggers use their position to act as a voice of authority to readers asking questions: The Sioux City Journal’s live blog of Lawrence Harris’ trial read like a radio call-in show. In contrast, when The Uptake covers the Coleman-Franken hearings, everybody’s got an opinion, and the hosts tend to fade to the background.

Some live blogs use tools like instant polls to interact with readers Though perhaps gimmicky, the polls at least make participants feel valued. Other live blogs utilize links, which can be helpful to provide more info. But in the case of a fast-breaking story, who has time to be reading other links?

Underlying every one of these questions is how the blogger conceives of the audience. If they think their readers are watching along with them, as with the Oscars or the State of the Union, then the blogger can afford to miss details and chime in at will. In other events though, especially court cases, the live blogger is the only eyes and ears for their audience.

The bloggers also have to decide if they’re writing for insiders or the general public. Newcomers to The Uptake’s coverage of Coleman-Franken may feel lost at first, because essentially the blog is an ongoing chat room. It’s great for insiders but hard to navigate if you don’t have the background. In contrast, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s coverage of the Vincent Fumo trial gave constant updates but was also written to be accessible to readers with only a passing awareness of the case.

In the end, these questions of the audience are far more important than the event is in deciding a live blog’s content. The blogger who stops and thinks about their audience, tone and the other issues we’ve raised will probably create far better and more popular content.

In our research we noticed a few trends in live blogs. We hope these sites broaden your understanding of this fun and evolving reporting style.

Continue…

Leaderboard for week of 3-16-2009: Three pillars of new media journalism

This week’s Leaderboard is a potpourri of different skills and examples.

That’s just the way I like it. We have strong link journalism, strong live blogging and strong community building. Each of those are important to journalism moving forward.

I apologize for the tardiness of the Leaderboard this week. We’ve been taking on a lot of new endeavors at BeatBlogging.Org and bringing students up to speed on the project.

David Brauer | MinnPost.com

• Brauer was nominated for this nifty bit of link-journalism. Curation is a big part of the future of journalism. Even if you’re not breaking every story, you can still act as a trusted source and filter for users.
• There is too much information to read on the Internet. It’s overwhelming at times. That’s what makes link journalism so powerful. Brauer combines great original reporting, with strong curation. His users get the best of his original work, plus the best work from around the Web.
• MinnPost.com is a non-profit journalism outfit that you should be following. They are experimenting with some interesting revenue models.
• Braublog is a kickass beatblog by them that covers local media and politics, and it’s a piece of new media journalism worth keeping tabs on.

Dave Levinthal | The Dallas Morning News

• This week features more CoveritLive goodness from a beatblogger. Levinthal used the live blogging tool to live blog / live chat during a contentious debate about a proposed Dallas Convention Center hotel. The debate featured Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert and real estate executive Anne Raymond.
• This is a particularly strong example of live blogging. Before the debate started, Levinthal answered questions that were e-mailed to him about the proposed project. He also took questions from people on CoveritLive before the debate started.
• His analysis and links before the debate started helped give users background and answered many of their questions. They were then better able to understand what was happening during the debate.
• Live blogging is a tool that can benefit just about any beatblogger, and CoveritLive is one of the premier live blogging tools. Live blogging gives journalists, particularly print journalists a new ability to immediately inform users and connect with them during live events. A debate like this is an excellent example of when a live blog makes a lot of sense. This is one of the best examples we have ever seen of live blogging.

Monica Guzman | Seattle Post-Intelligencer

• This is an honorary nod to Guzman because her role at the new P-I will be changing. The Big Blog has existed as a conversations starter, linking heavily to the P-I’s content and great content from around the Web. Guzman has also pulled out interesting comments on other P-I stories and elevated them to their own posts. But the thing is, the P-I is radically changing. Most of the newsroom is gone, and so Guzman’s role will be changing.
• The Big Blog was an exemplary example of how a newspaper could use the Web for two-way communication and community building. Guzman engaged in gathering, moderating and analyzing conversations. That was the heart of what she did. Most news organization do not have someone like her on board. They need to fix that.
• The Big Blog was also a blog that worked well with traditional print content. This is the style of blog that every newspaper should look into. You can find our past coverage of the old Big Blog here.
• Now that the P-I no longer has print content, it’s clear that The Big Blog will be changing. What the new Big Blog and P-I will be like is still to be determined. Regardless of what the new Big Blog looks like, the old Big Blog was a beatblog worth emulating by other news organizations.

