Last month, the University of Oregon hosted the fall conference of the Society of Professional Journalists. Along with a number of workshops on specialized topics, there was a lunch panel where I joined two newspaper managing editors for a spirited discussion (argument?) over the future of media and journalism.
Not long afterwards, the Portland Business Journal followed up on one comment by panelist Steve Smith with a page one story predicting an impending plunge in local TV news revenues, and potential layoffs that could mirror those that have plagued newspapers in recent years.
Now you can enjoy the entire luncheon chat online. SPJ has posted the video on the SPJ web site.
Moderated by Rob Smith, editor of the Portland Business Journal, the discussion featured Steve Engelberg, managing editor of ProPublica (and former managing editor of The Oregonian), Steve Smith, former editor of the Spokesman-Review, and myself, online editor at KGW
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
Election Night 08: Tipping point for New Media?
On the surface, it would seem like great news for a beleaguered industry: Wednesday's "Obama Wins" newspaper editions sold out their runs. Here in Portland, The Oregonian sold every copy and could have sold more. Likewise for the Washington Post. Copies of the New York Times edition are already on eBay earning $150 bids. But, as Ken Sands opines on Poynter, it's quite likely that "the print edition is more of a souvenir than ever before in a presidential election."
More than ever before, public turned to newer media. Mediaweek reported record tune-in across the major networks for TV and Cable coverage of the election.
The online story was even more dramatic. According to Akami, Internet News use reached its highest one-day total ever. CNN.com was among the many online networks setting one-day records. Lost Remote captured the web site home pages of a number of major online news sources, and the diversity of content and links helps explain why audiences flocked to the internet for continuing coverage and user-directed depth. Twitter also reported a 43% bump in traffic.
Perhaps the most interesting development was the anecdotal but undeniable increase in importance of mobile as an information delivery platform. At party headquarters here in Oregon, many in attendance had their faces glued to their phone screen.
In an era where the audience can read the New York Times in their hand, moments after a new President is elected, while attending an election celebration, the traditional newspaper seems like a souvenir. That's only bad news if your image as a journalist is tied to a specific 'platform', like 'print'. After all, someone has to write those stories that appear minutes later on the internet and mobile phones.
More than ever before, public turned to newer media. Mediaweek reported record tune-in across the major networks for TV and Cable coverage of the election.
The online story was even more dramatic. According to Akami, Internet News use reached its highest one-day total ever. CNN.com was among the many online networks setting one-day records. Lost Remote captured the web site home pages of a number of major online news sources, and the diversity of content and links helps explain why audiences flocked to the internet for continuing coverage and user-directed depth. Twitter also reported a 43% bump in traffic.
Perhaps the most interesting development was the anecdotal but undeniable increase in importance of mobile as an information delivery platform. At party headquarters here in Oregon, many in attendance had their faces glued to their phone screen.
In an era where the audience can read the New York Times in their hand, moments after a new President is elected, while attending an election celebration, the traditional newspaper seems like a souvenir. That's only bad news if your image as a journalist is tied to a specific 'platform', like 'print'. After all, someone has to write those stories that appear minutes later on the internet and mobile phones.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Covering the election in a digital age
It wasn't that many years ago when election coverage was pretty straightforward.
We would go to the polls, and hurry home by 8 p.m. to gather around the TV to watch the national networks collect and report the results. It might be several more hours before the winner was sure. The next morning, we would dive into the newspaper to read all about it.
That was election coverage.
Fast forward to November 4th, 2008. At KGW-TV here in Portland, NBC called the presidential race for Obama the second the west-coast polls closed, at 8:00 pm on the dot. But the speed of reporting wasn't the biggest change.
Our election coverage included an unprecedented depth and diversity of content made available on every conceivable platform:
We would go to the polls, and hurry home by 8 p.m. to gather around the TV to watch the national networks collect and report the results. It might be several more hours before the winner was sure. The next morning, we would dive into the newspaper to read all about it.
That was election coverage.
Fast forward to November 4th, 2008. At KGW-TV here in Portland, NBC called the presidential race for Obama the second the west-coast polls closed, at 8:00 pm on the dot. But the speed of reporting wasn't the biggest change.
