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.

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

Traditionally journalists — especially print — have hid behind bylines and their professional personas.

In the name of objectivity, journalists were told to keep their personal lives separate from their professional work. Journalists just reported the news and that was that (just the finished product, not the journey). That worked fine in a pre-Internet world.

But honestly, how many people on Twitter have a lot of followers acting like that? Virtually none. Same with bloggers. 

The Web is an interactive medium, and who wants to interact with a robot? Professor Carrie Brown created a thought provoking video about journalists opening up on social media. In fact, she argues that journalists must open up on social media to harness the platform properly.

“I don’t think social media will really work for journalists, unless we are willing to share a little bit about ourselves and our personalities,” Brown said in the video.

The idea is not to write about issues like politics, who you voted for or other divisive topics, but rather to become more human. Beat blogger Ron Sylvester also has made the same point earlier this year. He has tweeted about how he injured his knee, and it has humanized him to readers.

“People come to social media with a different set of expectations,” Brown said. “They want to see that there is kind of a real person with a personality behind the byline.”

Then there is a the Colonel Tribune approach. The Colonel is not a real person, of course, but it’s a fun and fascinating online persona that Tribune Interactive has created. The Colonel approach might only work once per paper, but it is interesting how people positively respond to a fake persona (instead of the robot approach that other papers have tried). 

This is a tricky road to navigate, however. The last thing journalists would want to do is to turn off potential readers. So, where is the line?

How human should journalists become on social networks? Does your news organization have rules about how to act on social media? Are you allowed to open up?

Mary Louise Schumacher, art and architecture critic with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, was recently tasked with teaching her newsroom about social media and beat blogging.

What worked? What didn’t work? What did her peers think about all this fancy social media?

And most importantly, how can social media and beat blogging improve their reporting and make their jobs easier?

“There has been a lot of buzz in the newsroom about [social media], and people don’t know how to use these tools,” she said about why her paper started offering training. 

The Journal Sentinel has come out as an early leader in giving social media training to its employees. Rather than just encourage its employees to use social media, the Journal Sentinel decided to discuss how to use social media to improve their journalism. Schumacher and her colleagues also had discussions about the ethical dilemmas that arise for journalists from social media. 

The sessions were limited to 6-8 people per training session. This allowed Schumacher to spend the last 45 minutes of each two hour training session talking to individual reporters about how they could use these tools for their beats. Different social media tools work better for different beats, but the idea of beat blogging and expanding a journalist’s network can strengthen any beat.

“Of course what works for me as the art critic is going to be very different than what works for a political reporter,” Schumacher said.

Carefully considering which tools to use and how to use them for each beat and each reporter could lead to less frustration, more success and better results. When dealing with people who are often new to these technologies, more guidance tends to yield better results and also avoid some of the missteps can happen with social media. For instance, Schumacher said that many of the people who came into her training sessions never thought of using social media for beat blogging.

“A lot of people came expecting something very different than what they got,” she said. “But I think people were coming expecting to hear more about how to get our content out into the click stream, so to speak, and how to get our stories out where people are looking at them on the Web.”

While it’s not a bad idea to disseminate content onto new platforms, that’s hardly the best way to use social media. The best journalists and news organizations use social networks to be a part of a larger conversation — to connect with people. Just using social media to bring in more Web traffic would be wasting the vast potential that social media offers for journalism and beat reporters.

“What we focused on in the training sessions is how to use networks and how to build communities around your beats to be better reporters, to actually improve your journalism,” she said. “That came as a little bit as a surprise to people, and I think a pleasant surprise.”

Listen to this podcast to hear why your newsroom should conduct beat blogging and social media training.

Also, don’t miss the fantastic conversation that Schumacher started about which online tools are best for reporters.

Some other topics discussed:

• Why does beat blogging make journalism better?
• What concerns arise with social media and journalistic ethics?
• Has anyone found stories using social media since the training?
• How did the training go over with the newsroom?
• Are certain social media tools going over better with your newsroom than others? Are some easier to pick up?
• What kinds of tips would you offer to people who want to conduct social media training in their news organization?

