Reporters in a Digital Age

When I got into reporting, all you needed was a pen, a notepad and your curiosity. These days, it's a little more complicated as newspapers try and capture the readers who have migrated to the Internet to get their news. Since leaving the traditional print industry and joining an Internet start-up that produces niche online content, I've had a number of conversations with newspaper editors about what a reporter should be able to do in this new digital landscape.

If I were back in a traditional newsroom, here's what I would consider if I were recreating a reporter's beat. Because every newspaper has one, let's assume the position is a city government beat -- although you can use this framework for any beat from sports to features and get the same result. And for the sake of clarity, let me say, yes, you'll still need to understand the journalism basics -- like how to use a pen and notepad and ask questions that folks sometimes don't want to answer.

But as more people commit citizen journalism, traditionally trained journalists need to become aggregators of content as well as creators of it. Really, each reporter becomes a community editor of sorts. And in the end, they will be more connected to what's happening in the areas they cover -- never a bad thing for a good journalist.

1. Video, audio and more. Just like a pen and notepad was once the basic foundation of a good reporter, knowing how to produce video, audio and photo galleries are now part of the job. Web readers love all of this. And there are lots of folks in your community who are creating it -- so you don't have to rely on only your own work. Use their work as well as your own to share what's happening in the neighborhood you're covering.

2. Set up a social network for your community. Get on facebook, twitter, linkedin and other social networks on the web. Find out who is from your area and hook up to them. Read what they say when they say it. And cull from those networks story ideas, links and other information that may be of interest to the people in your community. This is, in my mind, just another way to develop your network of sources -- possibly with some new voices you might never have had before. All of this can be used when you get to my next point.

3. Start a community blog. Make it accurate. Make it grammatically correct. And make it quick. Use the social network to write about the topics of concern in your community as they happen. You don't have to generate the information. You just have to find it, give it an introduction and link to it. And remember, whatever you write doesn't have to be long and drawn out. Twitter does this in 140 words. You can make yours longer, but they don't have to be.

4. Be a community builder. Your job is to find the folks who care enough to blog about what's going on in their world, cull the best pieces and share them on your blog so others will know about what's happening. You may even link people in your community, simply by finding topics they have in common.

5. Build your own content partnerships. What do I mean? In the Internet world, you connect with others who cover the same topic you do. They produce content, which you can write about and link to. They can link to your work as well, and through that, you build on your own little traffic network. Imagine all the agencies you cover in your community. Imagine their work on your community blog. OK, yes, you should let folks know where the information came from, so they can use their common sense about the bias, if there is one, in the story you are linking to. In exchange, you get more content.

6. Encourage participation. The more you engage in your community, the more they will engage with you. From focus groups to niche web sites, newsrooms have seen that happen time after time. Yes, some of these folks you'll only know online. But so what? It doesn't matter how the conversation is happening, as long as it is. And you can be proud of yourself for helping to build it.

What's SEO?

In the last few days, as the newspaper industry continues to implode, I've been invited by a former newspaper colleague to join a facebook group called "Newspaper Escape Plan." The description starts out like this: "Escape from newspapers while you can! At this rate, everyone will be laid off." I think you get the picture.

The backdrop to the invitation has been e-mails, phone conversations and text messages from friends -- some who still work in the industry and others who have been laid off -- who want to know what they need to learn to jump from the print game to the web world.

Note: I'm not an expert. What I've learned, I've learned -- as I did in print -- by doing. Yes, I was in charge of managing online projects and database reports for my last newspaper. But that doesn't make me an online expert by any stretch of the imagination.

At my job as editor at an Internet startup company, they asked me to come up with content for a reference web site, kind of a no-brainer for me. In return, I got a job that allows me to learn as I go, and I've done it by using my journalistic skill for adapting to change. As much as I miss traditional newspapers, this job allows me to do what I've been doing all week -- explaining some aspects of the web to former colleagues who are eager to learn, particularly now.

