Rating local news sites

Tough to keep up with the comings and goings of local news sites.

Michelle McClellan at the Knight Digital Media Center is taking a shot by sorting through the long list kept by Knight Citizen News Network. Working through the list, she intends to measure sites “…against criteria that indicates they are primarily a news site that is updated regularly, are accessible and transparent to readers, and are working on a viable business model. We’re also looking at how these sites use social media and other interactivity to engage their users.”

She finds many start fine but then fade quickly. So far she’s rating good sites as “promising.” Her first selections range from sites staffed by professional journalists to residents reporting on themselves. Among them, the Voice of San Diego, Twin Cities Daily Planet, and The Rapidian (Grand Rapids, MI)

UPDATE: Second list of sites rated.

Realistic multimedia training

Ellen Weiss, VP for News at National Public Radio, recently described lessons learned the past two years as NPR ramped up a more ambitious radio + online model.

High on her list:

Be realistic about how much multimedia you can handle and train for. Writing is multimedia when you are a broadcast organization.  NPR brought its training back to reality — away from video and to things people could take back to their jobs: how to take a good picture, what’s the mix of writing, blog writing, writing for the web vs. writing for print.

A key concept in developing effective workplace training is “…things people can take back to their jobs.” This should be a consideration in formulating a training plan (Weiss’ point here), in training design, and in the critical reinforcement that must follow training. Why?

Training plan: Start with a sense of where you want to end up. What kind of things do you want people to do, as opposed to know. Break it down by department or job description. A good plan should encompass what skills need to be taught and who needs to learn them for immediate use back on the job.

Training design: A common mistake is to cram too much into a single training session. With a focus on the job, craft each session by completing this sentence: By the end of this session, participants will be able to _____ (do what?) Keep in mind each session should not only demonstrate the skill, but give participants a change to practice and receive feedback. So even something as apparently simple as “…how to take a good picture..,” from Weiss’s comment above, may take several one-hour sessions to convey the step-by-step skills required back on the job.

Back on the job: In many industries, training effectiveness is measured in how much new skills transfer back to the job. A great training session is not enough. Managers need to plan on coaching and reinforcement to bring new skills into regular use. This can include shadowing, formal feedback, metrics on output, consistent praise for success. Training plants the seed for new skills, but on-the-job reinforcement nourishes and cements their use.

More on this topic: Training on the edge of change. How to build a training module.

Storytelling 2: Chronology is your best friend

The best starting point for planning and writing a compelling story is a good timeline. The timeline is not necessarily a big part of the finished piece. But planning a good story starts with understanding the time frame, those parts of the story that occurred before the start of the time frame (exposition and context that must be worked in), and if necessary where the tale did or may go at the end of the story.

A timeline helps structure early reporting by focusing on a clear understanding of the chronology of events, the cause-and-effect that occurs, and how the timeline may naturally break down into chapters or sections. As Jon Franklin notes, narrative power comes from “chronology with meaning.” Building and studying a timeline is about discovering the patterns and meaning that comprise the story.

This applies to timelines that run over weeks or months, as well as a timeline that may run just a day or less. And that clear sense of chronology also applies to key moments or scenes, so a timeline could involve something as short as a conversation.

Consider the opening of this story about how a mercury spill unfolded at an Arizona high school:

Maylene Byers’ Physical Science class was reviewing a set of articles. Students worked in groups in a classroom located next to a science laboratory in one of several buildings that make up the Agua Fria High School campus.

Two boys sitting in front weren’t paying attention. One was a junior, the other a freshman. They had noticed a plastic bottle on the open shelf next to their desks. They removed the screw cap, looked inside, and swirled around a metallic liquid they did not recognize.

Curious, they poured some onto the floor to see what would happen. The boys liked how the liquid balled into tight beads. The freshman scooped it up from the floor and put it into an empty Gatorade bottle.

Byers walked over to see what the boys were doing. Looking down, she thought the droplets on the floor were small BBs and swept them into her hand. She dropped the mercury into the trash and told the boys to get back to work.

