“The smartphone is increasingly an everyday tool for journalists, alongside the venerable notebook. On Aug. 26 at the Society of Professional Journalists’ Excellence in Journalism 2013 convention in Anaheim, California, Newsday’s online local news editor suggested ways for journalists to get the most out of this new part of their arsenals.
“We use our smartphones for a heck of a lot of things” at Newsday,” Corry told the journalists in attendance.
(And it’s not just print journalists who do so: Washington-area radio reporter Neal Augenstein now uses just his iPhone to record audio, Corry said.)
Using smartphones can enable journalists to do their work faster, and enable to them to take on modern tasks, like interacting with readers and audience members via social media and engage in multimedia storytelling.
None of this is optional for Newsday journalists, according to Corry.
“You don’t have a choice any more; these are expected skills,” he said. “You have to come in with a basic knowledge of smartphone journalism; you have to be willing to try everything.”
Even when journalists bring along some of Corry’s suggested optional equipment – a Bluetooth keyboard (which I used to liveblog at EIJ13 to great effect), gloves that work with touch screens and external lenses, microphones and lights – the entire kit is much more portable than more traditional mobile journalist equipment.
The multimedia journalism enabled by smartphones is helping accelerate the convergence between traditionally isolated branches of the media.
“You’re not ‘print journalists,’ you’re not ‘broadcast journalists.’ You’re all just ‘journalists,'” Corry said. “If I talk to someone just coming out of #journalism school and they tell me they’re a ‘print journalist,’ I feel sorry for them.”
New York photojournalist Ben Lowy famously used his iPhone to cover the Arab Spring in Libya.
“These phones now, the (photo) quality is great, and can be used in print or on TV,” Corry said.
Lowy even applied filters to some of his work, shooting photos with the Hipstamatic app. The company has said they’ll be producing a Lowy-inspired set of filters in the future.
“If you tell people it’s coming from a mobile device … I think they get it, at this point,” Corry said.
Similarly, Instagram photos have appeared on the front page of the New York Times.
For more traditional photo manipulation, Corry recommended the Photogene app.
Other recommendations included using Dropbox to share files between mobile devices and the newsroom, any of a host of video-editing applications (including VideoPro Camera, Filmic Pro or iMovie) and Google Voice to record phone interviews for later download.
Other tips include leaning against a solid surface when a tripod isn’t available for shooting photos or video and putting smartphones into airplane mode to avoid calls while recording multimedia. He also recommends keeping an eye on the #iphoneography, #smartphonejournalism and #mojo (for “mobile journalist”) hashtags on Twitter.
“A couple years ago, no one did (smartphone journalism),” Corry said. “Now an increasing number of people are doing great work.”
“Facebook, the world’s most popular social media site by a 2:1 margin over Twitter, offers journalists both a way to connect with audience members and to gather news.
Vadim Lavrusik, Facebook’s Journalism Program Manager, ran through some of the ways to use the site at his panel Aug. 25 at the Society of Professional Journalists’ Excellence in Journalism 2013 convention in Anaheim, California.
Journalists actually have two primary ways of establishing a professional presence on Facebook: Creating a standalone page or enabling Facebook users to follow public posts on their personal pagewhen the New York Times’ website recently went down. Status updates on Facebook max out at about 63,000 characters, according to Lavrusik.
News organizations and journalists including Diane Sawyer have used their Facebook pages to host Q&A sessions with fans by enabling the page administrator’s ability to reply to comments. (Not available on personal pages.)
The site can also be used to track down publicly shared information using the site’s new Graph Search feature.
“You could find school bus drivers in New York, New York,” Lavrusik said.
He also showed off the ability to find publicly shared photos from a site he knew had been affected by Super Storm Sandy and narrowed the photos down by date.
“You can actually find ‘books liked by people who work at NPR,’ which is an interesting one.”
The site has also recently implemented the use of hashtags, similar to those popular on Twitter and Instagram. Although many users aren’t using them, millions of them are, according to Lavrusik. Twitter-style Trending Topics are also on the way.
Similar to the feature on Twitter, Facebook also allows the creation of lists to make following large numbers of people or pages managable.
And ProPublica has used the Facebook Groups feature to build communities around stories they’re working on.
More resources for journalists on Facebook are available at: Facebook.com/journalists, Facebook.com/fbmedia and Facebook.com/facebookpages.
“Although Google+ hasn’t caught on the way some other social networks have, its ability to host live video conferences for up to 10 participants was highlighted Aug. 25 at the Society of Professional Journalists’ Excellence in Journalism 2013 convention in Anaheim, California.
The feature, known as Google Hangouts on Air, builds on the Hangouts chat technology already familiar to many Google Talk (known colloquially at “Gchat”) users. Hangouts makes the chat technology available inside Plus and Hangouts on Air adds video conferencing to the equation.
“Hangouts are essentially multi-person video chats,” Nicholas Whittaker, Google’s Media Outreach Lead, told panel attendees.
