Journalism 2.0

Ladies and gentleman, start your smartphones.

The Online News Association’s annual conference kicks off on Thursday in Washington, D.C. It’s the nation’s only sold-out journalism conference each year, meaning this is the place to be if you’re excited about news in the digital age.

If you are going and maybe this is your first time, I’ve thrown together some quick thoughts on how to get the most out of the conference.

DO: Bring a positive attitude and a willingness to share ideas. The people at this conference are excited and optimistic about the future and will do anything to help others make it happen.
DON’T: Whine and complain about how people in your newsroom “just don’t get it.” Most of the people at this conference are dealing with, or have dealt with, “traditional” journalists who failed to see the value in digital. This isn’t the time for that. It’s a time to celebrate the possibilities. In fact, I think we should rename this from “conference” to “festival.”

DO: Arrive at the sessions early. They often fill up and you’ll end up sitting on the floor if you get in at all.
DON’T: Watch the livestream from the conference if you are at the conference. This is pretty much a geekfest, meaning everyone is online all the time. Even the most robust wifi system is going to struggle a bit with this crowd.

DO: Try to network as much as possible. While the conference sessions are always good, it’s the people who make this conference special. Never dine alone and always introduce yourself to whomever is sitting near you. (Or you can “pull a Ken Sands” and never actually attend the sessions, preferring instead to work the hallways.)
DON’T: Forget business cards, or Bump on your iPhone or Droid, so you can exchange contact information with the new people you meet.

DO: Post helpful information to Twitter with the #ona10 hashtag. Save a search with this term so you can see what else is happening at the conference, too.
DON’T: Post personal tweets with this hashtag, unless it will be helpful for others to see. This stream will be flooded anyway, so use discretion.

DO: Use Foursquare or Gowalla to connect with others and figure out where your new friends are having lunch or a post-conference beer.
DON’T: Check in at every corner of the conference hotel. Being mayor of the escalator is really kind of pointless, don’t you think?

DO: Drink lots of water and squeeze in a nap if you can. Especially if you like “late-night networking.”
DON’T: Complain about traveling and time zones. Most of us traveled through time zones, too. Remember, no whining.

And lastly, DO play Webbmedia’s QR code game. If this doesn’t prove how different ONA is from other journalism conferences, nothing will.

See you in DC.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A news editor who pays too close attention to web analytics — especially in pursuit of building page-view inventories for advertising — will surely end up serving readers a steady diet of sugary desserts. Lindsay Lohan is the cake and Tiger Woods’ divorce is the ice cream in this scenario.

Hamburger cake (photo by bunchofpants)

What if I told you that readers actually prefer meat and potatoes? Better yet, what if I said those servings are more valuable to the publisher because they make more money than the fluff? (Picture serving New York steak, not ground round.)

Too good to be true? The folks at Perfect Market assumed so, but went ahead and did a study anyway. They were happily surprised by the results, which suggests that readers are actually interested in meaty subjects. And their interest in those subjects pays more in advertising revenue for the publisher.

Now that’s juicy.

“In the current world of media change, news publishers are constantly asking ‘how do we make more money?’” said Tim Ruder, Chief Revenue Officer . “The assumption has been either it’s trend-chasing, or entertainment posing as news, or news being delivered as entertainment that would make money. But issues that matter to people still have high levels of reader interest. And, thankfully, high levels of advertiser demand.”

Read more »

What do you get when you unleash a horde of college journalism students on a city, armed with cameras and challenged to tell stories in just 60 seconds? A creative new approach to a multimedia boot camp, courtesy of Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Incoming master’s students at Syracuse in print/online news, arts journalism and public relations students spend their first six weeks on campus in a crash course. This year, that collective effort resulted in a website with some 75 “slices of Syracuse life,” each one a 60-second snippet captured by the students in one day (August 3, 2010). “Secs in the City” – a play on the familiar HBO show/movie title – are one-minute videos, one-minute audio slideshows and short text articles. (Full disclosure: the project was published using Newsgarden, a social mapping platform I helped develop at Serra Media.)

“Essentially, ‘boot camp’  is to give new master’s students a comprehensive news reporting experience, including for many, their first forays into collecting and editing video, audio and photography,” said Syracuse professor Jon Glass, who coordinated construction of the website. “They learned the fundamentals of all three, plus received training with Final Cut, Audacity and Photoshop to produce their video vignettes.”

Professors hoped spreading students out across the city’s five different regions would help the students — especially those who just moved to Syracuse — learn about the community by  visiting the areas and interviewing the people who live and work there.

“This was a deadline-driven assignment with only one hour to shoot and then an afternoon and few hours the next morning to edit, Glass said. “We stressed they should be ‘slice of life’ stories rather than full documentaries, and for the most part the students delivered that with their video features and accompanying text stories.”

While the quick turnaround was fairly intense, Glass says the feedback was positive; most students felt it was among the most exciting aspects of the summer.

“While multimedia projects the past two summers were posted online, we wanted to integrate mapping into the final website as a way to introduce geolocation as something today’s journalists should factor into their reporting,” Glass said. “The Newsgarden tool enabled us to offer that functionality, and we’re really happy with the final product.”

Thanks for the endorsement on Newsgarden, Jon. And nice work on a cool project.

You like journalism. You like technology. And you like meeting smart people. So let me recommend you find your way to Washington, DC in October for the Online News Association conference and Austin next March for the South by Southwest Interactive conference.

The ONA conference usually sells out so get your ticket soon. If you don’t want to spend the dollars for the ticket, consider volunteering to help and you’ll get discounted (or free) passes.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know much I like the ONA conference. It’s my favorite conference every year (and I’ve been to a lot of conferences).

SXSW is “spring break for geeks” according to CNN. It’s just a ton of fun, packed with information and thousands of really interesting people.

Last year was my first SXSW and I was blown away by the journalism presence. There were several panels focused on journalism and an impromptu meet-up I helped organize drew about 50 tech-minded journalists to a bar on a Sunday evening.

There are 49 journalism panels proposed. You can vote for your favorites here. I’m proposing a book-reading from my new book, which should be published by then. You can vote for my proposal here. (Many thanks, in advance.) And here’s Poynter’s roundup of 20 panels of interest to journalists.