In the last few weeks, I've had a number of conversations about search engine optimization. They followed after I noted on several social networking sites in my "status" that I'm working on a project to improve seo on our web site, divorce360.com. Most of the conversations began like this: "What's seo?"

If you're going to make the jump to online, it's important to know what it is. So here's the layman (or woman's) version from a former print person.

Search engine optimization involves examining urls and headlines in web content to make certain that the Google bots (robots or spiders) that come to the web site find enough of the right words in all those things to push your content up to the top of the search pages.

So when someone searches on google for a term, let's say...divorce laws... or parental alienation syndrome...the stories on your site that include those words will pop up at the top of the first page of the search engine results.

You can also improve search engine optimization by doing what's called metatagging. It sounds really exciting, but for a journalist, it can feel like watching paint peel. Essentially, it means you pick key words from the story and tag the story with them. The purpose is the same -- so that the bots, which crawl around web sites, can examine your content, decide it's worthy of improved seo and then spit them out closer to the top of the search that a user does. You can do the same thing with key words in the stories.

Why would you do all that? Because if you improve seo, you can improve traffic. Simply put, if your content is higher up on the searches, users are more likely to click on it -- more often.

It's a lengthy process, to be sure. And it's not an exact science. Google has patented the way it calculates search engine optimization. So there's a whole industry of seo specialists who say they know the secret code to seo, but it's really trial and error.

It isn't exactly the kick you get when you're breaking a good news story. But once you publish the seo changes and see your content move up the ranks, it does feel similar to something else we used to do in print -- deliver the news to the readers who want it.

Social Networking Highs

Some months ago, we added a social networking side to the web site, divorce360. You could post comments and upload a graphic image. But given the personal nature of the topic, the profiles were anonymous, unlike many of the other social networking sites on the web.

What we discovered was fascinating. People didn't just want to talk about their relationship struggles with one another. They engaged in lengthy intimate conversations, sharing the details of their lives in a place they felt safe. They commented on each other's blogs, offered advice and answered questions. And their comments were often two or three pages long.

Recently, we added a wall to each of the user's pages. If you use facebook, you know this is one of the easiest way to talk to a friend -- as long as you don't mind sharing your commentary with the world.

On our site, the wall has become an increasingly popular tool -- and an addition to the commentary. What users are doing is posting their comments first for everyone and then talking directly to the other person on their wall. Literally, they're posting twice about the same thing, even though both posts are public.

The theory in the room is that the anonymity on the site's community is allowing people to engage more deeply in conversation than they normally would if their profiles were public. In the meantime, the number of users and the user time is climbing. So there must be something to it.

Interesting Post for Journalists

If you're a newspaper journalist and haven't seen this article "Will Algorithms Make Human Editors Obsolete? Not If Journalists Collaborate, you need to read it. Given the state of the industry, it's got some great advice for the new media landscape.

OMMA, Reference Web Sites and Good News

What do Babycenter.com, howstuffworks.com and d360 have in common?

Click here and look under finalists -- reference sites...

I have to say we're in great company!

Twitter, D360 and networking the news

I admit it. I'm a Twitter fan. It didn't happen overnight. It's been a long, slow courtship.

I know social networking has journalistic applications, but I wasn’t quite certain how this particular site would help. It's taken months and a breaking news story to help me really understand.

Twitter, if you don’t already know, is a social networking site that allows only brief posts – about the size of your average newspaper headline. So having a good editor -- or being one – is helpful to get the best use of the space.

Our marketing vice president at d360, Paula Sirois, twisted my arm into jumping on the Twitter bandwagon after a year of tweet-ing away about our Internet startup. I've been tweeting routinely since she helped me hook up.

A few weeks ago, late on a Friday afternoon, ABC announced that former presidential candidate John Edwards had admitted he had a brief affair with a film producer. Given that our site has an archive of stories about the topic of infidelity, I was able to put together a story quickly and post it online within minutes of the annoucement.