Leaderboard for week of 1-19-09: Users adding value

This week’s Leaderboard is about users adding value to journalists’ content.

Good beat bloggers build strong communities around their beats. These communities not only can help journalists report news and stay up-to-date on industry news, but they can also add value with strong comments after posts. Slashdot in particular has made an art form out of having comments after posts be more valuable than the original posts themselves (not coincidentally, Slashdot has one of the best commenting systems around).

Just about all of the beat bloggers we follow have built strong communities. These communities help journalists report, but there are some beat bloggers who have built such strong communities that their users and their comments and links are just as imporant as the original content itself.

Kent Fischer | The Dallas Morning News

• We’ll say it again, Comment of the Week is a feature that every beat blogger should copy.
• So many journalists are worried about allowing comments on posts and other content. Want to know a great way to get great comments from users? Acknowledge when users leave great comments. That’s exactly what Fischer does, and his blog has some really good comments. It also has a strong community around it.
• Fischer regularly interacts with users on his blog, and this is a key to building a strong community around a blog. By interacting with users, Fischer also has fomented a stronger and more civil community around his blog.
• Many news organizations have done a wonderful job of creating comment ghettos, filled with inappropriate, acidic, banal and often off-topic comments. These comment ghettos represent everything that many journalists hate about user comments.
• Fischer and other beat bloggers have prevented comment ghettos from forming by being active in their communities. Acknowledging when users leave comments that really add to the conversation is another great way to prevent comment ghettos from forming.

Matt Neznanski | Corvallis Gazette Times

• Live blogging is a great way to utilize the Web in ways that print never could. Services like CoveritLive make it easy for journalists to cover live events in real time. Twitter is also another popular way to provide real-time coverage of events.
• Live blogging is much more than just providing instaneous updates. It’s also about allowing people to have a voice. CoveritLive, Twitter and other services allow users to submit questions and make comments. A journalist can take this real-time questions and ask city council members, for instance, their thoughts.
• A live blog also has value after an event is over. CoveritLive makes it easy to create an archive of a live blog for users to read.
• Neznanski shows the power and immediacy of live blogging when he recently covered a City Blog meeting on homelessness. CoveritLive is quickly becoming a big-time tool for beat bloggers.

Brian Krebs | The Washington Post

• We’re continually amazed by the quality of the community around Krebs’ Security Fix blog. Good beat blogging is a way to build a strong community. Security Fix reminds us of Slashdot but with better original content.
• Krebs routinely makes posts that his users add additional insight and links in the comments section. Krebs himself is also very active in the comments section, answering questions and helping users out. There is an incredible sense of community on his blog where people are there for each other.
• This past week Krebs reported on fake online shopping sites that were trying to spoof legitimate sites. The debate and discussion after the post is arguably better than the original post itself. Users are sharing more fake sites to avoid, ways to tell if a site is fake or has a good reputation and tools people can use to make e-commerce safer.
• This is what happens when you build a strong community of knowledgeable users. It’s hard to imagine Security Fix without user comments. Many journalists fear user comments, but Krebs and Security Fix show how comments can add a lot of value to journalism.

Interview with Tawnell Hobbs on how beat and live blogging help form closer connections with users

Earlier this week, I reported that Dallas Independent School District blog, run by Kent Fischer and Tawnell Hobbs of The Dallas Morning News, had seen a huge surge in traffic due to their strong reporting of a financial crisis in the Dallas school district.

I specifically wanted to talk Hobbs about her live blogging efforts, which begun a few weeks ago. Live blogging has been a big part of the DISD’s aggressive coverage of the budget crisis and has become very popular with users.

