Leaderboard for week of 1-26-09: Participation

This week’s Leaderboard is all about participation.

We are featuring three distinct ways beat bloggers are getting their users involved and harnessing the collective intelligence of their communities. In today’s era of limited journalism resources, utilizing a knowledgeable user base just makes sense. Users are a tremendous asset and the best beat bloggers have learned to tap into their collective wisdom.

These beat bloggers have found ways to not only harness the wisdom of the crowd, but they have also succeeded in getting their users to participate. Participation is a big part of the Web, and these three beat bloggers offer distinct ways to get users involved.

Gene Sloan | USA Today

• Sloan made the Leaderboard this week for a cool feature of his, “Reader Tip of the Week.” Each week Sloan asks readers to send in tips on a cruise-related issue. This week he is looking for advice on going on a cruise with teenagers.
• There are some fantastic tips left by readers that help Sloan do his job better. One reader pointed out that certain cruise lines offer teen programs and suggested that people with teens avoid lines that do not offer teen programs.
• This weekly feature servers several purposes: It gets users involved and talking about issues, it taps into the wisdom of Sloan’s community and it serves to help Sloan report better. It’s also a very easy feature to produce.
• The best readers’ tips are put into the print edition of USA Today. A little bit of work can go a long way.

Etan Horowitz | Orlando Sentinel

• Horowitz is employing some networked journalism this week by asking users to report on Circuit City liquidation sales. Standard operating practice during a liquidation usually sees a store raise prices to MSRP before offering discounts. Few retailers attempt to sell items — sale or no — at MSRP.
• This means that a discount of 10 percent off, for instance, during liquidation might actually be more expensive than Circuit City was selling it for before liquidation.
• Prices and availability vary greatly per store during liquidation. One Circuit City may be barely discounting items because of brisk sales, while another may have begun deep discounting.
• Horowitz is asking users to report on the prices of items they see at their local Circuit City. He is also asking that they list which store they went to. Horowitz couldn’t do this all himself, but he is smartly employing the power of his users on his site to piece together this story.
• Horowitz’s users can help other users determine whether or not it is worth shopping at a particular Circuit City.
• Networked journalism is a great way to get users involved and to report on topics that a reporter couldn’t do alone.

Buzz Out Loud | CNET

• “Well actually” are two of the most famous words on this daily podcasts. Listeners write in to correct the hosts or to clarify tricky tech-related information.
• Covering a wide range of tech topics isn’t the easiest, and Buzz Out Loud’s vast, knowledgeable audience provides a lot of fact checkers to ensure accuracy.
• BOL’s Tom Merritt, Natali Del Conte, Molly Wood and Jason Howell know tech well, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t use some help in covering a broad and nuanced topic. Users send in tips and news stories every day that help BOL report on tech in a more efficient manner.
• Listeners also correct the hosts when they are wrong. It’s not often that one of the hosts is blatantly wrong, but many tech topics are extremely nuanced and can be hard for most people to get 100 percent right. The BOL gang may report on computer encryption, for instance, and the next day a computer security expert may call in to clarify a point or to add additional insight.
• This show is all about user participation because it wouldn’t be possible without a lot of help from listeners.

Podcast: Etan Horowitz on journalists being social on social media

Etan Horowitz, tech reporter and columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, uses social media to connect with users and make his job easier.

Last week, Horowitz was tipped off by a long-time reader of his column and blog about Bright House’s digital cable service being down in the Orlando area. Before social media, Horowitz would have had a much more difficult time ascertaining how widespread this issue was. But with tools like Twitter and his popular blog, Horowitz was able to ask people if their cable was down and where they were located in the Orlando area.

Using search.twitter.com, Horowitz can monitor chatter about specific topics, like Bright House. He also has an RSS feed of search.twitter.com results that helps him stay on top of what people are saying about the company. Horowitz said that this is even more powerful than Google Alerts, because you can specify a geographic location with your searches.

“If you do that, you’re not spending that much time on twitter,” Horowitz said about using search.twitter.com. “You’re not reading back dozens of messages. You’re saying, ‘only alert me when it is something that I care about.’”