Then I posted a quote from the story on Twitter, which is what I normally do for newly published stories. I wondered if I could drum up any interest in our d360 experts and related stories by posting them on Twitter as well. So I tried it.

Shortly after doing so I received a post from a journalist who wanted to congratulate me for being on top of the news and for providing related topics of interest to the main story. The e-mail that followed came from an editor at an online news wire service called All Headline News, who asked if I could provide experts for the Edwards story. Of course, I could – and did.

As a traditional print editor, I never thought about using a social networking site to expand our web site’s reach. But a year after taking this job, I have used Twitter – and other social networking sites – to increase my sourcelist, expand my web contacts and come up with related content to breaking news.

More importantly, I’ve used social networking to connect the content we’ve gathered with media outlets that need it. I guess it goes to show you – it is all about who you know.

D360 Partners with Woman's Day

The Holy Grail of Internet startups -- partnerships with other web sites.

How does it work? You provide content, which they pick up and use on their site. And then they give you links and credit, which drives more traffic to your site.

So far, our content has been featured on msn, AOL, so many newspapers and their web sites that I've long since lost count. And a year after eight months after we launched, we added one more partner to our list: Woman's Day.

Today, Woman's Day relaunched its site with a new design -- and some content from us. Enjoy.

http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Family-Lifestyle/Relationships/7-Ways-to-Move-On-After-a-Divorce.html

http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Family-Lifestyle/Relationships/How-Talking-Helps-Marriage.html

CNN, Mark Goulston and D360

What makes my day as editor of an Internet startup? When CNN quotes a D360 expert for a follow-up on the Edwards affair.

Men and women both have affairs, but not necessarily for the same reasons, says Mark Goulston, M.D., a marriage expert at Divorce360.com and author of "The Six Secrets of a Lasting Relationship: How to Fall in Love Again -- and Stay There." While men often break their marriage vows for reasons that include ego, a need for adulation and sometimes narcissistic behavior, he says, women tend to be tempted for different reasons.

"Women more often fall in love [with someone else] to feel adored and with a promise of protection and to ease pain," Goulston explains.

Gotta love MSN

Today's home page.

Internet Startup Reaches 10,000 members

Less than a year into the life of our Internet startup, we reached the 10,000 mark today. That's 10,000 people who have signed up to become part of the community of divorce360.com, the Web site we launched in December 2007.

As a former newspaper editor who hasn't much background in the social networking, it's taken me a while to become facebooked, linkedin and twittering regularly. But all of those things are now part of a routine day. Who knew it would take a few months to become a social networking junkie. Based on what's happening on our site's community, I'm not the only one.

In January, reporter Kim Hart of The Washington Post wrote a story about a new trend -- "social-networking sites have popped up to cater to specific interests, backgrounds, professions and age groups." Our site was one of several niche content sites named in the article.

Today, Paula Sirois, vice president for marketing for our site, said: "It speaks to the overwhelming need to connect, relate and find help." I couldn't agree more.

PR Contest for an Internet Startup

Internet startups do things a little differently than traditional print products. Recently, we decided to try something a little unusual in the marketing department. We're working with Peter Shankman, an "entrepreneur, adventurist and CEO of The Geek Factory, a PR and marketing boutique firm in New York City."

He and our vp for marketing, Paula Sirois, came up with an interesting idea -- pitching to his clients an opportunity to do his job for us. Here's the pitch he sent out yesterday for those of you who might be interested in trying your hand:

So... It's Friday morning. Wanna win an Amazon Kindle? Here's the deal. One of my really fun clients, (They're all really fun...)Divorce360, is the ultimate social network for anyone dealing with divorce, going through a divorce, or coming out of a divorce. I've already gotten them some great press.

But can you do better?