Hangouts on Air can both be watched live by audience members — anyone with the link to the conference can watch it — and uploaded to YouTube later. Up to 10 people can participate in one conference. (The Los Angeles News Group’s Inland group has used the technology to host editorial meetings.) Whittaker recommends using Google+’s Circles feature to set up lists of who to invite into a given video conference ahead of time.
“We don’t have to bring people into a news studio any more, and go through all the trouble, just to engage with them,” Whittaker said.
Who’s displayed in the main video depends on who’s talking, although the host can click on a portrait and lock the video on them. (Something I wish I’d known when I used this technology for a video interview with a local graduate turned astronaut earlier this year.)
The technology is already being used by various networks on their broadcasts.
“You can cover breaking news much quicker than if you had to make sure a studio was available,” Whittaker said.
It also enables live remotes such as, locally, wildfire coverage using the mobile apps to stream video and audio from the field back to a reporter back in the newsroom.
The videos is instantly saved to (but not publicly displayed on) YouTube, but viewers who come in late can also rewind the video within the Hangout On Air itself.
Plug-ins on the left side of the Hangouts On Air screen allow the addition of “lower third” participant identification and other features.
For newsrooms that intend to show this video to their audience, Whittaker recommends buying better webcams and microphones than typically come with a laptop as well as additional lighting and a portable tripod.
“People will forgive bad video, but they will not forgive bad audio,” he said.
A better camera and microphone will cost about $75 each, he said, and a tripod will cost about $150.
He also recommends the use of an Ethernet connection in lieu of wifi, although he’s had good experiences with 4G/LTE wireless Internet connections.
“Although US Census Bureau data has long been a go-to for journalists looking for data-driven stories, an Aug. 25 panel at the Society of Professional Journalists’ Excellence in Journalism 2013 convention in Anaheim, California, sought to help journalists take those stories to the next level.
“A lot of stories can be written out of #census data. It’s not easy, but it’s there,” said Armando Mendoza, a program supervisor in the Los Angeles Region of the US Census Bureau.
Mendoza acknowledged that the Census.gov site could be intimidating to visitors.
“If you’re looking for the percentage of married couples, where do you go from here?” he said, after pulling up the site.
For an easier experience, Mendoza recommended journalists use the bureau’s mobile applications, which are easier to navigate.
But on the regular site, users should click on “Data” and “Population Finder” to find data quickly.
“Here you’ve got some information on Alabama.”
Data can be viewed for various geographic boundaries, including sorting it by congressional district. (One of the purposes of the census is to help with drawing congressional boundaries.)
A salivating journalist in the back called out “wow!” when she saw the data for a single district pop up.
The site still has its challenges: Comparing data from multiple census years can’t be done within the site yet — “That’s the difficult part,” Mendoza said — although he believes the bureau will have that enabled by the time 2020 data is available.
(The main census still takes place every 10 years, although starting in 2005, the bureau began doing the American Community Survey, with every two-year snapshots of the population. Due to sample size issues, smaller cities only have released every five years, although larger areas get updates annually.)
In the meantime, the Census website allows data to be downloaded in spreadsheet format, where it can then be merged with data from other years. (See the write-up of the earlier panel on Google Fusion Tables for an introduction to spreadsheets for journalists.)
Mendoza often explores the Census website using Google, in lieu of the site’s own navigation system. He recommends searching for “census quick facts” or “census quick links” and the name of the area in question.
But on the site itself, “American Factfinder,” under the “Data” menu, is the “primary search engine” for data.
Scroll down on the American Fact Finder page and search by street addresses to get hyperlocal data.
And within data sets, some information breaks down into even more complex data sets: Both Asian and Hispanic populations break down into subgroups, for instance, detailing the background and national origins of those who identify as members of those groups.
Note that the bureau does not collect data on sexual orientation at this time. Demographic categories are not set by the bureau, but rather the Office of Management and Budgets.
In addition to the census and ACS, the bureau also does surveys on population, health interviews, crime and consumer surveys.
The bureau also does free data dissemination presentations to explain local data and how to access it.
The bureau would “absolutely, you bet” send out a trainer to teach a whole newsroom to access and census data better, Mendoza said.
“It’s no secret that journalists love Twitter. But according to former broadcast executive-turned-media strategist Steve Schwaid, that love may be misplaced.
“People in the real world do not live on Twitter,” he told journalists Aug. 25 at the Society of Professional Journalists’ Excellence in Journalism 2013 convention in Anaheim, California.
According to Schwaid, newsrooms should make Facebook — the most popular social media site in the world, with double the number of users as Twitter, as of December 2012 — their first love, instead.
Of course, “the debate is between Facebook and Twitter if you can only do one. You should be doing both.”
Schwaid’s firm, Cedar Rapids-based CJ&N, compiled a report on Facebook usage, which he shared at a panel Saturday morning at EIJ 2013.
According to the report, 22 percent of American women are on Facebook continuously, along with 35 percent of them online several times a day.
“So you have women, who we know are the news drivers … on a platform you should be on, actively engaging them,” Schwaid said.