Byers did not realize the freshman still had both bottles of mercury, which he slipped into his backpack. After class, the boys each took a container and went their separate ways, unaware they were carrying a dangerous substance.

Two types of chronology or narrative are at work here. Summary narrative compresses time and summarizes a series of events. Dramatic narrative slows down for a scene that is in the moment, unfolding in real time. In this passage, the summary gives way to dramatic narrative, then backs out to summary. The accuracy of this account — in both forms of narrative — begins with a clear, accurate chronology.

One thing reporters and editors often underestimate in planning and writing stories like this is the amount of time and detail that goes into building the overarching timeline and the chronology of even short scenes. Think of the painstaking detail in flipbook animation and how once the pages are set and flipped the visual chronology comes to life.

And that coming to life is the goal. Stories built on quotes present readers with digested narrative information, second-hand information. Stories built on clear chonologies allow readers to experience information and reaction emotionally. That’s the chemistry of great storytelling.

Story Telling 1: Touching Shared Emotions

Story Telling 3: Pick a Main Character

 

Indirection in writing, and how to fix it

Eleanor Gould Packard was for over 50 years a grammarian and proofreader at The New Yorker.

Her passion as an editor was the pursuit of clarity. When she died in 2005, New Yorker Senior Editor Deborah Garrison said, “Eleanor’s understanding of grammar goes deeper than stuff like making sure subjects and objects agree. It’s about the architecture of the sentence and the paragraph. And it’s about the architecture of the thought behind the sentence and the paragraph.”

One of Packard’s pet issues was “indirection,” defined as “the practice of obliquely insinuating new information into a narrative as if the reader already knows it – a technique feature writers often use to jam facts into tight space and achieve a knowing tone.”

Newspaper writing is full of “indirection,” and is one of the primary reasons readers turn away from newspaper stories. An awareness of the damage indirection can do in a story should be part of every writer’s and editor’s set of language skills.

Examples of indirection:

“The 36-unit apartment building burned in just two hours.”

“Acme Real Estate, the Tristate’s third largest commercial real estate firm, will purchase Allied Real Estate.”

“The hard-hitting third baseman, twice voted MVP of the Central Valley League, went hitless in the struggling ninth-place Cardinal’s weekend doubleheader.”

To remove the indirection, each sentence could be broken up so the information is delivered in a simple, logical order, closer to how people speak.

“The apartment building burned in just two hours. It had 36 units.”

“Acme Real Estate will purchase Allied Real Estate. Acme is the Tristate’s third largest commercial real estate firm.”

“The hard-hitting third baseman went hitless in the Cardinal’s weekend doubleheader. The struggling team is now in ninth place.” (The “twice voted MVP of the Central Valley League” is not only indirect but irrelevant in this context.)

Unfortunately, jamming information into tight spaces is what newspaper reporters and editors do. Some do it in an effort to pack more stuff in limited space. Some do it to achieve that knowing tone. In either case, readability suffers and we have given readers one more excuse to stop reading.

Attention to indirection, particularly in the opening paragraphs of a story, can be a very valuable part of the revision and editing process. The immediate benefit is improved clarity. Ideas are clearly stated. Sentence length tightens. Non-essential information is pruned. Comprehension and reader satisfaction can only go up.

And clear writing lays bare the “architecture of the thought.” Another way to say this is that brevity reveals both weakness and strength. If the thought is a good one, it will shine through. If not, then peeling away the husk makes it easier to spot and fix the problem.

Twitter news filters

Hooked on Twitter as your own personal news wire? Here’s a nice roundup from Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits blog on apps and Web sites that allow you to filter out some of the noise and hone in on the news.

Perhaps of greatest interest to journalists is the site Muck Rack which offers a directory of working journalists on Twitter.

Covering communities, nurturing democracy

Amy Gahan is writing an interesting series of weekly blog posts over at News Leadership 3.0 on how to put the ideas contained in a new report from the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in Democracy into action.

