Beat Reporting Today – Page 3

What I learned at the Online News Association 2016 national conference

I’m a fan of the Online News Association‘s annual conference. I’ve been before and went again in September to Denver, getting the chance to speak again too.

My favorite part of the conference is the chance to catch up with peers and meet new friends, largely to check in on whether I think my organization is still sharp. As a local chapter organizer for ONA, I got the added treat this year of networking with other local organizers too. But helpfully I do often find a handful of traditional conference sessions on topics I’m thinking about and learn some things, particularly tactical tips and tricks. I wanted to share some of what I learned.

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In defense of “Off the Record” and back room conversations

Transparency is a modern virtue.

Its pursuit is among the more commonly inalienable constants of news media. But like a child who needs to be exposed to germs to develop resistance, we can benefit from some level of privacy among leaders. Transparency of power can lead to polarization. Some conversations need to be worked out in private.

Of course that doesn’t sit quite right with many newsrooms — or among many civic minded people. A symbolic scourge of journalism is the back room conversation — dealmaking without public discourse.

But it’s so much more complicated.

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Journalism is a strategy, not an industry

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Journalism is a strategy, not an industry.

Newsrooms should rethink their competition. Journalism organizations are in dozens of different businesses. What we share in common (journalism DNA) makes us more partners than adversaries. The many businesses that are competing for the revenue and not providing other community value, like service journalism, are the real competition.

This was the focus of a lightning pitch I gave this weekend at the national Online News Association annual conference in Denver. Below find my slides, audio and some tweet reactions I received.

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Acts of journalism that aren’t written articles

Because the modern concept of journalism was developed inside newspaper newsrooms, we’ve stayed stuck on the idea that journalism only looks one way: written words with a feature lede and nut graf.

Maybe a photo essay. Or an editorial cartoon. Or nonfiction book. Radio and TV reports too can cut the pass. But we know what form comes to mind first when journalism is invoked: writing and editing long, multi-source feature stories, likely to put into some print publication. That has to adapt.

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Beat reporters: stop hanging out with other journalists and spend more time with your community

I say this fully admitting I’m an active, proud and lively member of the Pen and Pencil Club, a private journalist’s association and bar in my hometown Philadelphia.

Journalists, especially community and beat reporters, should spend a lot more time with their communities than with other in news media. For sure, you can get great professional development and important understanding from meeting with your colleagues. But count up the number of hours you spend with other reporters and compare it with your community in person: which one is the bigger number?

This was among my clearest points from a talk I gave at the third annual Entrepreneurial Journalism Educators Summit organized by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Below are my slides and some notes.

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How I described what I do for a living to a classroom of first graders

If you can’t describe what you do to a child, you don’t actually know what you do.

Sure, in an era of disruption and distraction, we are changing and evolving roles and organizations and missions rapidly enough that to kids and even other adults outside our industries, the details can get fuzzy. But the idea here is that your core purpose has almost surely been seen before.

So can you describe what you do at its simplest form?

I got this challenge when I agreed to do a Career Day this month at Adaire, a public K-8 school in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia in which I live. (The school has a fun history dating to the 1890s, including the above-depicted first building and a more conventional one used today)

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A few thoughts on editing young reporters for community news

After a few years of working closely with other reporters, I’ve found the points we most often talk about. Here’s a list.

Tell me something that matters with your lede.
Anecdotal ledes should follow through the narrative arc. That anecdote better be in your kicker too
Either a story I want or a lesson I need. Readers want a great story or something that can help them (preferably both)
Where is your nut graf? This always feels like what is most often missing. This is the pivot between a story and your point: what broader context brings this together?
Structure and pace are two different skillsets
Prepare headlines and stories for the wider social web. Help think through the tightest way to explain the importance of your story.
Allow your story to be focused locally and understood globally
That’s redundant, which means a waste of words, which is a sin.
Know what your news site believes in. Who is your audience? What is the worldview? What is the broader narrative this story fits in?
How could this story be told differently?
What would the reader most need? What would help the reader scan? Would bullet points help?
You haven’t earned long sentences; shorter sentences for pace
Move faster; ship product
Be flawless on grammar
Hyperbole and cliche is where imprecision lives
Human elements to give the reader a break from technical pieces
Lead with attribution on purpose, either for style or more likely because the source matters. otherwise, lead with the lesson. the attribution is the footnote.
Link for more information
Have a call to action and make it easy
When in doubt disclose. Transparency over all else

Innovation is taking a risk on a new approach for an old challenge

Sometimes when a word is really powerful, it gets over-used enough that its power dwindles. This happens in cycles, like how “collaboration” was sorely stretched in recent years as institutions got hip to open source culture, and now as “innovation” is being slid into the name of any new effort from any organization aiming to look forward-thinking.

That over-use doesn’t mean the word isn’t effective. It is. But it should mean it requires defense. So when I was asked to submit to business marketing magazine SmartCEO my own definition of the word and my process for employing it, I tried to do just that.

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What I’ve learned about running a regular professional meetup as a hobby

Organizing a regular event for peers and friends as a volunteer has become far more widespread with the power of the web, social media and services like Meetup.com for connecting like-minded professionals. It can be rewarding and relevant for both your personal and professional interests. This is what I’ve learned by doing just that.

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Linking methodology at legacy media online for competitor scoop: Example

A Technical.ly Philly reader sent a photo our way of SEPTA transit agency maps with a prominent station’s name renamed to reflect a nearby hospital chain, suggesting a possible sponsorship deal. Then our editor Zack Seward reported it out and we shared the item as an interesting possibility — SEPTA appropriately demurred from comment.

Then the name change was actually announced a week later.

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