abrahamhyatt.com » Journalism Posts

From RWW: White House to Federal Agencies: Beware Social Media Ratings and Polls

Abraham — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 22:47:18 +0000

I normally don’t cross post what I (occasionally) write at ReadWriteWeb, but I think that the White House’s concern about polls and ranking mirrors what a lot of newsrooms are wondering as well: Just because a lot of unknown people like a story idea, should we take it seriously too?

“In a memo released yesterday, the White House made it significantly easier for federal agencies to use everything from social networks to online forums. But with the newfound freedom comes a surprising caveat: User ratings and rankings on those services, the new guidelines warn, “should not be used as the basis for policy or planning.”

In other words, a million Americans can Digg or retweet an important blog post, but government officials shouldn’t use that popularity as an indicator of the post’s value.

That’s not always a bad thing considering that a dedicated group of like-minded people can game a casual voting system. But the voice of a social network corresponds to real people in the real world. A recent study, for instance, found that Twitter chatter accurately forecasts box-office revenues.

As a whole, the new guidelines [PDF] were sorely needed. Social media and other online activities fell under a law that arduously dictates how agencies handle written materials. Under the new guidelines, online activities are now considered a “public meeting,” which gives agencies much more freedom to blog, hold virtual meetings or even run contests.

That freedom comes with a stipulation. The memo was written by the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs administrator, Cass Sunstein. In it he explains that agencies should “exercise good judgment and caution when using rankings, ratings, or tagging” because they aren’t “statistically generalizable.”

That’s true, but it doesn’t mean they’re worthless. John Zogby, founder of polling firm Zogby International, told us last year that…”

Read the rest of the post here.

Photo by libraryman.

A Simple Tool For Finding Journalism Sources on Delicious

Abraham — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:19:44 +0000

A coworker of mine, Marshal Kirpatrick, once wrote, “People new to social media are often frustrated when they are told to “join the conversation” – because they aren’t sure where to find the conversation.”

That’s doubly true for journalists. We need to mine the Web for stories and sources but where do we start? The social bookmarking site Delicious is a good example. It’s filled with millions of potentially noteworthy links, but how do you filter it to find what’s valuable? To answer that question I built a simple tool for identifying Delicious users who are really interested in the same topics I am.

[tweetmeme]Last month I spoke at a conference for university admin types. The session was about the loss of higher ed reporters, and ways that a university can become their own media organization. That doesn’t just mean disseminating information, but collecting it as well. I wanted to give people at the session a simple way to get their toes wet. So I turned to Yahoo Pipes and came up with Delicious User Finder. (You can find a primer on Delicious here.)

What it does

You enter keywords. The Pipe spits out a list of Delicious users who have tagged bookmarks with your keywords — and the number of times they used those tags.

That number is the key part of this tool. Those users with high tag counts think just like you do; they see the news through the same lens you do. And now that you’ve found them, they’re your personal information mine. You can use them to find new blogs, news sources and online services. You can use them as your own news aggregator. You can use them to discover where the conversation is.

They’re not a “source” in the traditional, real-life sense; the majority of the time who they are is irrelevant. Click on their name on the Delicious User Finder search screen. That will take you to their collection of bookmarks on Delicious. You can either bookmark that page or grab the RSS feed on the bottom of that page.

What it won’t do

Some users are goldmines, but plenty of others are crap. Also, it’s a limited pool. The search will only analyze the most recent 100 bookmarks with your tags. For some searches that may go back two years, for others, two months.

Advanced

The quote from Marshall comes from a piece he did for ReadWriteWeb called “How to Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet.” It’s a little dated, but if you’re interested in getting even deeper into finding out where the conversation is, then I highly recommend it.

We Made The Media: What went right — and wrong

Abraham — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:29:32 +0000

We Make The Media was an intense day. As one of the sub organizers who spent the last few months helping Ron Buel and a core group of people create the event, it was both thrilling and heartbreaking to see how it played out.

Over the course of the day about 50 percent of attendees left and didn’t come back. Many that I talked to said they didn’t see value in simply discussing the problems of the industry. Several people told me they felt like the day was an attempt by OPB, which was a sponsor, to “steal” innovative ideas that were generated by the journalism community. (I think that’s completely unfounded.) By the end of the day, I didn’t feel inspired, I felt exhausted.

Two days later my mood has improved. When I spoke to the audience as part of the opening panel, I said I was amazed by how the journalism community in Portland has come together over this last year. Yes, it’s very “Portland-y.” But the ways we’ve been exploring ideas and learning from each other is fundamentally important to the future of journalism in Oregon. And we clearly saw that happening on Saturday. Because of that, I feel like the day was an overall success.

But I’m going to leave why and how it was successful to other attendees to write about. Here are two things I believe the conference failed at on Saturday.