We have a lot more information about how Horowitz was able to take that tip from a reader and provide his readers with a service in this previous post. Horowitz continuously updated this blog post about the status of the service and was able to give his readers information that they couldn’t get themselves because the Bright House Web site went down and their phone lines were jammed. 

Horowitz understands that if you want to use social media, you have to be social on it. He finds sources and gets tips on Twitter. During the whole Bright House fiasco, he responded to users of the service who were wondering what was going on.

Horowitz said that social media can help humanize reporters. This, of course, is predicated on journalists acting human on social networks. But for Horowitz, it has made him much more accessible to people, and they are more likely to contact him now.

“People know that I’m out there; they appreciate that they can find me on Twitter and that I’m accessible,” he said about his use of social media. ”It’s informal, and they don’t necessarily have to e-mail me or call me. It doesn’t feel like as much that you’re contacting the Orlando Sentinel newspaper. It’s just like, ‘hey you’re talking to me on Twitter.’”

Part of being human on Twitter for Horowitz is talking about more than just work. No he doesn’t talk about politics, but he does talk about his life outside of work.

“Mine is sort of a mix of personal stuff,” he said about mixing in personal and professional tweets. “I just got married, and I talked about that. I think people appreciate that. I know I do.”

Some other topics discussed:

• Horowitz discusses in depth how he reported on the cable outage.
• Why should journalists join social media?
• Why does social media make journalists more efficient?

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

The give and take of beat blogging

Orlando Sentinel tech columnist and reporter Etan Horowitz was recently alerted by a readers of his column and blog that Bright House’s digital cable was down.

At best, many journalists would have posted a small note on their blog and then went on with their day (or a brief in the print edition the next day, after the outage had been corrected). But if a journalist wants to keep getting tips from readers, it’s a good idea to provide a service back to readers. The reason this became a big story for many of Horowitz’s readers is that Bright House’s Web site went down due to an overload of traffic, and their phone lines were perpetually busy.

Horowitz promptly put a note up on his blog and then tried to contact Bright House to find out what was going on. Horowitz’s readers began commenting when their cable went down and where they were located in the Orlando area. This began to form a picture of how widespread the problem was and when it started.

That small note that Horowitz posted was later updated five times with new information throughout the day as Horowitz was in contact with Bright House. Horowitz told readers why service was interrupted (a corrupted database) and provided updates on when Bright House thought service would be restored. He also provided readers with information on how to get some of their service restored by unplugging their cable wire from the cable box and plugging it directly into the TV (this would give most people some of their cable service but without HD).

Horowitz provided a public service to his readers and they were grateful that he did. Many readers could not get through to Bright House, while Horowitz was able to get in touch with a spokeswoman for the company and get updated information throughout the night.

The original blog post received thousands of page views, 560 comments (as of publication of this post) and spawned two print stories. And perhaps most importantly, Horowitz provided a public service to his readers after they tipped him off to the initial story.

If Horowitz simply posted a note on his blog that said, “Bright House digital cable service is down for many people in the area,” and left it at that, he might not get that many tips in the future from readers. Many of his readers already knew that cable service was already down. What they want out of a journalist like Horowitz is why is the service down, when will it be restored and is there anything that readers can do to speed up the process or get some of their service back?

Beat blogging really is a give and take. It’s not about marketing the same old content in new ways or pushing old content onto new platforms. Beat blogging is about expanding ones network of sources. Many of these new sources are not the traditional insiders, but they can help reporters do their jobs better and easier.

But a journalist isn’t going to get a lot of tips if it’s always just take, take, take. Beat bloggers and readers help each other out. Success on social media requires a give and take, and that can be a tough concept for many journalists accustomed to one-way communication to understand. 

Writing about cable outages might not be the sexiest story or win awards, but I can guarantee you that many people are very thankful that Horowitz gave them this information. This kind of coverage probably gave both Horowitz and his employer some good will. Without Horowitz’s coverage (and sounding board for angry customers), Bright House customers might not have gotten a credit.

Horowitz also used Twitter to update people about the Bright House situation. Many people had questions on Twitter about the situation and about getting a credit for lost service.

