This document outlines strategies for journalists to adopt a digital-first approach across various beats such as court reporting, visual journalism, sports reporting, and general beat reporting. It recommends that journalists work and think primarily for digital platforms, experiment with new tools and techniques, cover news live and engage with the community through social media and livestreams. Editors are encouraged to monitor social media, crowdsource content, and prioritize digital content and live coverage for breaking news.

1. Thinking & Working
#DigitalFirst
Steve Buttry
Daily Camera
December 13, 2011

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5. #DigitalFirst journalists …
• Work & think first for digital platforms
• Experiment & take risks
• Try new tools & techniques
• Cover news live
• Join community conversation
• Engage the community (digital, print, IRL)
• Are optimistic about journalism’s future

6. Court reporter
• Live-tweet from courtroom
(narrative, not a transcript)
• Feed tweets into liveblog
• Big development: Text news alert to
editor
• Write summary or analysis story for web
& print

9. Court reporter, no trial
• Traditional rounds:
lawyers, judges, clerks, filings
• Add #DigitalFirst rounds: monitor
tweets, search Twitter, Facebook groups
& pages
• Tweet/alert/blog big filings
• Video clips in interviews
• Scan or download docs if not online

10. Visual journalist
• Shoot first w/ smartphone & post
• Shoot w/ camera for slideshow & print
• Shoot video
• Record ambient sound, interviews
• If disaster, shoot some after shots for
before/after

11. Sports journalist
• Live-tweet or liveblog game
• Color commentary/analysis, rather than
play-by-play (especially if on TV)
• Interact w/ fans (polls, answer questions)
• Livestream post-game press conferences
• Post-game chat

13. Sports, not game day
• Video clips of interviews
• Frequent blog updates & tweets
• Data visualization of stats
• Alerts of breaking news
• Webcast and/or live chat

14. Beat reporter
• Beatblog
• Liveblog meetings, hearings, events
• Tweet/alert/liveblog breaking news
• Live chat on continuing stories
• Data visualization
• Curate community conversation

15. Beat reporter questions
• How to crowdsource story?
• What terms, hashtags should you search
(routinely & for each story)?
• Regular/special hashtags to use?
• People to follow? New FB pages/groups?
• Other social media to search
(YouTube, Flickr, Foursquare, Google+
…)?

16. Gathering news on the beat
• Video
• Links
• Databases
• Monitor officials, agencies, sources on
Twitter, Facebook, G+, YouTube, etc.
• Source documents to upload
• Map, timeline

17. Assigning editor
• Monitors social media as well as
wires, scanners, etc.
• Staff questions guide digital journalism
(data, Twitter
search, hashtags, crowdsourcing)
• Urgency for breaking news, live coverage
• Edits digital content for print

18. Senior editor
• Listen, join & lead community
conversation (blog, social media, chats)
• Lead staff in trying new tools &
techniques
• Digital focus to daily meetings
• Post daily news budgets online

20. Copy editor
• Social & Google searches to question &
verify facts
• Writes strong SEO headlines
• Crowdsources print headlines, news
judgments

22. Read more about it
• stevebuttry.wordpress.com
• slideshare.net/stevebuttry
• @stevebuttry
• jxpaton.wordpress.com