Hobbs has used live blogging to cover district meetings about the financial crisis. A lot of interested parties are unable to make the meetings, but by using live blogging technology, Hobbs can give people live updates. Also, people can replay the live blog after the meetings are over to see what they missed.

The DISD’s blog traffic has gone way up since their first live blog a few weeks ago. One of the strengths of live blogging is the ability to gauge user feedback instantly. While Hobbs is posting from contentious district meetings, other people are posting comments on the live blog.

“There is nothing like it,” she said. “There is so much interaction that goes on it.”

Before the DISD beat blog, Hobbs thought she knew what people were feeling in the community. At meetings, she can interview people and ask them what they think, but now she has a lot more contact with people in the district. She has a lot more interaction with people in the district and can better gauge how they feel about issues.

“You don’t realize you’re not getting it until you have a blog like this,” she said. “Before, I thought I was kind of getting it. Until we put this blog up, I didn’t realize we weren’t getting as much as I thought we were.”

The blog has allowed Hobbs and Fischer to connect with users in a much more in-depth way. Because of this, people feel more connected to the blog and to Hobbs and Fischer than they did before when both were just print reporters.

“We have such a following,” she said about the blog. “People love it.”

That following goes both ways. Hobbs described the blog as “addicting.” A few days ago she was busy working on other stories and was unable to check in on the blog.

“I really missed it, just talking to folks,” she said.

That “just talking to folks,” has led to more tips being sent in and has led to some major stories.

“It helps your reporting because you get to know a lot more people,” she said about the beat blog. “Now you have hundreds more people. It opens you up to such more out there and so many more opinions. That blog reaches so many people,” she said.

We cover a lot more in this week’s podcast. Listen to Hobbs describe why beat and live blogging have helped her cover her beat better.

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

Chating Live With Your Sources – A Beat Blogging Strategy

On Super Tuesday I was glued to CNN and watching my Twitter stream of friends (even getting some of my responses blogged about ie: they were beat blogging in broad terms).

One Tweet caught my eye. It was from Josh Levy at Tech President saying that he was liveblogging Super Tuesday.

Okay: let’s check it out.

Josh was using a tool called CoverItLive, something I had heard of, but never seen in action. Within minutes I could see the value of CoverItLive for any beat blogger with an open network. This is instant feedback – and if you are covering the Superbowl, Super Tuesday or any concrete event with a fixed time line, why not open the floodgates and turn your site into the center of conversation.

I signed up at CoverItLive and had a test chat up and running in minutes – literally minutes.

What if you have/want a closed network?

A very valid concern – especially for some of our beat bloggers who expressed time and again, the need for anonymity or closed conversations.

I decided to send that question on to CoverItLive and received an answer directly from the top: Keith McSpurren the President of CoverItLive.

Hello

Thanks for your question. Think you’re watching Josh right now in techpresident…

There are a number of ways to achieve a private live blog.

The best way/easest way would be to put the Viewer Window behind a password protected page on your blog (financial analysts do this for earnings call coverage for their clients only);

A second way would be to launch it and NOT even
post it but then use the application to send out email invites to who you
wanted…a link would be in there for them to go to it (this leaves you with
kind of a ‘floating’ Viewer Window as it is not attached to your
blog…a bit weird, but no one can get to it without the link in the email.

We’ve designed the product to be open and pretty
passive for readers (no username/passwords required).  We expect that most
people wanting to have private content areas already have unique
username/password things so we just stay out of that and tell people to shove
us in behind.

In a follow up email Keith mentioned that mlive.com, which I recently pointed out as using Twitter in an interesting fashion used CoverItLive during the Superbowl.

Again: The obvious use for CoverItLive is in open networks during events that would be important to everyone who lives/breathes the beat. But I could also imagine CoverItLive being used to organize debates between specific sources, candid conversations between a variety of sources or even daily chats.

Imagine a blogger who, every day, starts their day off with a chat. From 10-11, come here to talk about X.