"Do Peter's Job, because he's so busy sending out the freakin HAROs." Come up with a great promotion for Divorce360.com. Can be anything.

Basic rules: Has to be simple, legal, media worthy, and under $2,500. Email kindle@divorce360.com with your idea on how to promote the site. I'll pick a winner in a week or so, and if you win, we'll give you a Kindle, and pimp you and your company out to 20k or so people in an upcoming HARO. You don't have to implement the idea, just come up with it. Go have fun, win a Kindle. Again - DO NOT EMAIL ME - but kindle@divorce360.com.

Pitch lively!

Another Good Week

A good week at an Internet startup that offers niche online content is simple. Some media outlet or another picks up your stories and runs them in their publication or on their web site. This week's highlights include:

1. mainstreet.com picks up two stories off the site, rewrites them and credits our site.

2. Our McClatchy-Tribune arrangement pays off with another story published on sunherald.com, a web site for a newspaper in southern mississippi.

3. A large metro newspaper uses our site and a story as the basis for one of their own.

You gotta love that.

Redesign Isn't Just for Newspapers

Everyone needs a new look sometimes. That applies to publications as well.

As a former editor for the largest newspaper company in the United States, I've done my fair share of redesigns. After 20 years in the industry, it was almost a given. Early in my career, it happened when new editors came into the room and decided their newspaper looked a little dated. Later, as circulation dropped steadily as readers moved online, it seemed they came with more frequency.

The big newspaper redesign news this week: an updated look at the Orlando, Fla., Sentinel, with another in September to follow at its sister paper, The Chicago Tribune. The idea is to re-engage readers in the print product as a way to maintain readership at a time when the industry is struggling nationwide.

In my career, I've helped or directed redesigns at newspapers like The Venice, Fla., Gondolier, The Tribune in Coshocton, Ohio, The Times Recorder in Zanesville, Ohio, and the News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla.

In the last year as an editor at an Internet startup, I've realized that similar redesign principles apply online. The only thing that's different is that you can use traffic as an indicator for what works for readers -- and what doesn't.

Since launching the web site in December, we have listened to reader comments about usability and watched the traffic ebb and flow and come up with ways to address any issues along the way. On Friday, after weeks of work behind the scenes, we relaunched with a new look for the home page.

It's cleaner, simpler and easier to understand. And finally, it's here, so I share. I'd love to hear your comments. So feel free to e-mail me at marisa@smallponds.com and let me know what you think.

What Works at a Startup

You gotta love working at an Internet startup. Some weeks -- no matter how many newspapers , hometown or otherwise, are laying off employees -- you wonder why you left the corporate bandwagon. And then there are weeks like this one, where you wonder why you didn't do it sooner.

This week what worked at a startup?

1. The Mice Played.
Waiting until the office coffee runs out and the boss is on vacation to order -- ohmygawd -- completely NEW coffee flavors like "Timothy's German Chocolate Cake" or "Gloria Jean's Swiss Chocolate Almond."

And then expanding into a whole new realm --- tea. My afternoons are now spent drinking "Timothy's Cranberry Twist Green Tea," or "Celestial Seasonings Mandarin Orange Spice" while some cranky guy with a Southern drawl stomps around in the background complaining, "It smells like a Baaa-k-ree in here."

2. Willie. Willie. Willie.
There's something about walking into a room every morning and having someone -- ok some dog -- so excited to see you that he almost knocks you to the floor. It's just plain good for the soul -- even if he is a trash picker.

3. Getting a Little Help from my (Old) Friends.
Signing a contract with McClatchy-Tribune (good old-fashioned newspaper companies) that allows your stories on the wire service and, within days, getting some play on newspaper sites all the way across the country.

Now, that's what I call the power of the press.

A Positive about Newspapers

With all the bad news about the declining newspaper industry, it's tough to find something positive to say when you're wrapped up in it. Declining profits, buyouts, newsroom cutbacks. You name it, the industry has seen it all in the last few years.