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

Colonel Tribune has become one of the more popular Twitter and Web personalities run by a traditional media organization.

Tribune Interactive’s Daniel Honigman is the brainchild behind the Colonel. The Chicago Tribune describes the Colonel as, “the Chicago Tribune’s Web ambassador. He is here to help you stay informed and in touch with the latest news.” The Colonel posts links to interesting stories from the Chicago Tribune, blogs and even competitors’ Web sites. 

“To be honest if someone beats the Tribune on a story, I’m going to link to them first,” Honigman said. “It goes over better with some people than others.”

Honigman believes that industry attitudes about linking to blogs and other Web sites are beginning to change. Within a few years he doesn’t think it will be a big deal. Sites like Publish2 have popped up to help journalists and news organizations embrace link journalism.

Why did Honigman and Tribune Interactive decide to embrace social media? After all, so many newspapers still haven’t embraced even the most basics parts of social media, let alone created an online persona like the Colonel. 

“You want to go where the conversation is at,” he said. 

Twitter’s popularity has exploded this year. The Colonel has more than 2,300 followers, but that’s not the real secret to Twitter’s power. Those 2,300 followers can then send the links that the Colonel posts around to their followers. And then those people can forward the links around as well.

The Colonel doesn’t have a distant, corporate voice. Honigman wanted to make Tribune’s Twitter presence more personal — something that people could connect with.

“The Colonel is a voice,” he said. “People like that because it really turns you into a person and not an institution.”

Honigman cautions, however, against doing the same exact things in different markets. Different tools may work better for different markets. Different approaches may be better for different areas as well.

“What works in LA may not work in Baltimore or Chicago,” he said.

After all, Colonel Tribune is based off of Robert McCormick, the Chicago newspaper baron and owner of the Chicago Tribune. Colonel Times, for the LA Times, may not work so well. 

Some other topics discussed:

• What does Honigman’s job entail? How does someone go about getting a job like his?
• What kinds of Tweets are the most popular?
• How do newsroom staffers feel about social media and the Colonel?
• Why is it important for news organizations to interact with users?

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

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.

Three of our beat bloggers are working in Ning.

Their sites are more or less built. None have actually sent out a formal request to any sources - but they will soon.

Before they do, I thought it would be good to examine and get feedback on two important questions.

1. How can we organize a Ning site
2. How do we go about the recruiting process (assuming you have already written your pitch)

To do this I thought I would list some of the Ning sites I know that are live - comment on the organizing principles and even ping the owners to see if they have any words of advice on either of the two topics above.

1. WiredJournalist - An incredibly successful open network. I think part of its success is due to the niche it is filling: A way to teach web newbies, for an industry in panic, how to get online. But WiredJournalists tapped into that in a brilliant way - they created a mission statement front and center, gave a list of five ways to get started. I like that the RSS feed is at the very top, with such a big community - it’s the only way to get oversight.

2. Next Newsroom: Originally Chris O’brien was going to build this in Drupal. In the end, however, he decided that he didn’t need everything Drupal had to offer - and as a result, it wasn’t worth the effort. What he really needed was a communication tool and that’s what Ning offers - albiet with a bit of a blocky design. I especially like the map graphic they have highlighted near the bottom of the main page. I also appreciate that they included RSS feeds to other relevant blogs.

3. Troopspace.net: One of the few Ning sites that - in the center coloumn on the front page has static, not dynamic content (ie: not a blog post or forum). The blog posts are on the right hand side and the forum is on the left. One complaint I have about Ning - the forum and the blog are functionally the same: There is no point in having two - it just separates the conversation. Going with one over the other is more about what kind of ethos you want (single voices and opinions versus discussion) and less to do with if you want a specific functionality. To its credit, Troopspace.net has the best banner.

