I love it when a plan comes together. Of course, that doesn’t happen for me as often as I’d like…(sigh), but, dang it, I do keep trying! I had grand plans of filming a lengthy video on Reno’s vintage neon signs, but that plan changed and morphed into an interview with my classmate (and guinea pig interviewee) Eli (Thank you again, Eli!).
Eli gave me a fabulous interview, which I mercilessly hacked to bits in order to MacGyver this video. I promised her she wouldn’t be on camera for more than a few seconds and that she would really only be voiceover “talent.” I kept to my word the best that I could. I was in soundbite heaven.
That sign, shouldn’t say ‘The biggest little city in the world,’ it should say, ‘the brightest little city in the world.’ This place is bright.
Without further ado, and because I have fifty more blogs to go tonight, I present my latest video attempt — a short piece about the city that Eli called “delightfully kitschy.”
One part amateur video footage plus one amateur videographer, mash them together with Movie Maker and what do you get? Behold, my first actual attempt at Movie Maker with my own raw footage.
Our classroom is next to an office that generally remains locked and dark. On that door are various notes of thanks and appreciation from students that feel their lives have been changed. The door and its office belong to Professor Warren Lerude, perhaps the pillar of the journalism community in Reno.
For weeks I’ve looked forward to meeting the man “next door.” This week, I finally had that opportunity when he came over and spoke to our class about the First Amendment and media law.
For me, the best thing I took away from our time with Professor Lerude, was Professor Lerude.
Meeting Professor Lerude was — well — an experience. While the topic, first amendment, could have been covered by almost anyone, or even read from a book, with Warren Lerude, I felt very much I was with some one who had been part of a great many things in history.
His presentation was much more like sitting in a college class than a class for working, adult journalists. Personally, I didn’t mind that so much. Our group members’ backgrounds vary, and so our knowledge of first amendment and media law probably does differ from person to person.
He went into the history of freedom of speech in our country, touching on Thomas Payne and Peter Zenger. The First Amendment may guarantee us a freedom, but it does not come with wisdom in making decisions. Professor Lerude also went into the policies of newspapers and editors in deciding to run stories and photos and gauging their sources. Even Pulitzer prize-winning pieces have been controversial and big name papers and editors have had to make hard calls or been duped by not checking their own reporters.
Sources should add integrity to the report, and he recommended the old rule of having at least three sources to check out all facts for a story.
“A newspaper,” he said, “is an instrument of community understanding.” Another “instrument” that he has recently happened upon is Twitter. He is fascinated by the whole Twitter phenomenon, especially now that he’s figured out how to watch trends.
At one point he called it “jabbering,” but not in a bad way. People want to communicate. They want to be heard. We are social creates. When a new technology comes along, we seize it and make it our own. Thomas Payne did the same thing, Lerude said, when he sold his pamphlets. The students in Tiananmen Square did it too, harnessing the newest technology of their day — faxing — to tell the world their struggle.
We did cover libel, standards of editing and shield laws. I learned terms such as public vortex and neutral reportage. I learned that Curtis Publishing was involved in a lawsuit that the Supreme Court settled. This fascinated me because I used to work for Curtis Publishing.
Warren Lerude is about to enter into “emeritus” status at the University of Nevada. He seems as much a part of this building as the bricks and mortar. He does lecture more than converse, but then he’s a teacher. He has things to teach. His teachings aren’t simply pontifications. He pauses. He questions. He waits for you to answer. And then you discuss and converse. He willingly shares his knowledge and experience. As good teachers do.
I have a very close friend who is a lawyer. We have the best conversations, full of deep, ethical, right-versus-wrong discussions. Having Melissa McCoy here was a lot like talking to my friend. You can see that she cares deeply about the issues before her and dismisses nothing.
Sessions with Melissa exercised a different part of my brain than had been at work since I arrived at Maynard. It was a welcome change of pace. As the recent deputy managing editor for the LA Times, she joined us to help us learn to tackle ethical considerations in the workplace. And we did. Some situations we discussed were related to covering stories or interacting with the public, and others were topics such as company policies or conflicts of issue.
In many of our theoretical scenarios, in the end there was no “one size fits all” solution, and I believe that’s what Melissa wanted us to see all along. The important thing was for us all to be thinking, to be aware that ethical problems can arise at any time and that in the best of all worlds, we are prepared before they arise.
We found, again and again, that for most of us, it came down to knowing our readers, knowing our community, when deciding whether we might run a particular story, release some information or print a certain picture. What would our audience want or expect? But sometimes, in class, it did come down to a personal decision. What was our paper’s policy? Our editor’s policy? What would our personal policy be? These are tough questions with no easy answers. They aren’t meant to have any. That’s the point.
I came away from Melissa’s sessions with that saying in my head, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” But at least I am thinking.
Amy Eisman, from American University’s School of Communication is the director of writing programs. She introduced us to the basics of writing for an online audience and rewriting print stories for an online audience. Beyond the basics of writing, we were able to delve into the specifics of cultivating that online audience and how to give them what is useful to them and keep them coming back for more.
The topic of social networking and harnessing it to drive traffic to our site, and therefore advertisers, again made an appearance. She also said that the valuation of user-generated content was still being worked out, but several of our fellows said that had proved to be very successful for their papers (Henry, for one).
She introduced information regarding studies by the Poynter Institute of how readers read online. The first eleven characters of a paragraph, and then you may have lost them. Talk about a “now or never” moment. And the web design had better be good. Again, my mind jumps back to Vivian Vahlberg’s presentation.
She gave several ideas for long-life multi-media presentations to produce for people to watch on our websites. I have some ideas on these and I’m hopeful I can get editorial approval when I get home.
