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Day 2 at UT’s International Online Journalism Symposium
If the first day of the International Symposium on Online Journalism was about optimism about the future of news, Twitter and paywalls, Day 2 was about taking a look at global news trends, learning how even the biggest news organizations in the world are learning to engage with readers and viewers one-on-one. It was also about the goals and business models of nonprofit news operations like Texas Tribune and The Bay Citizen and upstart community ventures like Patch.com and Examiner.com.
The day started off with an energetic, fast-paced keynote presentation by Madanmohan Rao, editor of The Asia Pacific Internet Handbook. Rao discussed emerging news trends in emerging markets, the classifications of online news environments in Asia (from “Restrictive” to “Advanced”), categories of connectivity and more. It was a whirlwind with lots of information to absorb for a wide swath of the world. Rao concluded by proposing that attendees join him in helping create online news chronology/timelines for Asian countries, to help create benchmarking for news organization social media policies and to work on books and ebooks on global online journalism.
Next up was a panel on news nonprofits. Lisa Frazier of The Bay Citizen said partnerships have been critical for her organization and that running it has required time, money and experimentation. “It takes guts and stamina every day,” she told the audience. One of the most interesting items she presented was a crowdsourced bike accident tracker. Has the effort paid off? She said one of the best compliments she’s gotten from a reader was, “You’re the least irritating news source in the Bay Area.”
John Thornton, chairman of the board at the Texas Tribune, talked about the organization’s desire to wean itself from rich donors and to break even in 2012. Thornton said the Tribune’s goal is to help Texans make better decisions about their civic lives.
Later in the day, representatives from hyper-local news site Patch.com (owned by AOL) and Examiner.com spoke on a keynote and in a panel on neighborhood news about raising an army of journalists (or “editors” in the case of Patch) to cover their communities. “Is it really journalism?” asked Patch.com president Warren Webster, addressing a question asked by former NPR chief executive Vivian Schiller on Friday. “I say yes.” He detailed the company’s hiring of 1,000 journalists last year.
To no one’s surprise, the first question he was asked in the Q&A was how much they pay. Webster declined to give specific numbers, but said many of them are being paid more than they had been at community newspapers and other jobs in their markets. Patch is currently in 800 towns. To the amusement of audience members, Webster said Patch has also been responsible for helping find six lost dogs through its sites.
In the case of Examiner.com, the site posts 3,000 stories a day and sees itself as a supplement to mainstream news. “We’re not aiming to be the watchdogs or the conscience of the community,” said Examiner’s Mitch Gelman.
Amanda Zamora, a social media and engagement editor at the Washington Post (and former American-Statesman staffer) and Jennifer Preston, a New York Times reporter who was previously social media editor, both discussed strategies for more closely engaging with readers and doing real-time reporting and curation, often with the help of the audience. Zamora said that the Post has been learning to treat social data as narrative data.
The approach was reinforced by Jim Brady, a former editor at TBD.com, who likened the way news organizations engage with readers with giving them a speech in the backyard. Instead, he said, they need to invite the audience to come inside and more closely engage.
The Times and the Post have both had success with using meaningful content that the audience submits (for instance, 14,000 photo submissions the Times solicited in a “Moment of time” project).
The research projects presented included research on Egypt Internet use (which, interestingly, was a long-term project that was completed shortly before protests began in January), research on the “Newsfulness” of various news browsing devices, a study on reporting versus curation and how reporters directly engage with readers and sources, among others.
You can get more wrap-ups on the symposium on the official site and see research materials from many of the presentations on this page. You can also find the symposium’s new academic journal, “#ISOJ” in various formats here.
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