Our election coverage included an unprecedented depth and diversity of content made available on every conceivable platform:
- 'Mainstream' new media content, like constantly updated text stories and videos, and real-time election results on kgw.com
- Breaking news emails pushed to subcribers alerting them to the results
- Continuous "tweets" on the KGW Twitter feed, reporting local race results as they came in
- Stories and election results updated in real time and available on the go on mobile phones via kgw.com/mobile
- Live blogging analysis from Portland's top political blogger, Jack Bogdanski of Jack Bog's Blog.
- Interactive polls, both yes/no and open-ended, with viewer and user questions posed to studio political analysts
- Continuous live video streaming coverage of the local election while NBC network coverage kept us off local TV
The 2008 election truly represented a new level of multi-platform journalism, and the winner was an informed electorate!
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Widgets bring National election home
Here is the MSNBC widget for Election Night coverage...a great example of how 'widgets' make it easy for local and smaller news outlets and blogger/journalists to enrich the quality and content of their own coverage, without added staff or even technical coding skills.
Widgets: Add rich content without being a coder
For news reporters and bloggers whose focus is on content, HTML and RSS and Javascript can be scary words. "Widgets" are a great way for content creators and publishers to enrich their own stories and blogs with content from other sources, without needing to be an expert in code-writing.
My favorite tool for this is the web site widgetbox.com, where easy tutorials guide the user in how to create a widget and generate the necessary code that can then be simply pasted into a web site or story for easy embedding. On Widgetbox, you can either search for a widget application you'd like (say, a countdown clock), or create a widget.
Here in Portland, the big news is the return of #1 Trail Blazers draft pick Greg Oden from season ending injury, so I found a widget that enables me to embed Greg Oden's blog onto my web site. I clicked on the widget, clicked on "Blogger" as my publishing platform and the widget placed it in the right column of my blog. Take a peek in the right-hand column to check it out.
Alternatively, you can simply go to a web site that has content you're interested in and see if they already offer it in widget form.
Want to embed automatically updated gas price information onto your web site? GasBuddy.com has a localizable gas prices widget. You can see an example here, on the web site I manage, the "Portland Gas Prices" page of kgw.com.
How about the Presidential election? Downloadable widgets are available from both CNN and MSNBC that enable local media and bloggers to pull the content & resources of these large national networks into localized web pages. I've added the CNN widget here, and the NBC widget in a separate blog post above this one.
A poster to the New Media Blog, JMK, recommends another great web site for getting and building wigdgets: http://www.go2web20.net/
The journalistic power of utilizing widgets is two-fold: non-programmers can now add complex multimedia content to their story pages without needing to know or even understand the underlying coding (it's all done by the widget); and, local news outlets and even bloggers can take advantage of the resources and expertise of larger or distance content creators to enrich and add substance to their local coverage. So, go forth and embed!
My favorite tool for this is the web site widgetbox.com, where easy tutorials guide the user in how to create a widget and generate the necessary code that can then be simply pasted into a web site or story for easy embedding. On Widgetbox, you can either search for a widget application you'd like (say, a countdown clock), or create a widget.
Here in Portland, the big news is the return of #1 Trail Blazers draft pick Greg Oden from season ending injury, so I found a widget that enables me to embed Greg Oden's blog onto my web site. I clicked on the widget, clicked on "Blogger" as my publishing platform and the widget placed it in the right column of my blog. Take a peek in the right-hand column to check it out.
Alternatively, you can simply go to a web site that has content you're interested in and see if they already offer it in widget form.
Want to embed automatically updated gas price information onto your web site? GasBuddy.com has a localizable gas prices widget. You can see an example here, on the web site I manage, the "Portland Gas Prices" page of kgw.com.
How about the Presidential election? Downloadable widgets are available from both CNN and MSNBC that enable local media and bloggers to pull the content & resources of these large national networks into localized web pages. I've added the CNN widget here, and the NBC widget in a separate blog post above this one.
A poster to the New Media Blog, JMK, recommends another great web site for getting and building wigdgets: http://www.go2web20.net/
The journalistic power of utilizing widgets is two-fold: non-programmers can now add complex multimedia content to their story pages without needing to know or even understand the underlying coding (it's all done by the widget); and, local news outlets and even bloggers can take advantage of the resources and expertise of larger or distance content creators to enrich and add substance to their local coverage. So, go forth and embed!
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