Social journalism: Community
building through social networks
Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association Summit
Seattle, Sept. 17, 2009
JD Lasica
President, Socialmedia.biz
jd@socialmedia.biz

Relax!
Flickr photo “relaxation,
the maldivian way” by
notsogoodphotography
http://delicious.com/socialmediacamp/pnna
(all sites in this talk have been tagged for later retrieval)
http://slideshare.net/jdlasica

Making sense of all the new terms
http://socialbrite.org/glossary
“Social media:
Any online technology or practice that lets us share
(content, opinions, insights, experiences, media)
and have a conversation about the ideas we care about.
”

Explosive uptake in social media
About 200 million blogs
5 of top 10 websites are social media
sites
57% have joined a social network
39% subscribe to an RSS feed
YouTube = 10% of all Internet traffic
Every time someone opens a computer, 60% of time it’s for
social reasons
120,000 new blogs launched every day
1.5 million blog posts per day (17 per second)
Sources: Universal McCann: Wave.3: Power to the People, 2008; various

Social networking and journalism
Cartoon courtesy of John Cole, The Times-Tribune, Scranton, Penn.

New metrics for participatory age
Old metrics: eyeballs, page views, stickiness
New metrics: engagement, participation,
passion, interaction, comments, uploads

10 ideas for building community
1. Be first with breaking news
2. Leverage Twitter
3. Enable conversations
4. Get widget-happy!
5. Community video
6. Geocoding & citizen photography
7. Create local map mashups
8. Hook up with Facebook
9. Tap into sharing economy
10. Study, borrow, steal

1. Be first with breaking news
SMS alerts
Latinos, African Americans > greater use of mobile devices
Twitter to break verified news
Best usage is to drive users to story on your site
Live-blogging of public events
Several free useful tools
Moblogging to upload photos from mobile device
Buzznet, Foneblog, Fotopages, mBlog, mlogs, phlog.net, Snap,
Textamerica, Webshots. Cross-posting?

SMS alerts for niche news
www.impre.com/alertas
• ImpreMedia: 20
alerts/day, 1 million
impressions/month
• Popular topics:
general news,
breaking news,
New York, politics,
entertainment, sports,
Mexican futbol league

Live-blogging to drive conversation
Useful free tools:
• CoverItLive.com
• Scribblelive.com
• Google Docs
Examples: Obama’s health
care speech, Sonia
Sotomayor hearings, Rod
Blagojevich impeachment,
NFL playoffs.
Use your site as a
community forum!

2. Leverage Twitter
San Diego wildfires: KPBS +
USD
Red River flooding in North
Dakota
Flight 1549 “Miracle on the
Hudson”
BusinessWeek: 40 journalists
on Twitter.
MuckRack.com: feed of
Twitter posts by journalists

Make Twitter work for you
Train your staff on how to use Twitter
Not a broadcasting medium to distribute headlines
Start by listening & observing, but then:
Be human, be conversational, not detatched
Unlearn the conventions of journalism
@ElDiarioNY: after 5 mo., 5% new traffic from Twitter
#1 traffic driver: retweets
“Twitter is just amazing. It's the perfect tool for journalists.”
— Arturo Duran, CEO, ImpreMedia Digital (El Diario, La Opinion, et al.)

Don’t ghettoize social media
@jamesjanega
General assignment
reporter,
Chicago Tribune
@kimpainter
Health columnist,
USA Today
@dsarno
Business reporter,
LA Times

Tweeting done right: 70-30 Rule
Omar Gallaga
Austin American Statesman

Twitter accounts page
Austin American Statesman
http://www.statesman.com/news/
content/standing/twitter.html

3. Enable conversations
Avert registration fatigue & BugMeNot syndrome

Identify & engage influencers
Scope out Twitterers with large # followers. How do
their interests intersect with your site’s?
Learn about how people in your community use social
media
Connect with social media influencers through
search.twitter.com, PlaceBlogger.com, etc.
Ask people around you (neighbors, students, young
people in your newsroom) how they use social media

Use hash tags to join conversations
Find relevant hashtags through
hashtags.org or Twitter Search
Join (but don’t spam)
conversation threads
Start your own hashtag
Some hashtags to latch on to:
#health #sports #latino
#education #democracy
#politics #Obama #news
#media #journalism #journchat
At left, widget found at:
http://journchat.info

4. Get widget-happy!
Highlight
community events
Indy.com staffers pick
the best local events to
highlight on the site’s
front page.

Tap into community conversations
Real-time
conversations
Tap into the
conversations that are
already taking place in
your community:
Widgets let you post
tailored discussions —
both by topic and by
geographic location.
Create widgets for your
business, opinion,
politics, sports
sections.