Diversity
Uncomfortable: That’s the only way to describe the atmosphere in the conference room when the lack of racial diversity was brought up. When the organizers were planning the event, we contacted media outlets we were familiar with. We failed to reach out to community media, and to media that reflected the racial diversity of Portland. This was a mistake, one that I take partial responsibility for.

We were lucky to have KBOO come on as a sponsor a few days before the conference. But what if that had happened a few weeks before? Who else could we have invited? And how would that dialogue have shaped the planning of the event? If we’re going to create a media organization that breaks out of the old news models, we need to be including people from outside traditional media outlets.

Technology
From the beginning of the day, the smartphone- and laptop-using crowd congregated in a back corner of the conference room. True, that’s where the power outlets were. But like minds found like minds — and they were in the minority. I’m not inferring that the rest of the attendees were Luddites. That clearly was not the case.

But the attitude of some of the core organizers was that technology, like the printing press, is simply a method to deliver the news. Wrong. Technology is journalism — from the code that creates new projects, to the tools we use to report and communicate, to ideas we are only now discovering. The cavernous gap between those two mindsets created an us-vs.-them mentality that drove some of the Twitter crowd into a frenzy. I’m not being critical of it; the heavy flow of snark on Twitter was hilarious and absolutely spot on.

But remember how I talked about a journalism community that’s coalescing? “The corner” wasn’t feeling it. And the project they gravitated to — an incubator for journalism startups — had little or no outreach or communication with any of the other final projects.

It’s two days later and I’m asking myself, “Now what the hell am I supposed to do?” I know I’m not the only one asking that. Over the next few days I’ll gather together answers from some other participants — and try and come up with one of my own.

–

Photo credits:
Binary: Carsten Mueller
Wrench: Davide Guglielmo

Hey media startups: J school students need your help (and you need theirs)

Abraham — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:37:58 +0000

I spent the better part of last weekend at the University of Oregon’s journalism school. On Saturday I was a panelist at the Building a Better Journalist conference, and on Sunday I took part in the Redefining J School barcamp. I don’t have a journalism degree. In fact, I don’t have a college degree at all. But this weekend I learned this: Professional journalists and their news organizations need to start thinking about how we can help students get the training they need.

It was a weekend of contrasts. I came away amazed by some sessions and depressed by others. The conversation during the barcamp was so fast and sharp at times it was almost impossible to take notes; the new media sessions at the conference had a great range in topics as well. Of course, there were also a few tedious veterans yabbering about “change.” I get cynical and bored with people who wave the word “digital” around like it’s some kind of healing wand without ever examining what has actually changed in our industry. Journalism students need answers, not aphorisms.

If there was one thing I took away from those two days it was this:

There are j school students out there who want more than what their universities are providing. And we may be loosing some damn good journalists because of it.

That’s not a crack at the U of O. In fact, they’re probably the most proactive university I know of. They recently changed their curriculum so that students get more hands-on training earlier in their studies. Several professors and instructors — including Ed Madison, Michael Werner and Suzi Steffen — were an integral part of the barcamp. Additionally, the university’s journalism department has been a strong supporter of community events like the Digital Journalism Camp and We Make the Media conferences. (Disclaimer: I am involved with organizing both events.)

But the reality is that as easy-to-use blogging, video, audio, programing and other digital tools increases, the number of students entering college with some type of skill is increasing as well. That doesn’t mean that a university can teach all incoming students at a higher level. It means the university has to serve a broader spectrum of students. With, of course, limited resources. Some students, like entrepreneur Daniel Bachhuber for instance, aren’t being challenged enough and they’re dropping out. That’s a tragedy not just for the school, but for the j school students who could be learning from their advanced-level peers.

One solution is to improve existing internship programs. Challenging, real-world work experience isn’t guaranteed to keep students in school, but it’s a significant start. Students at the barcamp had plenty of suggestions: Give us opportunities to add things to our portfolios, training that reflects what’s actually happening in journalism, and work that respects our time. But new journalism startups also need to start creating internship programs. J school interns are not just a source of cheap labor — they’re the talent pool you’re going to be drawing from as you grow.

Out-of-work journalists are fleeing the industry for stable work elsewhere. We can’t afford to loose talented students to other fields as well. Over the next decade we’re going to need them as much as they need us.

130 years of must-read stories for digital journalists: Five lessons from 1851-1981

Abraham — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:48:56 +0000

--Members of the White House News Photographers' Association, circa 1922-1926--

As journalists, the future looms so large that it feels like we’re constantly on new ground. But we’re not. Whether we tell stories with words, audio, video or a combination of all three, there are a surprising number of lessons to be found in the past. A 115-year-old slice-of-life story about a sick man falling down on a city street has the same emotional power we’re looking for in our own stories. A 28-year-old story about engineers designing a computer has a staying power we’re hoping for in our own tech reporting.