But after about a decade as a Gannett newspaper editor, I've spent almost a year on the other side of that fence -- working for an Internet startup company, developing a Web site and assessing the content's connection to the readership.

Part of the job is to search for partnerships with other news organizations interested in offering our stories on their sites. The more partners, the more they use your content. The more they use your content, the more the traffic builds. It's a pretty basic way to build online readers.

While our stories routinely get picked up by msn.com (Yesterday, our content was on the home page.) and other online sites, we've been searching for another way to increase traffic online -- through a partnership with newspapers.

Why? The CEO of our company, Cotter Cunningham, explains it by using his previous experience at bankrate.com, which built its traffic not just through its online partnerships but also through its partnerships with traditional print products. The more newspapers picked up the content, the more the online traffic increased.

This week, we signed a contract with McClatchy-Tribune to provide relationship content on its wire service to newspapers around the country. For me, it's an interesting twist. After spending years in the newspaper industry moving from print to online, I now work for an organization that's moving from online to print.

Funny how the world works. For all the bad news about the newspaper industry's decline, it's still offers something of importance to other mediums. Newspapers provide readers. It's just that simple.

Learning More about your Readers

I'm not a natural to online social networking. To be honest, I was always too busy to connect with people online when I'd rather do it in person.

After leaving my traditional newspaper job, I realized I needed to learn more about it. Even though many of my responsibilities in print had turned digital, there's something about joining an Internet startup that will force you into learning the details of something you only know on the surface.

Almost a year later, I'm facebooked, linkedin and twittering away. Aside from the connections and reconnections, both personal and professional, it's become even more important to me as a the content manager. I'm using the social networking part of our site, divorce360.com, as a way to assign stories that readers are talking about in groups, writing about on their journals or asking about in our polls.

Also based on my experiences, I've been involved in the discussions about how to improve the social networking part of the site. We eventually came up with an easy-to-use question and answer format that allows readers to share the details of their personal relationship story with their friends in the community.

Last week, after some weeks of editorial and technical tweaking, we rolled out the latest addition to the site. We sent out a link to the site addition in late-week e-mail to users, who have been filling them out ever since.

In addition to their story, the new page also gives users a chance to offer relationship tips to others, which we'll eventually cull to use in another form to enhance the site's content.

As I wrote in the e-mail introduction: "No matter where you are in your relationship, you can also offer advice to others about what you've learned so far. And you can read what others have learned along the way as well. By sharing your story, you can help yourself to move forward to a new and better place. And your story can help others do the same."

And isn't that part of what social networking is all about?

A Good Week at a Startup

What's the definition of a good week at a startup Internet company?

Several radio talk show interviews, an article in Adweek and a discussion with a major news company about distributing content from our Web site.

These are the days that you just know -- you're making a difference for the reader. And isn't that what good journalism is all about?

Fascinated by Facebook

A few days ago, a journalism editor and friend asked if I knew anything about facebook. His question -- how is it useful?

I must admit, I'm a facebook newbie. Several years ago, I set up a profile I rarely used and then, finally, got rid of it. I just wasn't certain I wanted to share that much personal information with the world. Besides, very few people I knew actually used it. At 40-something, I'm not exactly the facebook demographic.

Shortly afterward, I joined linkedin.com, a professional networking site, and became slightly addicted. The thing that struck me was how easy it would make my life. Now, instead of looking up numbers or e-mails for friends, family or colleagues, everything was right there at my fingertips.

It was like an online Rolodex, if you will. It helped me reconnect with some folks, connect for the first time with a few others and maintain contact with everyone else. Plus, my bio is attached, which means I never have to go searching for a copy when I need one.

Since then, I've decided to give other social networking sites a try. I failed miserably on myspace.com. I was befuddled by the site, which required too much thought to use. But my second go-round at facebook turned out to be so easy that I may soon become a pro. When my friend e-mailed me to ask what I thought about its uses for a non-facebook-using journalist, I came up with a list -- so I share.