The numbers are even better in the women 25-to-34 demographic sought after by advertisers: Twenty-five percent of them are Facebook continuously.
“If you know where the people are, go to where the people are. … You want to be there, in whatever way we can,” Schwaid said.
History seems to bear out the approach. According to the CJ&N data:
- Women were four times more likely get their information on the July 2012 Aurora, Colo. movie shootings from Facebook than Twitter.
- Facebook was comparable in popularity to local newspaper websites for the shootings, and twice as popular as local TV websites.
- Nine months later, in April 2013, Facebook was the fifth most-popular source for Boston Marathon bombings information, after national, cable, local TV and national websites.
“Twitter is good for the moment, the breaking story as it happens,” but it’s tough to catch up on it, he said. “Information on Twitter kind of disappears, and if it disappears, you’ve got to reload, and people hate to reload.”
(He’s skeptical about Instagram, as well. News organizations are experimenting with using it, but he says it’s mostly good for teenagers.)
Dana Neves, the news director at WFSB News in Hartford, has worked with Schwaid in the past.
She advised against pushing every single story from a newsroom onto Facebook.
“If people wanted to see a continuous stream of news all day, they’d just stay on your webpage,” she said. “You don’t want to post more than 12 to 14 times (a day).”
But you do want to engage Facebook fans, because that makes the stories that are pushed onto the page more visible, as Facebook’s algorithm favors content from sources that users interact with more regularly.
“Pictures are huge” on Facebook,” Neves said. “You’ll get your most bang for your buck.”
She advised asking fans to share their own photos and to like photos posted to the site.
“I think sharing is underutilized for everybody, and it’s something you can do really, really easily,” she said.
Schwaid agreed.
“You want shares, then you want comments, then you want likes,” he said. “Whatever takes the most effort is what’s most appreciated” by Facebook’s algorithm.
Which brings us back to women:
“Women share, men don’t share,” Schwaid said.
And that’s a reflection of how they consume online media: “Most women have their smartphone by their bed table,” he said. “Any women in here disagree?”
That easy accessibility is a reflection of their usage habits, according to Schwaid.
“If (women) don’t look at Facebook first, they look at their email first,” and then Facebook.
(Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a comparable non-porn, non-sports site for men that most media companies can take advantage of, he said.)
Schwaid also has specific strategies for news organizations hoping to take better advantage of Facebook:
When posting a story to Facebook, don’t just post the web headline into the comment field up top, put in a teaser instead. And make it short, so that readers don’t have to click the dreaded “read more” link.
Avoid obviously canned timed posts.
“People don’t like automated posts” on Facebook, according to Schwaid.
The vocabulary of Facebook — with the ubiquitous “like” button causes problems with sad stories, which users feel awkward about “liking,” even if it’s just that they appreciate something being posted. Instead, Schwaid suggests, offer them an alternative way of thinking about it: “How about some likes for Richard and his snow sculpture?”
He also advises changing the organization’s cover photo regularly, celebrating the local area.
There also needs to be more of a human voice on the Facebook page: No posting photos and the like without captions or explanation and no posting images some might find objectionable — they’ll automatically show up in a Facebook feed, with no chance to opt out of them.
He also recommends engaging with those who post on a news organization’s Facebook wall. Ninety-five percent of all Facebook wall posts, he said, are not answered.
“You’re making a huge mistake,” as posters could be correcting a story, using racism or slander or complimenting the organization. Interacting with them could be as simple as just clicking the “like” for their comment, showing that it’s been read and appreciated. WFSB has someone check their page three to five times a day, just for that purpose.
And sometimes, news organizations need to put out fires.
WFSB’s Sandy Hook coverage included interviews with frightened children, because Neves said they were central to the story.
“If you saw the hundreds of children hiding in the woods and under cars” after the shooting last December, “it painted a picture,” she said.
Nevertheless, viewers were outraged, and jumped on the station’s Facebook page to tell them. Neves and the other crewmembers were asleep, exhausted both mentally and physically from their coverage and missed what was happening, until Schwaid called her up at home and told her to check out their Facebook page.
“It was like no posts we’ve ever seen. We were getting lambasted,” Neves said. Viewers had posted the station manager’s phone number and other corporate executives, urging other viewers to call in and get the entire team that had covered Sandy Hook fired.
Schwaid advised Neves to get on Facebook and to post that she was a mother with a kid the same age as the Newtown children and her logic in interviewing them. Her long Facebook Note worked.
“Even people who said ‘I still think what you did was wrong’ said ‘thank you for telling us why. Hug your kids tonight.'”
To make sure there’s no dead time on the site’s Facebook page — and Facebook is incredibly popular on weekends — WFSB has a social media staffer who specifically works weekends.
They also have a rotating shift of when they post to their page, with “wake-up news” posted between 6 to 8 a.m. each day; news and fun stories posted between noon and 2 p.m.; the busiest time of day, hard news between 4 and 6 p.m.; and, around 9 p.m., stories that catch readers up on what they may have missed.
Schwaid also recommends using Facebook sponsored posts, which he called “the cheapest way to drive markets.”
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