There’s another lesson that’s buried in these stories from the last two centuries. It may be the most important. If you want to create quality journalism, the most important thing is to stand up from the keyboard, walk outside with whatever tools you like best, and start reporting.

1: You can report on technology in a way that it remains compelling — and relevant — for decades afterward.
“The Soul of a New Machine,” Tracy Kidder, 1981 [Google Books]

In the late 1970s, Kidder followed a team of engineers at a company called Data General Corporation as they frantically tried to design a new computer model. It’s a topic that could easily be confusing and dry. And 30 years later it seems like ancient history. But it’s not. The story is still a great read. Kidder took great pains to keep the technology understandable. And while the equipment is now quaintly archaic, the story around it — a crushing race to build a product that appears doomed to fail — is fascinating. “Soul” went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award.

2: Don’t be afraid to get close to the action, whether you’re recording with a notepad, recorder or camera.
“When Man Falls, a Crowd Gathers,” Stephen Crane, 1894 [PDF]
“Can’t Get Their Minds Ashore,” Abraham Cahan, circa 1898 [Google Books]

“When Man Falls” is slice-of-life reporting, not hard news. A man walking on the street falls over in what looks like an epileptic fit; a leering crowd gathers and waits for police and an ambulance. “Ashore” has a similar feel. Cahan is the invisible scribe as he follows a series of conversations at a receiving station for new immigrants in Manhattan. We’re no strangers to up-close journalism these days, whether on a battlefield or a crime scene. But Crane and Cahan are two great examples of reporting that gets close enough to see the smallest details, but not so close as to overshadow the story as it unfolds.

3: If you play with language, with storytelling, never forget the journalism at the core of the story.
The Pig, Ben Hecht, 1921 [Google Books]

“The Pig” is a brilliant example of voice done right. In the last forty years, there have been a few dozen print journalists who fall into that same category of “voice done right”: Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Susan Orlean. The examples of voice done poorly feel countless. If you allow a strong voice in your work, remember this: Journalists have been trying and failing miserably at it for more than 100 years. Do your homework. Learn how the masters got it right.

4: Sometimes you’re part of the story. Your honesty, not your ego, is what’s most important.
“How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?” Lillian Ross, 1950 [New Yorker archive]
“Travels in Georgia,” John McPhee, 1973 [New Yorker archive]

The “I”, the first person, is a firmly entrenched element of modern journalism. The “I” can add a crucial character to a story, one that guides readers with an invisible hand. Done poorly it’s an exercise in vanity. Ross’ profile of Ernest Hemingway is a great example of the “fly on the wall” reporting style that made her famous. In “Travels,” McPhee hangs out with biologists as they do field work and occasionally eat roadkill. The “I” in each of their stories is a remarkably unobtrusive but essential voice.

5: Profiling everyday people will always be powerful.
“Court Buff,” Mark Singer, 1980 [Google Books]
“Watercress Girl,” Henry Mayhew, 1851 [Link]
“The Rivermen,” Joseph Mitchell, 1959 [Google Books]

Singer wrote about courtroom spectators. Mayhew wrote about a child living and working in incredible poverty. Mitchell (and his contemporary A.J. Liebling) spent his entire career writing about supposedly unremarkable people. “I actually believe deeply in the dignity of ordinariness,” Susan Orlean once said. Orlean wrote what I think is one of the best profiles ever crafted, a study of a 10-year-old boy (“The American Man at Age Ten“).

“An ordinary life examined closely reveals itself to be exquisite and exceptional, somehow managing to be both heroic and plain,” she wrote in 2001. “I really believed that anything at all was worth writing about if you cared about it enough, and that the best and only necessary justification for writing any particular story was that I cared about it. The challenge was to write these stories in a way that got other people as interested in them as I was.”

Alive In Baghdad: Help independent Iraq journalists

Abraham — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:38:51 +0000

Alive In Baghdad is a collaborative effort between journalists in Iraq and the U.S. For the past four years they’ve been producing video stories about what it’s like to live in Baghdad. They cover a lot of the war- and security-related issues you’d expect. But they also cover a side of Baghdad you’ve never seen: the lives of gays and Christians, the state of women’s rights, teenage soldiers, youth soccer, illegal pharmacies, what college students do to relax.

Right now Alive From Baghdad is hurting for money; they can’t afford to hire translators for their stories. This is a short video on just a few of the stories that Alive In Baghdad has done over the years. Even if you can’t support them financially, go to iTunes and subscribe to the podcast, or go aliveinbaghdad.org and watch some of the stories in the archives. It will change the way you think about the war, about independent journalism and about the Iraqi people.

Visit aliveinbaghdad.org to buy a t-shirt, make a voluntary subscription pledge of $5, $10 or $25, or to make a one-time donation.