1. I discovered young people.
And they've all hooked up to me on facebook. Between kids of cousins, kids of friends and my former stepdaughter, I apparently know quite a few people under the age of 25. Who knew? And really, why did it escape me that prom season was here -- until I began looking at their photos?

2. My high school classmates are alive and well and on facebook.
And, oddly, some are using it more routinely than I. They send me funwalls and superpokes and all kinds of stuff I still haven't figured out. Given that we're the same age, there's hope for me yet.

3. People at work are hooked up.
I don't just mean the people at the Internet startup where I work. I mean folks from linkedin are on facebook, too. And folks who aren't on linkedin are there. And when their birthday or their newest photo is posted, I know right away on facebook -- which I can even get on my Blackberry. It helps me keep in touch with more people, more often, something I really didn't think was possible.

4. The place is chatty, chatty, chatty.
If I have facebook open during the workday, I often get e-mail from there -- rather than my e-mail address. Sometimes writers will ask me questions about their stories for the web site. Or friends will give me the latest news about layoffs or cutbacks in the print industry. Several times I have had instant messages from journalists asking for professional advice -- right now -- as part of real time.

5. There's even professional networking.
Since signing up for facebook, I have talked someone into doing some work for the site. In another case, I convinced an editor who runs a fledgling non-profit journalism organization to put up some information on facebook. And I've reconnected with other journalists I've lost track of over the years through the Poynter Institute project, which has connected more than 7,000 journalists around the world.

Recently, I came across an article in venturebeat.com with statistics for social networking sites. Myspace, the leader, had dropped one percent earlier this year. Facebook had increased 77 percent. Linkedin -- number eighth on the list -- had increased 729 percent. With those numbers, the question isn't how useful they are, but which one works better for you.

Will Internet Portals Invest in Newspapers?

The most interesting thing I've seen in a long time about newspapers was a video on Yahoo! Finance. In it, Todd Harrison, CEO of Minyanville.com, who suggested that online portals buy large print companies like Gannett, my former employer. The idea of "Content as King," isn't news to a veteran newspaper editor like myself. Nice to see someone in the financial world with the same understanding.

I e-mailed the video to a number of newspaper friends, one of whom asked me what I thought would happen if such a deal emerged. As the editor of a startup company for a niche product, I think there's a real possibility in the idea. Given the media partnerships that emerge online, (msn.com, for example, using content from our site and links to it), it seems like a sound idea to maintain a steady stream of content that could be reused online from the original source -- the newspaper.

Until newspapers don't have any readers anymore, there's still income -- albeit much less of a profit margin than in the past -- that comes from the print product and the traffic from its online publications. So an online portal could maintain the newspaper's circulation until it becomes a financial liability and still get the benefit of great journalism.

These days, given the state of the struggling newspaper industry, the idea looks appealing indeed.

In Startups, It's All about the Little Things

When you're the editor at an Internet startup, days go by that follow a routine. It's all about the internal stuff. Playing with headlines to get better search engine optimization. Restructuring stories to make them easier to read online. Examining the look of the latest emoticons, avatars or landing page redesign. All worthwhile stuff, to be sure. But given my traditional news background, occasionally I miss the excitement of a good, old-fashioned breaking story.

And then one day, when you're out of the office at a daylong conference about startups, the fun happens without you. Your Blackberry gets tied up with e-mails about your content getting picked up by another news organization -- or two.

You find out a blogger from the Seattle Post Intelligencer has picked up a story about how baseball can help your relationship. Or Yahoo's women's site, Shine, quotes the same story. Or that msn.com has highlighted your news story about how the mortgage crisis may be adding to the divorce rate. And then U.S. News and World Report picks up the story the same day.

These are the days when you know, despite the daily routine, you're doing something right with the content. And you remember what a kick working on a good news story can really be.