Here are a sample of some of the questions that readers left for Horowitz on his blog:

“I live by the Orlando Airport. Cable has been out since 3. Phone and internet still working. Stopped trying to call Bright House and customer care. How many busy signals can one person take? Thanks for the update!!” – Kathy

“Thanks OS for keeping us better informed then our cable operator!” – Todd

“And THANK YOU ETAN for posting this article and linking to it from your Twitter! Your article was the ONLY PLACE I could find any information!! The phone number’s been busy for hours, the website was super slow (understandably).. Thanks so much!!” – Jen

Twitter can still work for journalists without tech savvy readers

There was a time when I thought Twitter mostly made sense for large and national beats, with readers who were tech savvy.

After all, if your readers aren’t on Twitter, what good is using it? Well, I was wrong.

Wichita, Kansas is not a tech hub. It’s not known for being particularly bleeding edge with technology or Web adoption. It has a median household income of about $40,000, and Kansas is around the national average with regards to the percentage of people over 25 with college degrees.

This doesn’t sound like the greatest test bed for a social networking service, Twitter, that only has a few million users worldwide, who are largely concentrated in wealthy, educated areas in major cities (D.C., New York, San Francisco and the Bay area, London, etc).

Nonetheless, Ron Sylvester, a court reporter for The Wichita Eagle,  has found great success with Twitter. The thing is, his readers don’t have to have Twitter accounts to enjoy his tweeting. All that is required for Sylvester to be successful with Twitter is for him to harness the platform well.

Sylvester uses Twitter to cover court trials live. People love being able to read what is going on and why, especially at major trials. Most of those people will never join Twitter, but that doesn’t stop Twitter from being immensely useful for Sylvester.

One of the keys to harnessing Twitter well for information dissemination is realizing that a Twitter feed can be embedded onto virtually any Web site. People can consume Sylvester’s Twitter feed in a variety of ways:

• People can go to Twitter.com/rsylvester and view his feed. Sylvester does not make the mistake of protecting his feed. He allows anyone to view it. Yes, there are people who follow his beat that are on Twitter, but a lot more people are glued to his Twitter feed even though they don’t have Twitter accounts. During court trials, people love his live tweets.
• On his blog, What the Judge Ate for Breakfast, users can find his Twitter feed embedded on every page. As people navigate around his blog they’ll find a continuously updating stream of news that Sylvester is publishing via Twitter.
• People can subscribe to his Twitter RSS feed. Many, many more people use RSS readers than use Twitter. Beat reporters can just make another subscribe to button with a link to their Twitter RSS feed.
• People can view his Twitter feed when he embeds it into blog posts or onto his newspaper’s Web site. Sylvester can make a blog post that says, “Today I’m covering this trial live. Below you’ll find updates throughout the day from the courtroom.” Sylvester can then embed his feed right into that blog post.

Think about this: Let’s say you’re covering a big event, you have several written pieces about the event, have some video and are posting live updates.

All this information could be placed together in a single blog post (or on a page on your Web site, CMS permitting). The post could link to each written piece, with a description. Video content could be embedded onto the page, and the live Twitter feed could be embedded as well. This way people can grab all your content in one convenient place.

Etan Horowitz, a technology columnist and blogger for the Orlando Sentinel, on the other hand has many readers on Twitter. His beat covers a topic that has a lot of overlap with Twitter, and many of his readers aren’t even in the Orlando area. He often asks questions on Twitter about people’s tech habits, which help him write stories and blog posts.

It’s a different use than Sylvester’s. Both are using Twitter in ways that make sense for their beats. Horowitz can use Twitter to help him find sources and information for his reporting, while Sylvester uses Twitter as a major tool for reporting information.

They are starkly different uses, but both work very well. Horowitz, by the way, also embeds his Twitter feed onto his blog. For Horowitz, this can be a great way for readers to know that he is on Twitter.

Always keep in mind that social networking services like Twitter, delicious, Publish2, YouTube, Viddler, etc usually allow their content to be embedded onto other sites. This makes these tools much more powerful and flexible for journalism. Embedding content allows journalists to have conversations on and off site, while also allowing their content to reach broader audiences.

Even if most of your readers will never understand or use Twitter, you can still effectively use Twitter to help report.