Liveblogging the CapitolBeat multimedia panel...
I'm at the CapitolBeat conference in Philly, where I gave a presentation on using web-based tools to deliver content online. (If you were there and didn't get a software CD before they ran out, give me a shout and I'll drop a copy in the mail to you.)
From Besty Russel of the Spokesman Review:
SpokesmanReview.com broadcasts its newsmeetings live twice a day. There's a "transparent newsroom" section on the main page with "notes from our daily news meetings" and an "Ask The Editors: We answer your questions about our editorial decisions and operations" section. I haven't seen this - at least not this prominently - on other news websites yet, and I think the transparency section is a fantastic idea. Also great for jurno students who want insight into how newsroom managers' meetings go... They have a "mo-jo"... a mobile journalist.
Mark Binker of the Greensboro News & Record is talking about blogging. Says to use blogs for short takes of stories you're currently reporting on. Include links to source info.
Next up is Chris Krewson, Online Editor at the Morning Call in Allentown, Pa. Says he doesn't want any more reporters blogging by themselves... wants instead topic-based blogs with multiple contributors. Wants updates at least three times a week, not necessarily throughout the day, every day. Says that online, other newspapers aren't your competitors. Says that news orgs should certainly link out to every other media publishing that story online. Audience wants as much information as they can get online.
Aron Pilhofer (NYT CAR team), Tiffany Shackelford (Stateline.org) and I had a frank discussion about the use of blogs in a newsroom during our panel. We tried to explain that blogs aren't the place for jurnos to post snippets of newspaper stories. That they can't be published the same way that a newspaper is published...a one-way communication street. Doesn't work that way.
I don't understand why journalists have jumped on the blogging bandwagon without understanding fundamentally how and what blogs are. Blogs are about community. They're conversations that happen in the comments section. They're collaborative. There's no point in having a newspaper produce a hundred blogs if reporters are just repurposing what either didn't make it into the paper or wasn't ready for a full story.
Meredith Artley, new Exec. Ed. at the LAT is using blogs for breaking news...and they're doing a fantastic job of it.
