1. The Gift of Experimentation: Too often we hear about stations where “it” can’t be done because of various policies. “It” can be lots of things – trying new collaborative sites online, experimenting with new tools of the trade or using their own tech to contribute. Have a contest for the best experimental idea, and give a day off to the winner.

2. The Gift of a Scissors for Red Tape: I worked with a client whose policy was simple – “If someone in the company says it can’t be done, you come directly to me.” Inevitably, he got it done. Be that person or identify that person. You will hear lots of reasons why something new can’t be done. Chances are it can — especially if some other company is doing it already.

3. The Gift of Social Leadership: Nothing says “let’s be using social media” like doing it yourself. We hear a lot of talk about stations’ needs for rules around social media, but the best way to establish the rules is to set the tone yourself. Bonus: you’ll really like doing this and you’ll connect with your audience. (Double Bonus: You’ll find an old friend you actually want to hear from.)

4. The Gift of Fewer and Shorter Meetings: In our book “Live. Local. BROKEN News,” we found that, by far, the most time wasted in newsrooms was in meetings. There are a number of books on how to hold efficient meetings. Pick one up at the library and set some ground rules. Shave just ten minutes off a meeting and you’re saving real money.

5. The Gift of Training: Terry and I have been pounding on this like it was a Christmas walnut. You have got to train your people more. This doesn’t have to cost much. Bring in a local journalism professor to talk about writing. Hell – you’re smart enough – put together a few sessions yourself and put on that old, dusty journalist hat of yours. Get someone from the Web to hold a seminar on what they are up to and how their colleagues can help. Find the people who can truly educate and inform. That, after all, is what we do for a living.

Why dedicate a separate feed to one story? Because of the audience. I’m following the Fort Hood story, but I’m not especially interested in the other stories coming from the paper/website. To get information about the story that interests me, I’d like to see the local reporting on the story. It’s a big plus for me to be able to opt-in to this one story. I can’t speak for locals in Austin, but I’ll bet they appreciate being able to break out this one story from the others the paper may cover in a given day.

Poynter’s Craig Kanelley talked with Robert Quigley, the social media editor at the Statesman:

“When we heard (the first news about the shootings), we knew we had to get moving and sent out a breaking news alert,” Quigley said in an interview conducted by phone and e-mail. “Within a few minutes, we had a reporter on the phone with Fort Hood and got confirmation. And we turned it around really fast, setting up the Twitter account.” Statesman Editor Fred Zipp first proposed the idea of creating a separate Twitter account to cover the event, according to Quigley. Quigley said he liked the idea and immediately jumped on it, trying different name combinations on Twitter, including “FortHood,” before deciding on “FtHoodShootings” to fit Twitter’s character limit for an account name.

Smart stuff. The instinct was to Think Social. The updates on Twitter are not all about driving traffic to the main site. Some updates have links, others don’t. As of this writing, the paper had sent out 265 Tweets and had garnered 3,300 followers just of this one stream. That’s huge. The paper’s “master” Twitter feed, twitter.com/statesman, has 15,000 followers. To pick up 3,500 just for the one Fort Hood stream – in the space of a week – is an enormous success.

It so happens that the story broke as Twitter introduced a new feature – Twitter Lists. (See next article.) These allow you to curate lists of your favorite feeds, and your friends can decide if they want to follow your lists. Statesman’s Fort Hood Twitter page made it onto 154 lists. This improves the chances that the page and stream will go viral. That, in turn, helps the Statesman become the authority on the story. This is where we want to be.

However, it has a disclaimer that seems a little odd:

Should I read you instead of my local paper?

No, you should read us in addition to your local paper. We’ve always believed it’s both/and, not either/or. The reason we started the Trib is not because your local paper doesn’t believe in journalism in the public interest. It does, and it produces as much as it can. But in this severely depressed economy, human and financial resources are not as plentiful as they once were.

