Creating the perfect beatblog
A cutting edge beatblog, and the sites of highest interest to Beatblogging.org, are those using the two-way, social part of the Web, to cover a beat in a networked or user-assisted way.
Here we find information and newsy items, advice and ideas regularly flowing in from readers as the blog becomes a platform for extending the network of the beat outward until hundreds and thousands of people are helping to… cover the beat.
But — truth be told — there aren’t any beatblogs that get it all right. Mostly, this is due to lack of time and resources. Where one blogger spends time on original content, another blogger spends time on two-way communication with readers/commenters.
So, let’s say that it were possible to create the perfect beatblog; that time and resources aren’t an issue. And let’s say that we created this blog using only elements from existing blogs. In other words, a mash-up.
What would this blog look like?
The Creators
First of all, it’s important to note that a beatblog does not have to be run by a large media company. It can be created by a single person or a team, a pro or an amateur journalist. The idea is that the creator(s) whoever he/she/they are, are people who care deeply about regularly covering a beat and focusing on content that is not only valuable to their readers who are interested in the niche topic, but also focus on content that their readers suggest be written or covered.
In other words, the creators “get it” — all of it. From the look and feel of their blog, to its subject to their linking ethics and social media leverage — they focus on truly becoming a “beatblog” and not just a blog that “happens to have a beat.”
They would have the reporting drive of Kent Fischer, the networking savviness of Monica Guzman, the friendly, open-mindedness of Brian Stelter and the entrepreneurial spirit of Daniel Victor.
The Design
It must be stressed that design goes a long way online. As much as “Content is King,” design can really change the way readers approach your blog and interact with it.
A beatblog that really hit the nail on the head in terms of theme and design is GothamSchools. It’s a blog focused on breaking news and analysis of the NYC public schools. If you take a look at the site, you’ll find that it’s header is properly tied in with the subject — it has the New York City skyline and the image of a public school.
The rest of the page is very minimalist and straightforward, designed to look like the pages of a notebook. What is great about GothamSchools is that there is no way anyone can get lost or confused with where to find more information, how to contact the creators or what the site is about. Everything is neatly organized and tagged, exactly the way beatblogs should be.
I’ve stressed before that many beat blogs fail to provide enough transparency and contact information on their pages. This is because so many of the best beatbloggers are attached to legacy news organizations, and thus, their pages are not stand-alone sites but rather limbs of the main news site.
I think the proper way to run a beatblog is to make it it’s own Web site, with it’s own contact information and “about” page. It shouldn’t just be a link from a drop-down menu on a news organization. Of course, if it’s affiliated it should have the proper attributions and links, etc.
But making the beatblog it’s own page can make it more comfortable for readers, easier to find and easier to interact with. Just as a news site’s Twitter feed or Facebook page is separate from the organization and more personalized, so should a beatblog be.
The Strategy/Execution
Properly running a beatblog can be difficult if there are time constraints or not enough helping hands. For example, Pharmalot, a beatblog run by journalist Ed Silverman about the pharmaceutical industry, featured really good daily journalism and link journalism. It was a beatblog that doggedly covered its niche.
But it would have been much stronger if had the same community building as the DISD Blog. Pharmalot might have been the best beatblog from just a pure content perspectiveve, but it always lagged in the two-way communication department. Silverman spent so much time delivering incredible content by himself that he simply couldn’t do more two-way communication.
Then you take Alexander Russo’s District 299 blog, and it has great two-way communication but could be stronger in terms of original content.
Again, if time weren’t an issue, what would the proper mash-up look like?
- Clear beat: GothamSchools
- High volume of commentary: SciGuy
- Harvesting of comments “Here’s what you said about this…”: Come Heller High Water
- Inquiries/questions asked to readers: Security Fix
- Daily roundup: The Daily Wrap
- Filtering and linking: Today in the Sky
- Comments or e-mails from readers run as posts/used for story ideas/improve stories: Central PA NewsVote
- Comments hosted in blog entries: Inside Ed
- Reader blogs: Seattle PI
- Hoisting Comments: Dallas ISD Blog
- Live blogging: The Caucus
- Frequent blog posts by author, i.e. several per day, updates: Glenn Greenwald
- Contact info/Transparency/Accessibility/Brand identity: Security Fix
- Good use of Twitter: Alex Roarty of PoliticsPA
- Quality writing/grammar/style: Slate.com
The Results
In the end, it’s all a time and money game. There’s not enough of either. And that’s okay — for now.
