And on Saturday I got hit with a bad flu and was out of the loop from the group. And I realized I was mostly unneeded by my group. At first I was slightly sad, after all we all like to feel important, but I realized this is actually a great thing. With a few simple clicks of the mouse any of us students can create unpublished pages for WUNC and create great pieces to accompany them. This really brought some of the ideas we’ve been playing with all semester–reporters certainly are needed but there is a way that everyone can contribute to the conversation in some way.

One of the things we looked at in the past was the use of crowdsourcing. With our WUNC project we are not doing this but it could be easily done. Crowdsourcing uses audiences, ordinary people, to complete simple tasks that help create a larger project. Some crowdsourcing projects seem rather frivolous and are run by companies that are not journalistically affiliated, like brand tags, which asks you to enter the first word that comes to mind when you see a brand logo.

Although this is not particularly useful for public affairs reporting, the same idea can be applied to reporting projects, like the ones WUNC is doing. For the energy series they could have asked people to post some energy-saving tips, gathered them in a central place and posted them to the website.

Crowdsourcing does have some opponents. Some argue that it is cutting out the professionals, from reporters to photographers alike who are trained in these areas and earn higher salaries for their work.

Crowdsourcing is worth exploring to make some decisions for yourself. I think crowdsourcing should not completely replace traditional reporting but it can certainly augment traditional styles of reporting.

• A list of interesting crowdsourcing projects
• Professor, author and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff in an interview about crowdsourcing.

The explainer was familiar ground for me. After all, I generate links for arts stories at The Daily Tar Heel every day. But I had not worked with Illustrator before. It was interesting to be responsible for the visual elements and to think about how to better present the information. I think the style of presenting information sadly has a large impact on people’s access to and attention to the content.

Often I have been looking for information and I have shied away from any Web site that did not have a good presentation style. In class, we have often talked about the costs and expenses involved in maintaining and designing a Web site. Many different elements are in play and without a good structure, information on a plain site looks uninviting.  When faced with limited staff, its hard to allocate resources and money–who will get to do reporting? who will be working on the Web site? can one person do both?

I don’t have the answer to this, but its something that’s been on my mind. Too often there seems to be a divide between the people who know the technology and people who generate the content. As we go forward, we need to bridge the gap between these two. I think some of this starts with simple training and requiring staff members to learn a bit about what other departments do and hopefully grows to a better relationship. Certainly there should be experts in certain subjects, but with a bit of understanding, everyone can better work together to generate great content and present it in a compelling way.

One of my initial criticisms of WUNC‘s site was the lack of full articles to accompany their audio pieces. But, if Wolff is right, this is actually a great strategy for the organization. These small snippets give a general overview of the accompanying audio piece and feed easily into news aggregators.

But this style works best for certain types of news like entertainment and breaking news. A new development is easy to explain in two paragraphs, but the style of reporting we’ve been studying in class cannot be conveyed so easily. Public Affairs reporting needs more space to explain. It often involves situations that need context, because they have not been explored much before or are complex situations.

For my work with this energy series, I am helping convert the reporters’ radio scripts into inverted pyramid-style full length stories. I think this is necessary for this series, as WUNC attempts to explain the complex issues and key players in the debate about the future of electricity.

I think the increased popularity of news aggregates is good for many things like breaking news but does a disservice to public affairs reporting. Reporters must find a good way to provide compelling summaries of their public affairs stories to be pulled into news aggregates and enticing readers to take the few minutes and explore the issue.

Though it can be intimidating, looking at the vast areas of knowledge correlating to the digital world, it is important to incorporate these skills in public affairs reporting, even if only a baby-step at a time. My first major move was to take a computer class and learn basic HTML coding. This semester we’ve been having tech-training sessions and I’m dipping into audio and video tutorials.

Public Affairs Reporting can and already is benefiting from these technologies. The New York Times and The Washington Post are some of the leading newspapers using interactive technology on their site. CNN has also used a good deal of new media, and famously used the iReport option letting viewers upload their own videos to the site. These videos are not very professional, and shows that even simple one-shot videos have value for reporting.

Here is my wish-list of technology knowledge and how it can help public affairs reporting:

• Flash. This is the best tool for interactive graphics. Flash graphics can be interactive, which makes people want to read and manipulate them. Flash graphics can also be available online for a long time without updating, providing interactive evergreen content.
• Video. Like it or not, people are drawn to video over audio and often video over text. Radio stations of course are masters at audio but they need to supplement their audio content with occasional videos. Videos give visualization to an issue that simple audio cannot.

This does not mean you have to be an expert overnight. Video projects can start small, such as short vlog (video blog) entries. Also, even if you do not know the whole system, if you know the vocabulary of flash and video you can talk to the experts intelligently. Understanding a bit of this technology is a great way to start bridging traditional and new media reporting.

WUNC, my community partner for this class, has a twitter and updates it regularly. They tweet about their different programs and as far as I can tell include a link with every post. Twitter is a great way to connect audiences to additional information. In some of the tweets, they include part of the lead of the story and a link. This is a great way to get readers to their site from just a bit of information. They also use bit.ly which is one of the better Web site shorteners, because it gives click credit to the host Web site and is an easy way to count and analyze the number of clicks on the link.