It’s my feeling that this is something of a sop to the local press. The idea behind a native news organization is that it should be a standalone. We’re not in this so people will read our work as an adjunct.

Further, The Austin Chronicle reports, the site raised $3.5 million in capital and is paying its execs handsomely. And the site seems to have a strange attitude about whom it hires:

Texas Tribune is paying (Editor Evan) Smith $315,000 a year. (Managing Editor Ross) Ramsey is making $165,000; technology director Higinio Maycotte, $120,000; and general manager Alisha Ring, $115,000; (Brian Thevenot) is the top-paid reporter at $90,000. “You don’t want clowns who can’t get a job working for public media; you want the best you can find,” Thornton said. “Did I ask Evan to take a pay cut? No.”

Clowns? Is that any way to begin a news organization? By, effectively, calling potential contributors from your audience “clowns?” Those are some handsome salaries for an unproven model. I’ve run the numbers before on not-for-profit news, and you have to have an absolute fundraising machine to make it work. (Or those sugar daddys need to keep giving you $3 million per year.) A staff of 16 will burn through that money in no time.

Cities could benefit from an online, multi-platform news source. I’m just not sure this approach – or attitude – is the way.

The book came about as a call to the audience for one specific task:

On Wednesday, September 9, WMUR Channel 9 asked everyone in the state of New Hampshire to grab their camera and take great shots of one day in the life of New Hampshire. The only rule was that the photos be taken on 9/9/09 between midnight and 11:59 pm. The result was amazing. More than 9,000 photos were submitted. And now we are publishing the best of those images in a beautiful coffee-table book that will be available in time for the holiday season! Plus, the book comes with a companion DVD which includes thousands of extra photos from this unique project.

The result is the book “9-9-09: A Day In The Life of New Hampshire.” It’s for sale online for $29.95. Is this a terrific idea or what?

You can see some of the many wonderful pictures people contributed by going to the WMUR site.

Google Wave

So what, exactly is a “Wave?” Google’s site explains:

Google announced Wave back in May. It supports real-time sharing of text, video, pictures, embeds, social networks, maps and even games. Think of it as hyper-instant messaging for everything. But it’s more complex – you can invite collaborators into your conversation and documents at any time. If I’m late to your Wave, I can “play it back,” and see the discussion that happened before I joined.

I strongly recommend watching this ten-minute video about Google Wave from the original announcement. (The full Wave presentation is over an hour. If you have the time, check it out.) Here is a glimpse of what Google Wave looks like:

(I realize the picture doesn’t do much justice to the project.)

Online collaboration is nothing new. What Google Wave does is make the concept free and portable, and it brings all the elements together in one place. It is open – Google is giving away the Wave API so anyone can go in and build extensions or new uses. This is something Terry and I absolutely believe is critical to success. Google Wave works on mobile as well – part of Google’s steady march to mobile devices. The program aims to make email passe as well. Google calls email the “snail mail” of the Internet.

Google Wave has a heck of a pedigree. It was developed by Jens and Lars Rasmussen, who built Google Maps. Right now, Wave  is in beta, and is available by invitation only. Put out the word via your social networks that you want an invite, and start playing immediately.

Imagine starting a wave in your office about a news topic. People could constantly add to it, put in the latest pictures, video and information. The assignment desk could contribute its findings and the reporters and producers would have instant access, as well as the ability to add more. We don’t yet know how newsrooms can fully take advantage of this tool (and isn’t that wonderful?) but we do believe it will be a powerful way to have the entire staff work together.

Pulling a story without an explainer is a New Media Sin, IMHO. It also invites people to republish rather than make a quick comment and move on. So, if you missed it – here’s the story.