4. Social News Central: Is a Ning site I actually started myself about two weeks ago. We already have over 165 members - all joined via word of mouth. We have a “group of the day” which we highlight on the left, to point out what other people are talking about - and at the bottom you’ll see we’ve tested (but haven’t used) a live chat feature.

Management: I can only speak for myself in terms of managment of the Ning site - but I will ping the owners of the Ning sites also listed above who I hope will feel publicly pressured by me - and will comment below (HA!).

Social News Central has only been up for two weeks - so it’s been light. Since it’s a completely open network, I did have to deal with one spammer. I simply deleted the content which was slightly offensive - although it was an attempt at humor. To figure out what to do with the community - I created a simple Google Form survey. If they want live chats - we will do it. If they don’t want any moderation or organized activities - so be it. I will simply watch.

Recruitment: Same as above: I think a good discussion on how these sites found members would be beneficial to any journalist interested in starting a Ning site up. I did recruitment in three phases.

Phase one: Just the closest confidants. This was maybe 5-6 people who weren’t really doing anything on the site, but I knew they’d get a kick out of the idea.

Phase two: The oh-so-cool “beta.” Leak it to a few people let them join and play with the site. Observe what they do and see where the site can be improved. Get feedback from them in terms of design. The beta had 25 or so people.

Phase three: Spread the word.

I don’t claim to be the expert - that’s just a rough analysis of the steps I took.

Now to get comments from other Ning site owners.

The San Jose Mercury News’ Green Tech beat is almost ready to launch a Ning site of their own. I’ve checked it out and it’s looking very clean (with a light green background) and I think will be easy for people to interact with.

Similarly, Education Week and the Patriot News have Ning sites as well - all three are ready to launch and probably will very soon (one even has a fantastic video introduction which I hope to re-post later).

I wanted to get in touch with Katharine Fong , the deputy managing editor at the San Jose Mercury News to find out how things were shaping up at, especially after their recent executive editor change.

With a drastic change like that in the newsroom it’s completely understandable for everyone to do a quick gut-check. But Matt Nauman and Kathy decided to move ahead with the beat blogging experiment, truly championing a mantra I think all newsrooms should adopt if they want to start a beat blog of their own: It’s cheaper and easier to just start something online than it is to hold all the meetings to decide whether or not to try it.

That’s not to say that people’s attentions are cheap: You don’t want to try an ill-planned experiment that involves readers and loses their faith - that is your bread and butter. But online tools for collaboration are quick and easy to use and cheap. Dirt cheap. Free. You don’t need to have meetings to discuss the cost analytics of beat blogging. If you are having that conversation, stop right now. The conversation you should be having is: Do we know how to do online organizing? That’s what Matt and Kathy have been circling around - which is great. That’s the shift a reporter needs to have in beat blogging.

Still, the change in managment and regular work load has understandably slowed the launch of the green tech social network. But as I have repeated to all the beat blogging editors/reporters - this is not a race and it’s much better to take it slow than rush into something and realize you weren’t prepared.

At this time Katharine and Matt Nauman, the beat reporter are thinking about the overall strategy of the Ning site. Do they give it a mission statement or let it run as it is? Should they start very small and grow organically, or try to push things as wide as possible.

For now, the goal is to seed the network without over-extending Nauman. This will be a difficult balancing act, but it seems that it is an integral part of it: While online organizing can help a reporter - we have to remember that we are still reporters.

That said, Katharine had lots of ideas about how the network can be organized and approached. Once this network launches it will be a live experiment.

I have always been a proponent of social bookmarking for journalists. When Digg was a young community, I used it as a resource for finding new story ideas. As I explained to Greg J. Smith recently, social bookmarking is a way to find experts in specific fields: "I am friends with Roy Schestowitz.
Roy is an open source maniac….If I want to know what’s
going on in the OS world, I look at Roy’s page. If I want to know about the environment - I turn to either Aidenag, SocialPyramid or Tomboy501. If I want to know about science, I turn to Hanksname."