Eisman discussed new models of newsroom thinking, reevaluating our competition and information aggregation methods to keep the reader constantly updated throughout the news cycle. SEO and (re)writing for web I found particularly helpful. Here’s some of what she said.
Don’t be afraid to supply links to outside sources, even other news
Search engines, and thus readers, can’t find your stories if you don’t write for SEO
Westerners read online in an F- shaped pattern, design accordingly
When T. J. Ortenzi from the Seattle Times came to see us he explained all about Twitter. For those of us unfamiliar, or relatively unfamiliar with Twitter, he gave us a tour of how Twitter operates, a run down of the lingo and a liberal smattering suggested websites and applications to further educate ourselves and enhance our Twitter experience.
I haven’t been able to utilize them all yet, but they are certainly handy to know about and have helped me manage Twitter more effectively. These links and T.J.’s strategies for building followers on Twitter are proving to be additional valuable tools in building our company’s online presence.
I am a visual learner. I love charts, maps, graphs and diagrams. Chad Snow brought great ones. He’s now one of my heroes. Thank you, Chad Snow.
He brought flow charts for before, during and after the web hit newsrooms. It was impressive. Ever seen the exponential breeding capabilities of a pair of bunnies and how quickly they can get out of hand? Chad’s charts for after looked something like that when he factored in lack of editorial oversight in favor of speed in posting just about anything to the web. Talk about a wake up call.
Having almost no web presence to speak of, I am quite grateful for Chad’s charts. (I really like the alliteration of “Chad’s charts. I may keep writing it, just for fun.) They made an impression that I know I won’t forget. In addition to the need to be aware of the hodgepodge of what may be thrown on to a website, there is a vital need for quality control.
Taste and ethics, it seems, have been known to fall by the wayside in some newsrooms, again in favor of speed. Less than top quality writing and editing have also slipped by more than one news desk, it seems. “It’s only the internet,” is foreign to me, but in certain circles, my fellow journalists seem to have been lured by this siren song.
Thanks to (here we go again) Chad’s charts, when we do get our online presence up and running, we will be able to plan ahead for a proper workflow and avoid the perils that nearly befell Chad and his coworkers. And we will keep no bunnies in the office. I promise.
Reno-Gazette Journal publisher and president, Ted Power gave us a presentation and addressed the issue of exactly what counts as news. These days, that very issue is up for debate as “citizen journalism” runs rampant and anyone who can text, blog or email a photo may consider themselves part of the media.
Ted gave us the following guide, which I am paraphrasing.
Background is what you know
Opinion is what you feel
News is what you know
I believe he attributed this to former editor Lester Markey. Power went on to say that the current platform for breaking news is the web. A testament to that is the current uprising in Iran over the presidential election. With with media under state control, the people are using cell phones to send messages over the internet, that are finally being picked up by television and other mediums.
Those updates do drive traffic, which in turn drive advertising, which drives revenue, the key to the survival of all businesses. And that is what newspapers are, and what we are all trying to figure out – how to keep this business alive, even thriving.
Determining what is news and how best to disseminate it is a recurrent theme here. I believe we must drive the traffic and not simply let it drive us. If we become custodians of information and directors, instead of disinterested dictators, then we partner with people, with readers, responsibly and with integrity.
We must continue to hold ourselves to a higher standard of accountability than someone seeking their fifteen minutes in a Google ranking, and remain a trusted place for the public to turn for information and analysis.
Jennifer Carrol of Gannett Digital spoke to us via Skype in a remote teleconference. My first ever. I thought it was pretty cool. Her topic included information about Gannett’s online presence and the forums and communities that they have built and are developing for their audience.
They focus on trying to understand and attract people to their sites and build different sites for different audiences. Their moms sites are very popular in major cities and include photo galleries, discussion pages with leaders, subgroups, forums, calendars with activities, targeted ads, polls, contests, give-aways and social media tools.
They use an analytic program called Ripple 6 that captures information such as the ages of children, demographics, psychographics, geographics, key words and reactions of registered users, and all users must be registered.
They are still working on a site for men. Women, she said, identify themselves as mothers first, and then as women. Men, on the other hand, identify themselves as men first, and dads second. Tough crowd. She was more than willing to take suggestions on how to get men into an online community.
If I crack that nut, will it include a spiffy office with a great view and a cappuccino machine? Maybe? Excuse me, I think I have some analytics analyze…
And then she made us blog. She did. She really did.
She talked to us about online identity, offline identity, finding and maintaining tone and persona, branding, and measuring results. If you can’t measure it, she said, don’t do it. She urged us to be personal, authentic and to give our own perspective to the world. If we weren’t sure whether to say something, she urged caution — the old “when it doubt, leave it out” rule.
The tools of social networking, she said, were there for the using and could be utilized to build the online presence of our papers, but also ourselves by accessing web communities. Blogs, meetups, messaging, alerts, posts, newsfeeds, recommendations, friending and following all help to establish relationships online that cross over into real world contacts. Common interests solidify and sustain these relationships in the virtual world, but transference occurs easily as the geographical world gets smaller and smaller as more people use social networking tools as part of the way of doing business.
I already understood this. Back in the wee years of the internet, I was part of an online community of moms. I formed very close friendships with several other women and traversed cross-country to visit some of them, babies in tow, so we could all meet. I have all teens now, so that gives you an idea of how long ago this was. Slightly crazy, but my point is, I know how powerful a tool social networking can be in bringing people together in spite of obstacles.
Susan zipped through a lot of material, but there was quite a bit to cover. If she Googles her name and finds this post, thanks, Susan, for going through all bells and whistles online today. It was a great help. I was very out of practice, but I think I’m climbing back on board.
