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Archive for the ‘Broadcast media’ Category

Using social media for reporting

Posted in Broadcast media, Online media, Print media, Social media, tagged on May 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

(Originally posted May 26, 2010)

A great example from The Palm Beach Post showing ways to use social networking sites as reporting tools. The summary:

The Post’s social-media editor saw something on Twitter about a popular restaurant closing. She instant-messaged a business reporter, then 1) searched Twitter, 2) searched openbook, a site that lets you find public Facebook status updates even if you’re not logged on or have never used Facebook, and found two posts seemingly related to the business’s trouble, which she sent to the business reporter, 3) did a Google search of social media postings, and 4) tried two search engines for photo-sharing services. As the post says:

“The point of all this is not that Ouzo Blue’s closing is the news of the century (although they did have great melitzanosalata…) but that there are several social-media avenues available to search for information on a news story, to find people to interview and more.”

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A slog

Posted in Broadcast media, Online media, Print media, tagged , on May 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

(Originally posted on May 7, 2010)

One of my least favorite parts of any local-election season was always compiling profile information, especially when there were a lot of candidates. You knew it was going to take forever to pull together, it would be largely boring stuff, it would disappear almost forgotten, and most people who needed it might never see it. The Web, of course, lets this stuff have a longer, more useful life. This year the Winston-Salem Journal made it easier for people to sift through it by compiling it into a searchable database. It might still be tedious to compile, but it’s more useful for voters.

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Everybody’s doing it

Posted in Broadcast media, Social media, tagged , on May 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

(Originally posted May 7, 2010)

RTDNA reports a big one-year change in the use of social media by television news departments: 76 percent of responding stations say they integrate social media on their websites and 68 percent incorporate it into their storytelling. Last year, 36 percent said they were doing NOTHING with social media (although, granted, that means 64 percent were doing something); now fewer than 9 percent say that, while 36 percent say their newsrooms are “constantly” active on Twitter.

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Getting your videos seen

Posted in Broadcast media, Online media, Print media, tagged , on May 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

(Originally posted May 6, 2010)

Interesting if unsurprising fact from a report that says the non-YouTube sites seeing the most success with online video are those of the broadcast TV networks and Web-only media brands, followed by magazine sites and music labels, with newspaper sites lagging in both total video views and growth: Google drives nearly 40 percent of the views, so you need to be sure your videos are tagged with search engines in mind.

Another interesting fact: Although video on newspaper Web sites has the lowest rate of being viewed, the people who do click on those videos are much more likely than viewers on other sites to watch through to the end.

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Find something different

Posted in Broadcast media, Mobile media, Online media, Print media, tagged on May 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

(Originally posted April 27, 2010)


The RTDNA site posts tips for better video storytelling from NBC News Correspondent Bob Dotson, who presented an RTDNA@NAB session called “How Better Storytelling Can Save Your Job.” Among the tips: avoid pack journalism, meaning that when covering a news event that others are also covering, find something different that no one else can see.

This reminds me of a discussion about covering annual events, such as major festivals, during a recent peer review at the Danville Register & Bee. One editor said he won’t send reporters anymore to cover such events. And it’s true that if you tell a reporter to bring you a report on the festival, you’re going to get the same expendable story every year. That’s why it’s better to ask the reporter to come back with a story about someone or something particular that he or she finds at the festival. For instance, a Winston-Salem Journal reporter once went to cover the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games, one of the all-time big annual events in the region. Stories about it are almost always interchangeable — scenery, weather, a few happy quotes. But this one reporter came back with something different — he had gone to the area where the competitors in the strength events, the guys who toss around telephone poles and big rocks, were waiting for their event. They were passing the time by showing off, bending nails and smashing things against their heads. Fascinating stuff, and no one else had ever gotten it before.

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Socialize your promos

Posted in Broadcast media, Online media, Social media, tagged , on May 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

(Originally posted April 21, 2010)

Among the experiments in Media General newsrooms for using social media to promote upcoming content, Sara Diamond of WJHL has started using a webcam to make 1 1/2-minute promos for Facebook saying what stories the station is working on. Many TV stations — and some newspapers — do these kinds of promos for their websites. Posting them to your Facebook fan page as well just makes sure they are in more places and are more likely to be seen by more people.

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