But there are still a few ways to improve their tweets:

• Make all tweets 130 characters so that people can retweet them. This is a great, easy way people can pass on information about WUNC that they think their followers would also find interesting.
• Include hashtags. Have one for each program, like #stateofthings. This makes searching for all tweets about the subject easy and helps followers find links from other tweets with the same hashtag.
• Use more words people would search for, not just part of the lead of a story. Leads really can pique people’s interest, but sometimes the story is about a topic that is not present in the first clause of the lead.

Tweeting is still a hot topic for journalists and it has an ever increasing role in reporting. It has been used to break news, help political leaders and even get them in hot water. But many things about twitter are still undefined. Some reporters mix both personal and political issues together, but sometimes this can get them in trouble, like Terry Moran’s comment about Obama calling Kanye a ‘jackass.‘

Public affairs reporting is all about holding people accountable and shining light in dark places. Twitter helps spread the word to many people, quickly. I think it has a definite place in public affairs reporting, but reporters should have a way to mark which tweets are “work related” and which are personal. Adding simple hash tags can accomplish that quickly, such as marking all #wunc tweets compared to personal tweets without a hashtag.

Others have been discussing data-drive reporting for a while. Before UNC’s spring break, Sarah Cohen, Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University, spoke to our class about using data in some of her stories and projects at The Washington Post. Not only did she use databases others had built, she created internal databases to use on her projects. These often resembled the finished pieces that were published, but not always.

In this class I’m working to become conversant on web programming, video capturing and editing, audio capturing and editing, and also about photography. I think I will be able to apply these skills in my work with WUNC and WUNC will be able to further use data in their reporting. In this energy series, they could build a database of all the energy uses for different counties in NC and compare the use over the years. WUNC could also examine how much of each type of energy is created in NC. Not everything is a public record but many records are available and should be used in reporting.

Here are some interesting links:

• Sarah Cohen’s projects: Bush’s spheres of influence; Forced Out series, about land lords letting their properties deteriorate to force out renters;  Harvesting Cash series, about farm subsidies and who really gets the money.
• Databases to practice your data analysis: data.gov, United Nations stats, World Health Organization stats.
• Interesting blogs: The Guardian in the UK’s data blog; Many Eyes, this allows you to try different visualizations of information. For a list of more than 30 blogs that are Data related, check out a post from flowingdata.com.

I am working with WUNC for this project and did a bit of what I do best–google searching– to think about how to best help WUNC. WUNC has a good ranking when searching for NC public radio, public radio podcasts and other similar radio related topics but it does not come up much when you search for content-related items or news in NC.

One of the challenges for this particular project is its specialization. WUNC is working on an energy series, so they will have to build an audience for a product they have not yet delivered and draw people to their site. From what we’ve talked about in class, here are a few suggestions about ways to increase their search engine ranking:

• Add key word tags into the header of the site’s HTML code. This helps Google find the important words associated with your site
• Create a page previewing the series. This will help people start associating energy information with your site and add more key-words to your page
• Know your competitors. A top hit on “NC energy future” results in government ordered reports, a news story from Wake County and a forum from NC State University about emerging issues in 2008.
• Learn from your competitors. None of the top 3 hits had energy in their key words. NCSU’s site has energy in its title information, but not as a key-word. Adding energy to WUNC’s keywords will give them a leg-up above these competitors.
• Know what your audience looks for. People in NC are looking for terms like “nuclear” “energy nc” “progress energy” and “duke energy.” People are searching most for their energy providers, so try to include some of the same terms these companies use like “progress” and “power” in addition to energy. (Try Google Insights to learn more about what people are searching on the web).

Initially, the old-school journalist in me does not like the idea of having to change terms against AP or WUNC style to drive traffic to the site, but I understand that it is important to have readers or all the valuable information and reporting is not read by anyone. Changing terms like “energy” or “power” is not changing style and is a simple step that could have long-term benefits for their site. Down the road, WUNC should regularly check how they are ranked and consider these key-word issues when packaging content.

In the meantime, here is a link to my resume to know a bit more about me.

Here is a more detailed look at the official code of conduct:

• Keep it PG. No swearing, sexual language or other forms of obscenity are allowed.
• Do not put copyrighted material on this site. If it’s not yours, it doesn’t belong here. I want to hear your own thoughts.
• This space is not for sale. Any comments that are commercial in nature will be removed.
• Posting the same comment multiple times won’t get your voice heard–it will get your comments removed. Everyone should have equals chances to comment and respond to other comments.
• Stay on point. If you want to talk about something else going on in your life drop me a line, but save the comment section for things related to the corresponding post.
• Keep it civil. If you make any personal attacks on others and/or use hate speech, your comments will be removed.
• If you comment while impersonating someone else your comment will be removed.

Thanks for reading!

And this is me:

Photo taken by Kevin Nguyen

]]> http://reportingroundup.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/setting-up-shop/feed/ 0 reportingroundup profile image