Beatblogs are still in their infancy, and it’s going to take time to evolve into something powerful and profitable. It’s always important, however, to keep fresh ideas in mind and constantly try to break the mold.
Be creative. Think outside the box. Learn from the best.
Run the best damn beatblog that the Internet’s ever seen. 
Who wants to be Daniel Victor’s assignment editor?
How Daniel Victor’s ‘Central PA NewsVote’ is raising the bar on beatblogging
The media industry is in trouble. That much is clear. But instead of grieving the death of a long-suffering system, the important question we should be asking is, “What can journalists do about it?” Daniel Victor, 24, is a reporter for The (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot-News, and he thinks he’s got an answer.
“My new assignment editor? You, the community” is the headline of the post written by Victor on PennLive.com’s blog. Left alone, it sounds like a gimmick. Yet, the first sentence dispels any ambiguity in what Victor means by his title: “In the face of some skeptics, I stubbornly believe PennLive readers should be involved in deciding which stories we write.”
Pitch your stories. Vote on them. I’ll write them. I’m all yours.
On March 3, 2009 Central PA NewsVote officially launched. What is it? How does it work? As a “hybrid mobile journalist/general assignment reporter,” Victor will take the best story ideas from the comments section of his blog, create a poll on the site and allow readers to vote on which story he should do next. Then, the chosen story is the one he will write.
The people are his assignment editor.
Already, in the first week Victor received dozens of story ideas which he compiled into a small poll widget. The idea is to report on the hyper-local stories that matter most to the people. The result is that the blog will eventually become the number one, go-to site for members of that community.
“If you check this new blog every day, you will always learn about a new wrinkle in your community,” writes Victor. “That’s a wonderful promise for a news site to make.”
Tackling the Skepticism
It’s a wonderful promise, indeed. But is it even possible? Can a reporter really rely on an often-snarky forum culture that lives on the Internet? What if the readers contribute bad stories? What if they don’t contribute at all? Is there a plan B? All these questions press upon Victor’s new endeavor.
“I am trying to build up a bank of story ideas that people can vote on; that’s the backup plan,” Victor explains. “I can get my own pitches and let people vote so they feel like they’re participating, even if their not producing story ideas.”
Victor has already done a lot of work to get things started off on the right foot by using social media, and building a small army on Facebook and Twitter in order to get people used to sending in pitches.
According to Tech Dirt’s culture blogger, Mike Masnick, a mere voting mechanism sort of misses the point of what the community can add. It should go beyond voting to actually helping out — giving tips, feedback, ideas, facts and opinions, he writes. Masnick suggests letting the community go so far as actually helping to research a story.
“That’s kind of what I’m doing with Twitter,” Victor said in response. “That’s my main way of reaching people. I could see possibly using the blog to say, ‘this story won.’”
What it takes to be a beatblogger
Want to know what it takes to be a beatblogger? Not sure where to start? Who is doing it already? Here is your simple introduction to the new revolutionary practice that is changing the world of digital journalism.
A beatblogger isn’t just a blogger.
Twitter isn’t merely “Facebook Status Updates.” It’s much more. Likewise, beatblogging is more than just a journalist being assigned to blog for a major news publication. A beatblogger, simply put, is a beat reporter who uses their blog as a tool to engage their readers, interact with them, use them as sources, crowdsource their ideas and invite them to contribute to the reporting process.
When a beat reporter uses social networking with the community to create hyper-local and hyper-focused stories – that’s beatblogging. As a result, the beat is better researched because the community that is directly involved with the subject is actively participating in creating news.
Your readers are your new BFF’s. Get to know them. Invite them to dinner.
Okay, so you don’t exactly have to invite them into your home, but you get the idea. Beatblogging requires reporters to start conversations with their readers. But simply replying to a few comments doesn’t cut it. It’s the year 2009. You have to be way more active than that. This means asking questions, replying to comments, seeking out tips, using their story ideas and building stories upon their conversations.
More often than not you’ll be required to continue conversations on older stories even when you are already working on a new project. This can be tiring, time-consuming and hard work. But the trade-off is that much of the researching and source-chasing that journalists used to undergo is eliminated through the first degree contact with the community.