Associated Press

Swiss arrest Polanski on US request in sex case

Associated Press, 09.27.09, 10:41 AM EDT

OK, can you do some more probing? New York will want to know

frank’s out today.

i checked already, and so did zurich. they say the question is irrelevant. he answered me with the quote i used, about we knew when he was coming this time. he’s been here many times in the past, we think.

thx brad. aptn is aware, but unfortunately won’t make it in time, but is hoping to catch tail end.

i’m pushing out another writethru with some more background details before press conference.

no surprise, new york is really hot on this.

they particularly want to know why now. (has he never set foot in switzerland before?) sheila, theorizes that’s because they’re under intense pressure over ubs and want to throw the U.S. a bone, but can yo ucheck with justice department sources there?

is frank around too, or are you alone?

u can tell aptn press conf 1700 (15 gmt) in bern at the parliament

i’ll watch it live on internet

]]> http://www.mediareinvent.com/2009/09/28/ap-and-forbes-fail-but-sin-worse-by-no-apology/feed/ 0 http://www.mediareinvent.com/2009/09/24/tales-from-the-disruption-book-publisher-in-a-box/ http://www.mediareinvent.com/2009/09/24/tales-from-the-disruption-book-publisher-in-a-box/#comments Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:18:23 +0000 Steve Safran http://www.mediareinvent.com/?p=329 The Harvard Book Store is having a contest to promote its new “Book ATM.”The Espresso Book Machine, made by On Demand Books, can print a 300-page, library-quality paperback will full-color cover in about four minutes. (Watch how it works.)

The machine is about the size of an large industrial copier. (I suspect later versions will get smaller.) On Demand Books signed an agreement this month with Google to have access to print more than two-million public-domain titles from Google Books. On top of that, the company already has the rights to print 1.4 million titles. That’s a great start. It’s not exactly an Amazon-killer, but I predict you’ll see these in every book store – and in non-traditional locations — think Starbucks, or even a 7-11. It will be a boon to local libraries that can afford it.

This has the potential to create a massive disruption in the book publishing industry. I expect there will be backlash from the traditional print houses. With the right deals, Google Books can become the publisher, and it has nearly limitless room for content. There’s no reason why you couldn’t write a book, upload it to Google Books and have it instantly available for sale everywhere that has one of these machines.

Back to that contest – Harvard wants a unique name for its book machine. Enter if you come up with a good name. My suggestion: “The Guten-Nuff.”

Thank God for the viewers. They’re the ones who posted the good stuff on YouTube.

There are some strange ironies here. Prior to the show, it seemed it would be the “webbiest” ever. The E! preshow had celebrity Tweets. The people behind the Emmy site used a Flip camera for some Red Carpet interviews. The promos for the Emmys featured host Neil Patrick Harris (who did an excellent job) with a kid who livetweeted everything he said. Indeed, the Academy did a good job livetweeting attwitter.com/primetimeemmys.

So where is the actual show video? And how is an online user supposed to navigate this?

For starters, there is confusion between the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) and the plain ol’ ATAS. ATAS was the original, but the two split in 1977. The National Academy is responsible for the Daytime, Sports, News, Public Service and Technology Emmys. Its site is at emmyonline.org. ATAS does the awards most people think of as “The Emmys,” the big TV awards show.

There is also an International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Best to leave that one alone.

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (no National) runs the big show, and its site is at emmys.com.

It turns out Emmy.com is a two-page family site with a picture of a girl and her dog, from Emmerdale Farms. Surely ATAS could offer a little money to pick up the URL and make things a little more convenient for us (and help the farm while they’re at it)? Even sillier - Emmy.tv is a placeholder page for a John Murray, whom I contacted via email. He tells me he has been a NATAS member for 10 years and intends to use the site to showcase his work.

So, once you’ve navigated your way through the Emmy sites and found the one for TV, you’d think you’d get a pretty goodwrapup. Sadly, you get squat. There is one video from the show - Neil Patrick Harris’sexcellent song-and-dance opening number. Want anything more? Go rogue.

