The Modern Journalist

On Posts, Comments and Moderation

Here is a really insightful piece about how newspapers should handle reader comments and discussion boards — particularly for sensitive stories.

It’s not a piece that comes with any answers, but it certainly brings up mainly salient points: how do you deal with comments when a child has been killed, how do you make sure you aren’t posting factually irrelevant information and how do you verify people are who they say they are.

The problem I have (not with the piece, but with the idea of moderating comments) is that the decision to moderate discussions is oftentimes made without a complete understanding of the options.

Although to the credit of the piece, there are some ideas that are there, appropriately marked as agree by the writer:

other suggestions for moderating online comments included requiring users to confirm their identities with a credit card (impractical — my comment); grouping registered and anonymous posters separately (really? seems confusing); blocking users who submit too much irrelevant ranting (a given, if possible); disabling the comment function on certain stories (I agree); and depending on users to flag other users’ inappropriate comments (again, I agree).

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For Those Who Think The Word is Dead. Eat It.

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A new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 93 percent of teenagers write for their own pleasure, but fail to connect the relationship between communication writing (anything done electronically) with the more formal structure of writing.

The 83-page report is filled with startling insights:

1. teenagers believe critical and formal writing is tantamount to their success in life; however, they don’t believe that their e-communication prepares them for that
2. 48 percent of parents believe their children write more than they did during school; 20 percent believe their children write about the same
3. That said, the typical high school assignment is only ONE paragraph in length
4. 82 percent of teens believe there should be more writing instruction in school; 72 percent believe there should be more computer-based tool work to help them with their writing.

There’s more, but too much for a blog; that said, there’s a couple things we can take from this.

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Socializing the Web

For the last year, I’ve been working with a computer science student at Northern Kentucky University to create a content management system that would enable users (not site owners, but the people who get online) to create buddy lists that would:

1. allow for internal bookmarking
2. allow for dynamic generation of site content based upon those bookmarks
3. import rss feeds from other media outlets
4. leave notes for friends who want to know what you thought about the article

At the time, we thought it was a pretty interesting idea, creating this CMS that was agnostic to existing technologies while incorporating some of the more social aspects of the web.

But it turns out, we aren’t the only ones thinking about this.

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Social Media, Yes We Can. If Papers Don’t Do It, Everybody Can.

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I’ve been asked to speak at several events in the last year, discussing how technology is reshaping the media landscape.

One recurring meme in my talks is this: social media has changed the expectations of many people in terms of media, and if news organizations don’t adopt those principles they will quickly be left behind by those who better get the landscape.

This is usually met with either guffaws or blank stares. I’m not sure the editors, publishers, reporters and advertisers grasped that I wasn’t just a crank spouting off opinions. We can look at the research from Pew or the traffic numbers from ComScore or the financials from the SEC to track what companies are doing well in the new media economy.

It ain’t traditional news organizations.

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Lifestyle 2.0: At the Movies

I’m not going to tackle the entire arts and entertainment section at once because I’m less familiar with this section than I am with the others.

That realization has been a strange for me since John and I wrote a book about video games, have a quarter-finished book about anime and the United States and we have the idea for a comic book, uh, book.

You’d think I’d spend all my time in that section. The fact that I don’t goes to how narrow and out-of-touch that section is.

Honestly, if it weren’t for the complete vacuousness of that section (and maybe local politics), the American weekly newspaper probably wouldn’t exist. Weeklies are — and I don’t mean this negatively because I started at Cincinnati Citybeat and have a fond place in my heart for it — primarily arts and entertainment listings with some stories and profiles.

Music and movies offer an interesting pathway for newspapers. That’s too much though so I’m going to start with movies.

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It’s The Tools, Stupid

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Everything I’ve ever learned about technology started with reading Steven Levy.

Sometimes, though, I wish I hadn’t learned so much because now I expect everyone to get technology the way he did — and does.