If you haven’t spoken to your audience, if you don’t know who your most loyal reader is, if you haven’t written a story based on a tip from the comments section of your blog and if you haven’t asked the crowd for help — you’re losing. You’re not using 2009 tools to be at the forefront of the digital revolution. And you’re certainly not a beatblogger.
Be everywhere. I’m not kidding.
Journalists in the 21st century can no longer hide behind their bylines. I can’t stress enough how important it is for bloggers to be accessible through all networks and social sites. Where’s your “about” page? Is your e-mail easy to find? Do you have a photo up? Even some of the most successful beatbloggers today have not been doing a good job of making themselves transparent.
It’s important to bridge the gap between reader and source and build a circle of trust. And the only way this can happen successfully is if both sides agree to be transparent. If bloggers are annoyed by snarky, anonymous commenters, then lead by example. Don’t hide information about yourself either.
Be accessible. That means I should be able to find your name, a photo, e-mail, Facebook page, LinkedIN account, Twitter name and possibly an e-mail. That’s it. It’s not too hard, and it will make your beatblogging experience world’s easier. (P.S. Want to be a top search result when searching for the term ‘beatblogger’? Then make sure to add the keyword multiple times in your various social profiles!).
Learn by example. It’s okay to copy practices. Don’t worry, it’s not plagiarism.
Journalists hate to copy. They don’t like anything that isn’t original or different. They like to be the first to report on a story or have a certain angle. But sometimes it’s okay to copy, especially in the case of beatblogging. What this means is that you should look at what current beatbloggers are doing successfully and emulate their methods to form your own beatblog.
Take a look at Kent Fischer from the Dallas Independent School District Blog, who is building a “blog on steroids.” Fischer’s blog is essentially a micro-site, a niche publication that covers the education system in Dallas, Texas by combining beatblogging with database reporting.
Learn from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Monica Guzman as she innovate with her weekly office hours for readers. Guzman connects with her users on her blog, The Big Blog, on social media sites like Twitter and in person. Guzman is a master conversation starter and uses her networks to get people talking about issues in Seattle and about the PI’s content. The Big Blog is all about cultivating conversations and there is no one better than Guzman at that.
Check out Brian Stelter from the New York Times who is beatblogging at “TV Decoder,” where he covers the day’s on-screen and behind-the-scenes developments, with insights into Nielsen ratings and the machinations of the TV industry. Stelter has found that it’s easier to share stories, ideas, links and be able to ask for advice, contacts, and sources. He is always opening himself up to opinions, more points of view and more sources. Likewise, users send Stelter feedback and actually like to contribute because they feel more connected. He is a real person they can interact with.
Watch Daniel Victor, the twenty-four year old reporter for The (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot-News. Victor is trying his hand at mobile journalism, and he’s convinced that community-building and crowdsourcing are the two biggest keys to journalism’s future. Victor experimented with a Ning network that ultimately didn’t work out, but it hasn’t deterred him from innovating. Victor’s latest venture is a blog where Victor asks his reader’s to be his assignment editor. Readers are, literally, his assignment editors — researching, contributing ideas and suggesting stories.
Lastly… INNOVATE!
The most marked characteristic of beatbloggers is that they all took it upon themselves to pitch new ideas to their editors and take on radical experiments that had never been attempted in the world of journalism. A true beatblogger never stops trying to innovate and create new ways of using the community and social media tools to improve journalism. Don’t be afraid to use your own methods. And when you do, be sure to send us your work our way!
Did this article help? Comments or questions? Be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments or send a tweet to @MsBeat.
Podcast: Social media critical to reporting a story
Daniel Victor said social media, and Facebook in particular, were crucial to his ability to gather alumni reaction to the news of a local school being slated to shut down.
Word recently came that the Pennsylvanian government wanted to axe the Scotland School for Veteran’s Children because of budget issues. The school serves at-risk children of veterans, but closing the school would save the state $10.5 million.
Victor’s assignment was to go out in the community and to talk to people about the decision to close the school and also to get in touch with alumni to get their reactions. Normally, this wouldn’t be that easy of a task to do, but thanks to social media, Victor was contacted by dozens of people who wanted to share their stories and reactions.
“It was absolutely critical,” Victor said about using social media to help report this story.