One of the great successes of internet content has been Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. The inexplicably funny short film (originally released in three parts) won an Emmy this year. It so happens Neil Patrick Harris (our host, remember) starred as Dr. Horrible. People have been begging for a sequel. Who shows up in the middle of the Emmys? Harris, in a Dr. Horrible short along with his co-stars. The original Dr. Horrible, when it was released online crashed servers. Demand for this clip should be through the roof. CBS, however, won’t profit a bit.

We need to learn from this. It’s a simple lesson: give the audience what it wants, or it will go elsewhere. All the use of the cool tools in the world won’t mean anything if we don’t deliver on the big goods.

While the record industry cries foul over music downloading and the like, what we’re seeing is a resurgence of music as it’s presented in new and interactive ways. What’s more fun than pretending to be a Beatle? The band was smart to reissue all its albums, now remastered (and sounding great) on the same day the Rock Band game came out.

This isn’t a game review. What’s interesting is how Rock Band is becoming a platform. The game is $60. If you own the original Rock Band and Guitar Hero games, plus their sequels, you’ve spent more than $600. That’s not including ancillary products. Be a real nut for these games, and you’ll be shelling out $1,000 before you know it.

You can download new songs for each of the games. And here’s the really big part – Rock Band is becoming a platform for new artists. The Rock Band Network (RBN) is coming soon. It will allow you to “Rock Band-enable” your band’s song, upload it, and share in the money as people download and play along. Oh – by the way – MTV (owners of Rock Band) charges bands $99 for a “premium account.” Smart.

So why should you care? Local news isn’t going to rock out any time soon. This concept is important to note, because it once again shows us that technology doesn’t kill content; it enables it in new ways. Apple is making money by legitimizing downloadable music on iTunes; now MTV is in the same business, going a step further by selling downloadableinteractive content. Rock Band doesn’t spell the end of music. It’s another way to appeal to audiences and get them to buy content. We have to change our approach to our content, just as they do.

Twitter forces us to use an extreme economy of writing. Now, we’re not about to switch to 140-character scripts, but we can think of script-writing in terms of Twitter in this respect: is every word necessary?

Writes Josh Catone at Mashable:

These limits can be seen as a burden, or they can force you to think creatively about your content. If you only have 140 characters to work with, for example, you have to work extra hard to pack as much information as you can into each tweet while maintaining a voice consistent with your brand’s other copy.

Right on. We have to ask ourselves: Does each word add to the understanding of the story? Have we chosen our words carefully? With Twitter, we have no choice. It’s an excellent cure for logorrhea.

Twitter reminds us that people talk about the news in real time. I strongly recommend visiting twitpipe to get a view of just how much conversation about news is happening. Twitter is not all about “what I had for lunch.” Go to twitpipe, enter a keyword from the news, and watch the river flow. What do we learn? That we need to be a part of this river. The continuous news model that we preach feeds this desire. Tweeters (and webbies in general) don’t wait for the whole story. As I watch twitpipe today, I see a blast of tweets about the various Apple announcements.

There’s another good reason to use twitpipe (or the many sites and programs that do similar things). We constantly wonder what people are talking about in our community. Enter some search terms and you’ll see whether your guess is on the mark. This is real-time eavesdropping.

Josh also points out that Twitter is an excellent case of the importance of knowing your audience. My tweets are aimed at the people I think are following me (mostly TV and tech types). I try to offer helpful links and advice, mixed with my own strange sense of humor. My feed would be unsuccessful if I were to post my favorite recipes. If I were a chef, on the other hand, that’s exactly what I’d do because my followers would expect that. Know your audience, and use your expertise.

My other takeaway from years of using Twitter is the importance of links. The most helpful tweets are those that both summarize a story and link to it. That way I have a choice. We don’t link out enough. We need to. TV news websites are designed to be “sticky,” but the web doesn’t care about “stickiness.” What matters is being the right place to start. People will opt in to your Twitter feed when they believe you’re a trusted source of continuous, multi-platform information.