I’m oftentimes energized by reading smart people discussing the future of media even when I’m not in agreement with what I believe. The fun part about social media is you are forced — if you participate — to wholly defend your point.

There are days, though, when it seems like I’m standing in a field by myself. Today is one of those days. As I stumble across more media blogs, I’m taken aback by the fact that smart people discussing the future of newspapers cling to the notion that the written word — their written word — is the sacred cow that must be protected against the evil doers on the Web (blogs and such).

Their Major Premise is flawed although their logic is sound. The believe the path to economic viability is protecting their stories. The truth is newspapers and media outlets must embrace the opportunities that the Web and Internet have placed before them.

Namely, successful companies build tools.

What got me thinking about this was a post at Balkinization, which said in part that newspapers should consider charging a set licensing fee for feed access to their content.

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Book Review: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

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I’ve been threatening to review Joe Trippi’s book about his role with the Howard Dean campaign in 2004, the campaign that tapped into the social media networks emerging online to not only raise more money than a candidate had ever done before but also to galvanize voters by going around traditional media outlets to speak directly with voters.

The book is one of the first I recommend to lay people who want to experience the joy — and fear — associated with social media, which effectively removes control from one centralized location.

That mind-numbing fear that comes with that isn’t just limited to politicians, though. Everywhere I go, the one constant I hear is that people are afraid to cede control of their network to the masses because if they do that, the argument goes, bad things can happen.

And there’s nothing that anyone can say to make that fear go away. But this book does a good job of explaining what can happen if you can embrace that experience.

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Lab to Use Games to for HIV Research

Since games are on my mind these days, I’ve been keeping my eyes out for innovative ways that people are using Alternate Reality Game-like structures to solve problems.

The more I read about them, the more excited I am about the possibility of news organizations incorporating this community-styled project to engage in its readers.

Today, my old publication has a story about a research lab designing a game to help create potential protein vaccinations for HIV and the story points out a concept that we’ve been discussing in part on the social network: computers crunch data and people add context.

The game, called Foldit, is part of Baker’s vision for the future of protein engineering. His algorithms are good at the nitty-gritty of generating completely novel protein sequences for a particular purpose. But humans, who are better at seeing the big picture than computers are, could improve computer-designed proteins by playing the game.

The idea of melding reality and virtual worlds to solve actual problems is something that Chris Graves from the Enquirer posted on the social network. She’s a former crime reporter and proposed creating some type of game around unsolved crimes.

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Business 2.0

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One of the most interesting propositions for newspapers is the overhaul of the business section.

There are more opportunities for important — and audience-capturing — features in this section than any other simply because, other than sports, the section relies more on raw data and numbers.

Traditional business papers should, first and foremost, ditch the stock and index pages. Those are much better left online since they provide the most up-to-date information.

I’d ditch much of the national news writing too, unless it was a feature-type story that covered trends. I’d do the same with international.

That doesn’t mean treat the world and the country at large as if it doesn’t matter. Instead, I’d adopt an Economist type digest that covered the big trends nationally and internationally for those who were interested.

The real rub, though, comes with the integration of online and offline properties.

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Ah, Web Video. The Latest Savior

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One of the rather disturbing trends I have experienced in my talks with newspaper folks is there insistence on latching on to the latest trend.

It’s easy to get caught up in the mix. After all, new technologies roll out every day and if you’re not careful, you can find yourself at the bottom of an avalanche of circuits, software and gadgets.

Video is one of those trends that frightens me. Not because it’s not important. Clearly, media of all types are important and the rise of the vlogger certainly show how powerful the medium can be.

But news organizations really need to think about their video strategy. They need to understand what does well, what their strengths are and what the best use of the video is. Not mention, what sells.

The Online Journalism Review has the best description I’ve ever read about how you should think about video.

What concerns me is what Pat Thornton wrote at the Journalism Iconoclast today: Web video isn’t hard to make.

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