He sent out a tweet and got a few responses on Twitter, but Twitter wasn’t nearly as big of a help as Facebook was. Victor found an alumni group for the school on Facebook and joined the group. He explained what his story was, and he left his cell phone number.
One of the alumni who read his message on Facebook sent out a text message to an alumni network that helped spread the word about Victor was doing. Soon he was contacted by 48 alumni who wanted to be interviewed, and he was able to interview almost two dozen of them.
“They ended up doing the work for me,” he said. “It’s amazing how much of a difference it made for my story. Everybody had a stake in it, and for them to all be in one place, and for me to have access to that, that’s pretty powerful.”
Victor regularly uses social media for crowd sourcing. When news happens, Victor looks to get the news up his paper’s breaking news blog and Twitter ASAP.
“That’s kind of an accepted part of my reporting,” he said about Twitter. “If something is going to be breaking, I’m going to check with my network.”
Because Victor is much more accessible now with social media, he gets a lot more tips. Recently, somebody alerted him to an accident with an EMS responder, where the driver had heart attack. Because of Victor’s online networks, the Patriot-News was able to get that story quicker than they would have otherwise been able to.
“People just kind of know that I’m available to them,” he said.
Recently some bank robbers got loose and were being chased all over the Harrisburg area, Victor said. Roads were being closed, and the story was quickly developing and changing. Victor was able to monitor in real time people’s reaction’s on Twitter.
People were discussing which roads were closed, what the best detours where, analyzing the news and more. The Patriot-News was unable to keep up with Twitter for breaking news, Victor said.
“I kind of equate Twitter to the police scanner, the way that the police scanner kind of gives us this constant monitoring of what is happening in the cop world, he said. “I feel like Twitter is giving us a constant taste of what is happening in community news.”
Some other topics discussed:
- How has your ability to harness social media changed within the last year now that social media is becoming a lot more popular?
- Which beats are best suited for Facebook?
- And more.
Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.
Audio interview with Daniel Victor about his Ning experiences
In my last post, I noted that Daniel Victor is moving on from his Ning network for his beat.
His experience setting up a social network for his beat hasn’t gone that well, but Victor is not giving up on using social and Web tools for his beat. This is just the beginning of his Web efforts and Ning has been a learning experience for him.
Listen to Victor discuss what went wrong, what went well and what he will be doing in the future with social networking for his beat:
Click here to stream the interview. Or click here to download the MP3.
Sometimes a Ning social networking site won’t work for your beat
One of the original 13 beat bloggers, Daniel Victor, is stepping away from his Ning social network that he built for his beat because of a lack of participation.
Ning is a service that allows people to set up their own social networks on any topic. Victor called his “Hershey Home,” because it was a place for people from Hershey, Pa. to talk about what was going on in their community. He also wanted to make contacts, and he did make some worthwhile contacts through the network, just not that many.
The problem was that the social network never got enough buy-in from the community, and Victor admits its not a very technologically inclined population. Just 36 people signed up and only 15 wrote something in the discussion forum. Only five members started their own discussions.
He’s not going to close the network, but he is stepping back and
concentrating on other Web efforts. Ideally, Victor would like to find
a community member to take over the network and try to make it into a
community gathering place. At first, Victor wanted it to be a place to discuss hard news, but he eventually realized that it would make more sense if it were a community gathering place to discuss any issue.
Victor, however, is not giving up on building an online community. His paper is launching a new blog for Hershey, which might allow for Victor to organically grow a social network. They are even allowing users to make their own blog posts (moderated, of course).
The idea of allowing community members to make their own guest posts whenever they feel like it might be a good way to get buy-in from the community. Whether or not community members will regularly make guest posts remains to be seen.
The other big issue with Ning is that it’s not part of Victor’s newspaper, The Patriot News. People have to go out of their way to get to Hershey Home. The new blog, however, will be part of his paper’s Web site. That should make it much easier to get buy-in from the community.
Kent Fischer told me that he wishes he started blogging before trying to set up some other social networking utilities around his beat, and Victor came to the same conclusion as well. Those efforts didn’t pan out for Fischer, but a social network organically grew around his blog. Once a blog gets established with regular users, a Ning network might be a way to take it to the next level.