The report is titled, Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age, and is the work of 17 media, policy and community leaders whose purpose “…is to assess the information needs of communities, and recommend measures to help Americans better meet those needs.“

In the introduction, they write:

The Knight Commission sees new thinking about news and information as a necessary step to sustaining democracy in the digital age. It thus follows in the footsteps of the 1940s Hutchins Commission and the Kerner and Carnegie Commissions of the 1960s.

But in the digital age the stakes are even higher. Technological, economic and behavioral changes are dramatically altering how Americans communicate. Communications systems no longer run along the lines of local communities, and the gap in access to digital tools and skills is wide and troubling.

The Commission seeks to start a national discussion – leading to real action. Its aims are to maximize the availability and flow of credible local information; to enhance access and capacity to use the new tools of knowledge and exchange; and to encourage people to engage with information and each other within their geographic communities.

Amy’s weekly posts so far:

Community info building blocks: What do you already have?

Teamwork: Collaborating to build a community dashboard

Civic topic pages: Boost local traffic, democracy

Government 2.0: What’s in it for local news?

Making key government documents easier to find, understand

Tips for seeking local news funding from community foundations

Volunteering widget: Basic gateway to civic engagement

Future of Media Project: FCC wants your views by March 8

Storytelling 1: Touching shared emotions

Red West and Souleymane Sy Savane in Goodbye Solo

Going into 2010, I think one thing that will differentiate news sites in an increasingly competitive environment will be the ability to tell good stories. And good stories, no matter the subject or tone, share the ability to show people something about themselves. Stories that resonate with readers work on a two levels.

The tale: A well-crafted account of something happening to a main character. Most work along the classic three-act narrative line of introducing a main character and complication, the main character’s struggle with the complication, and then a resolution.

The touch: Great stories tap into universal feelings, experiences, or patterns that readers identify with on a deeper, emotional level. The struggle of the main character reflects or becomes the struggle of the reader. Great stories touch something deep inside that is witness to our inner selves.

Catching up with movies this holiday season, I was reminded of this after watching two very different movies back to back. The first was Avatar,  James Cameron’s 3D extravaganza with uses impressive technology and special effects to tell the story of a man trying to bridge the conflicts between humans and the Na’vi of the planet Pandora. The second was Goodbye Solo, the story of a poor Senegalese cab driver in North Carolina who begins to worry one of his regular customers wants to kill himself.

Both movies, on the level of the tale, are about an outsider drawn into close proximity with strangers in an attempt to save lives. On the level of the touch, they do not compare. Avatar channels numerous collisions of culture movies, from Dances With Wolves to Alien Nation, for the familiar mix of mistakes, tension, newbie-flops humor, and predictable acceptance such stories usually provide. Goodbye Solo goes much deeper, past the cultural differences  to visceral sensations of loneliness, hope, joy, and uncertainty that comes with being human.

Stories like Avatar are told on a well-plotted surface, with obvious themes, dull blocks of exposition, and heavy-handed emotional billboards to cinch the deal. Stories like Goodbye Solo are told in strings of moments, glimpses, an accumulation of telling details, the “chronology with meaning” Jon Franklin refers to when talking about great narrative.

Telling those kinds of stories requires skills of observation and the ability to report for story as much as for information. This involves capturing action, dialogue, and telling details, and then the ability to recreate the experience (not just the event) for readers to illicit the same emotional response.

Watch for most posts on how to do that in early 2010 in a series on storytelling skills for print and digital journalists.

Storytelling 2: Chronology is your best friend

Leadership lessons

One of the least taught yet most important newsroom skills is leadership. And in tough times the demands on leadership — at all levels of newsroom management — are overwhelming.

As Sandy Rowe ends her 16-year-run as editor of The Oregonian, one of her many former colleagues, Michelle McLellan of the Knight Digital Media Center, shares six leadership lessons learned from Rowe,  and others who have passed through Rowe’s orbit underscore how well she lived each one.