Promote community service
Left: AllforGood.org helps you find and share ways to do good in your community.
Right: UnitedWeServe: Bottom-up volunteer opportunities at http://serve.gov

5. Community video
Video + chat =
engagement
Think of your site not just
as a way to showcase
your own journalism but
as a platform to connect
users with interesting
events taking place in the
community.
Streaming video tools
include Kyte.com,
Qik.com, Ustream.tv,
Livestream.com and
This is the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, student journalism channel. Youcaster.com.
http://www.kyte.tv/ch/109996-jmsnews

Live video streaming
ImpreMedia teamed up with
the PBS NewsHour to live-
stream the Sonia Sotomayor
hearings. Went from 20,000
streams during 2008
campaign season to 45,000
streams this past spring.
PBS provided the signal &
video player, ImpreMedia
provided the Spanish
translations.

6. Geotagging & citizen photography
Visitors to Flickr could see photos of the 2007 disaster taken from
Minneapolis multiple vantage points. Many new digital cameras and mobile
bridge collapse devices, like the iPhone, come with geotagging enabled by default.

Geotagging an art walk
An afternoon
with smart phones
Dan Gillmor took a class of
journalism students at Arizona
State University out for a stroll
and created a cool Flickr map
with more than 120 photos
captured with G1 smart phones.
“It was absurdly easy,” he says.
News organizations should enlist
community members with geo-
location capable devices to
cover designated community
events.

Community photo albums
NewWest.Net
NewWest.Net created
a group pool on Flickr
for readers to add
photos to. People
have added more
than 16,000 photos.
http://www.flickr.com/
groups/newwest

7. Create local map mashups
http://chicago.everyblock.com/crime/ Everyblock
Atlanta
Boston
Charlotte
Chicago
Dallas
Detroit
Houston
Los Angeles
Miami
New York
Philadelphia
San Francisco
San Jose
Seattle
Washington, DC

Over the line?
An anonymous
publisher compiled
a mashup of public
campaign
donations records,
including the
donors’ street
address, and
published it.

8. Hook up with Facebook
http://apps.facebook.com/mndaily/ http://www.mndaily.com/

Reward points
http://apps.facebook.com/mndaily/
Readers win points if they post a news
story, share it, invite friends, send a letter to
the editor, etc.
Top scorers win prizes like Twins tickets, T-
shirts, a bag of goodies.
15,000+ additional monthly visits, greater #
comments, revenue potential

Charlotte Observer
http://apps.facebook.com/observerfacebook/

9. Tap into the sharing economy
Creative
Commons
• Rich source of free
commercial material.
• Flickr: 15 million Attribution
licenses
• Flickr: 10 million Attribution
ShakeAlike licenses
creativecommons.org
flickr.com/creativecommons
socialbrite.org/sharing-center

Don’t do all the heavy lifting
Flickr photo by
Jason Means
Partner with smart people. Use your community.
Use free: Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, CC
Use open source: WordPress (and its plug-ins),
Drupal, et al.
Steal good ideas. Build on what’s come before.

10. Study, borrow, steal
Statesman.com
Moms Charlotte charlotteobserver.com/moms
TechCrunch.com
Mashable
NewWest.Net
Politico.com
ProPublica.org
HuffingtonPost.com
BlogHer.com
Themediaconsortium.org
The Local: http://maplewood.blogs.nytimes.com
Baristanet.com
http://delicious.com/socialmediacamp/sites

InlandSocal.com
Riverside
Press-Enterprise
Hyperlocal
Partnerships with
local businesses
Emphasis on
dining, movies,
music
User-submitted
photos, video,
content

Momarama
http://blogs.pe.com/moms/

Indy.com

Periodismociudadano.com
 Recent
comments
 Tags
 Embedded video
 Twitter lifestream
 Pointers to
Twitter,
Facebook, Flickr,
Blip.tv presence
 Global Voices en
Español

2-year horizon
Flickr photo by
jonrawlinson
Embrace change as an opportunity
Launch pilot projects, get a toehold
Talk with your users about what you’re planning
Get top brass to use social media
New metrics: engagement, participation,
comments

Innovate!
"Rocket Man" on Flickr
by Dave-F
 “We have to change our entire corporate-industry behavior.
We’ve got to stop overplanning and over-analyzing and turn
our battleship into a speedboat.”
—J. Todd Foster, managing editor, Bristol (VA) Herald Courier
 Dare to fail. If you’re not failing at something, you’re doing
something wrong. (“Fail often, fail fast.”)

Resources
Socialbrite.org
Knight Citizen News Network: kcnn.org
Social Media Club: socialmediaclub.org
BeatBlogging.org & NewAssignment.net
Spot.us: crowd-funded reporting
CiiJ: ciij.org/resources

Thank you!
jd@socialmedia.biz
twitter: @jdlasica
http://delicious.com/socialmediacamp/pnna
Image: Universal McCann: Wave.3 report, March 2008