Having sources who you rely on as "news-recommenders," never hurt.  There is editorial value in serving up the best links, but a good link-blogger will tell you - it takes time and effort. Just ask Romenesko. But with social bookmarking you can mimic Eyebeam Reblog, and get great links form a  volunteer effort. That’s what Digg is - a space where volunteers find links in their expertise area and share them.

This is all related to a new phenomena that could become more common for the networked journalist: Sharing links and information with journalists in other news organizations.

Why don’t reporters who are on the same beat share more information?

This was one of the motivating factors behind Scott Karp’s new social bookmarking tool: It’s made by journalists for journalists. Publish2.com is in private beta right now, but Scott says any journalist can register.

Publish2.com is set up so that you could use it as a regular social bookmarking tool (think Del.icio.us) or as a way to network with other journalists interested in the same topic.

Beat bloggers who work for a national news organization might not want to tap into this second aspect. Sharing too much information might feel like losing a scoop. But for beat bloggers for local newspapers, it makes perfect sense. If I’m reporting on education in Dallas, why not share the sources (national or local) that I have with an education reporter who covers the topic from Florida?

The beat blogging project is about networking between journalist and sources. Publish2 has found another angle of networking that will benefit journalism - networking between beat reporters. Through tagging, a group of journalists can agree to show each other all their stories - allowing them all to know what sources the others have.

If they are in communication they can really drill down: Imagine our education reporters decide to use "standardized test" as a tag.

Publish2.com is riding the wave in-between Digg and Deli.ico.us according to Scott karp. While Digg has become more of a social networking site, with bookmarking functionality, Del.icio.us is a bookmarking site that can establish a social network of sorts. Publish2, he hopes, can be used personally as a bookmarking tool, but could also be used to aid journalists to find and work with each other.

Think of it as a Poynter 2.0: There is a core niche of journalism, but it is a space to connect to other people and share important ideas and information with them. It could have a tangible benefit to their work.

Instant Journalist: Another Ning like site - that helps you build your own branded community of citizen journalists.

I don’t care for the name too much. The notion that you can "just add water" and get an active community of citizen journalists that will report on your every whim is wrong, wrong, wrong. That might not be what the founders think, but that’s what the name connotes. This site just launched, according to the Seattle PI, for under $25,000. I am skeptical - but haven’t had a chance to use their site, so can’t give a final conclusion.

This can be added to TechCrunch’s list of social network building tools.

Seriously - This TechCrunch list of web apps and social networking sites is amazing. If you are a reporter thinking about diving into this world. This is a good place to start. Credit goes to Jeremiah Owyang for compiling the larger list which TechCrunch boiled down into the chart above.

Via Digital Journal: "Journalists
are required to have a distinct online presence these days. But, in the
absence of any media professionals’ social networks, where do freelance
reporters turn?"

Steve Outing, who has always been on the cutting edge of online journalism says "what you might want to do is set up a second Facebook page for your
professional persona, and collect not "friends" but "followers." Why? Because ABC reporters are making purely professional Facebook pages.

Mathew Ingram follows up: How ABC’s use of Facebook to cover the presidential elections is…. meh.
What did they do wrong?:

"Maybe the application just sucks, or maybe it doesn’t really take
advantage of Facebook and how a social network operates — I took a look
at it, and while it allows you to support a particular politician and
read the news, it doesn’t do a whole lot other than that. The ABC Politics page
is more useful, in the sense that you can join in debates (vote on
issues) and follow ABC reporters. Several of the questions asked have
close to 10,000 responses, which isn’t bad."

How to use a network to cover sports?
There is a lot of potential in this field - since sports gets people more passionate than politics (just being honest here). ESPN is trying to break new ground with BeatBlogging.org and ESPNU

They will rely on college students for up-to-the-minute scores and quick reviews of games. Our sports beat bloggers might not want something as expansive, but it’s something to get our brains churning.