Here’s the list of lessons:

1. Listen, and listen well.
2. Let others lead.
3. Make the tough calls.
4. Stand up for readers.
5. Know your talents and how to use them.
6. Own the vision.

The six share pieces of  the “Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership” at the heart of Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner’s book, The Leadership Challenge.

1. Model the way.
2. Inspire a shared vision.
3. Challenge the process.
4. Enable others to act.
5. Encourage the heart.

All these skills and practices  culminate in that last one of encouraging the heart. Kouzes-Posner describe the fifth practice this way: “Accomplishing extraordinary things in organizations is hard work. To keep hope and determination alive, leaders recognize contributions that individuals make.” Recognition can be public praise or rewards. But day to day “recognition” is about  listening, walking the talk, letting others lead, and all the rest. And if there was every time hearts need encouragement in journalism, that time is now.

Future of local news skills

As 2009 and the ’00 decade wind down, established news organizations and a growing number of digital folks are circling back to local news in search of the elusive formula for local content and profit.

• Politico recently hired Jim Brady, former executive editor of Washingtonpost.com  to establish a local news site in Washington D.C., of which Brady says,”I was in journalism for 24 years. I wanted to do something that helps guide a path for other people in terms of building businesses around journalism. Local is an appealing area to be in, because if you can do something well in Washington, then others can look at that model and try that too.”
• MSN has a new deal with NBC and Hearst to add more content to its Local News page.
• Local news aggregator OutsideIn.com is growing, signing deals with CNN, Dow Jones, and others. CEO Mark Josephson says the plan is to “…continue to evolve Outside.in so that more publishers can do more things with all the data we aggregate and organize. We’re going to do more things for local bloggers to drive more traffic and help them build their business and we are going to continue to evolve our core site so that people can get more answers about what’s going on right around them.”
• The recent Interactive Local Media Conference put on by BIA/Kelly brought together a variety of people all trying to figure out the best formula for local news  and other content. Summarizing what he heard, Mark Briggs of Journalism 2.0 concluded:  “While we’re just getting started here, some urgency is required. News enterprises, large and small, need to gear up their ‘local online’ strategy, seizing the opportunity to cash in while connecting local businesses with local consumers. Before it’s too late.”
• The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are pushing forward with local sections in cities outside New York City. The NYT San Francisco effort, for example, includes a news blog devoted to the Bay area. Similarly, ESPN is expanding its own network of local sites in major cities, including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Dallas. Plans are for as many as 20.
• The local news guide offered for freelancers just a few months ago by Michelle Rafter in WordCount, as well as MediaShift Mark Glaser’s occasional roundups need constant updates.

So as 2010 unfolds, it will be interesting to watch what kind of content emerges as the core of a successful site. And from that, people focused on staff development will have to consider what news-gathering competencies stay and the same and what new ones emerge.

Making the most of multimedia content

Time Inc. is about to release an e-reader tablet tailored for its stable of magazines. The impressive video demonstration from Sports Illustrated shows off versatile navigation, color images, and even live video.

As high-tech news readers become more common, there is greater pressure placed on the skills and decisions involved in producing multimedia content. This is where systems and methodology are essential.

First among skills is still the critical thinking needed to spot opportunities, frame content, and quickly decide on the best medium for the content. Along the way some standard practices, systems, and strategies emerge.

For starters, try thinking through potential multimedia content to find the best match between medium, form, and content.

–Time: Consider how quickly the content needs to go up, and what is then the best medium  to present the story or information.

– ROI: The amount of effort and resources required to produce versus amount of time it will be relevant content on the Web or reader. Cost versus shelf life.

– Interactivity: Does the content provide a good opportunity for a medium that involves interaction (i.e. clicking through a slide show; polls or quizzes; Flash presentation). Users are drawn and spend more time with content that offers high-quality interaction.

As time goes on and you experience missteps as well as successes, deconstruct the successes to find the elemental makings of good standards and practices that enable you to repeat success. This is one part of successful change management.