In many ways, blogging before something like Ning is like learning to walk before you run. Establishing a successful, dedicated social network is difficult for anyone to pull off, especially if there wasn’t an online community to build around in the first place. A blog can give you that base to build from.
“At the beginning it showed some promise,” Victor said about the Ning network. “People were contributing a lot, but by the end the participation had gone down a lot.”
Victor originally hoped that people would make their own posts and that he would be more of a moderator, but he found out that he had to the catalyst for discussions on the network. Victor didn’t always have the time or energy after he got done with his other work to be starting discussions.
Victor also listed on his blog what worked well and not so well with Ning:
WHAT WORKED WELL:
- Though the network didn’t bear much fruit in terms of immediate translation to the print product, it did help create offline relationships that were very important. Contacting these people, either by phone or by e-mail or by messaging new members, meant I was able to make personal contact with 36 potential sources I might not have otherwise. A lot of public and private messages on the forum led to productive phone calls.
- As I detailed in an earlier post, the site’s mere presence was an advertisement for my willingness and desire to hear from residents. I called it an “Open for Business” sign.
- Due to my insistence that members use their full, real names, the quality of conversation was usually higher than some of the noxious forums that are used otherwise. The members often expressed appreciation for that.
WHAT DIDN’T WORK WELL:
- It hasn’t been the “Set it and forget it” reporting solution I hoped it might be. One time a big story broke, and I only had about two hours to gather community reaction. I took 20 very precious minutes to pull into the Panera Bread parking lot to use the wifi and solicit reaction on the site. I e-mailed all the members to let them know of my desire to hear from them. When I came back two hours later to see the mountain of riches that had come in, there wasn’t a single message in response. I ended up just calling one of the members.
- In a community with very little activity on social networking sites, it was difficult to find a full buy-in to the concept.
- The site did nothing to overcome what residents have repeatedly called a “culture of fear” when it comes to criticizing local officials. So in some of the most contentious and important issues, the ability to be anonymous elsewhere redirected traffic to those other forums.
None of this is to say that a Ning social network can’t work for your community, or that “Hershey Home” won’t be popular one day, but it may not have been the best first course of action for social networking.
Listen to Victor discuss what went wrong, what went well and what
he will be doing in the future with social networking for his beat:
Click here to stream the interview. Or click here to download the MP3.
Beatblogging success story: The “Open for Business” sign
From Daniel Victor’s personal blog.
“I love the beatblogging project because it’s innovation in real newsroom laboratories, as opposed to tsk-tsking and dreaming.
My foray into it has had its ups and downs, but I recently had a kind of success story that I didn’t expect when I signed up.
And it shows why I believe so much that social networking can revolutionize small-town beat reporting.
A woman in the town I cover believed that she had spotted an
injustice. (I won’t go into detail for competitive reasons, and because
my work on the possible story is ongoing.)
But she didn’t know what to do with this knowledge, so like any
other computer user, she turned to Google. She typed in the name of a
resident in town who her neighbors had recommended, a person who might
know what to do with this information.
One of the first results took her to The Hershey Home, the Ning network I set up for the beatblogging project. The resident she sought has been a frequent contributor to the network.
Once there, she strolled around the site. She read all of my
solicitations for story ideas, background information on stories I was
already working on, and feedback for stories I’ve already written. She
went ahead and e-mailed me to set up a meeting.
After she spilled the beans at our meeting, I asked her why she contacted me.
“I just read through your comments on the site, and you seemed like
the type of person who would want to hear this,” she responded.
Imagine that! I may have stumbled upon a high-impact story based on a tip from a person who isn’t even a member of the network.
She chose to contact a reporter because the network put up an “Open for
Business” sign, and revealed that I have a genuine interest in hearing
from as many residents as possible.
An obligatory listing of our e-mail address at the end of our
stories doesn’t invite our readers to contact us, it just allows them
to. Setting up this kind of network, interacting with people online,
and really advertising that we really, really do want to hear from
people can directly lead to stories.”
Where Are They Now? An Update on the First Four BeatBloggers
As this project picks up speed, expect posts on a more regular basis. In this early stage, however, most of the beat bloggers are still plotting. One mistake we don’t want to make is sending out an invite to a group of eager sources to join our network, only to realize that we haven’t thought through how to build it or what we want from it. It’s an easy way to build false expectations.
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.
