Reporterist collaborates with Media News Group papers

We recently made a successful presentation to about 16 Bay Area newspaper editors from publications like the Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune, San Mateo County Times, Times-Herald, Tri-City Weekly, The Piedmonter, The Montclarion and Berkeley Voice.

The meeting was with publications that are part of the Bay Area News Group, owned by the Media News Group.

All the editors were receptive and told us that there is a definite need for relevant freelance work. We've already had more than five stories purchased through reporterist since that meeting, and many more articles uploaded by freelancers.

Freelancers continue to tell us how much they love us. Alison Satake, one of our super users wrote in to say

"Receiving the 'Your article was sold' message made my day. Thanks!"

after she sold a piece to the Oakland Tribune.

If you'd like to be a beta user of reporterist, come sign up for an invite.

Reporting New-News in the Online World

Scott Karp, over at Publishing 2.0 has a great post about how Google News, and the Internet in general, is affecting the value of wire service content.

Local newspapers pulling content off the AP wire, or Reuters or Bloomberg could once claim exclusivity in their consumer base, even if someone across the country or state was running the same story. But this is clearly no longer the case.

Take for instance, today's breaking news about O.J. Simpson's arrest. The San Jose Mercury News, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, the Orlando Sentinel all ran the same AP story, and it's all online.

Karp points out that searches for stories on Google News are increasingly leading readers back to wire stories printed on Google pages.

With this latest development, newspapers are in even more need of original content, and it won't be coming from the wires.

But it will be coming from reporterist...

Private Beta!

We have launched private beta now!

Our first 60 users (currently open only to selected professional journalists) have gotten invites and are using the system.

More updates soon...

The Calm before the Storm

With just about two months to go before we release a Beta product to our first partner, things are definitely far from calm here at reporterist.

We've beem demoing our product to newspaper editors who've given us great feedback; some critical, and mostly overwhelmingly positive.

We're also extremely busy preparing for a limited private alpha. What's that? It's where we open up our product to a few people, and let them beat up on it and help find bugs in our software.

And so, even though things have hardly been calm for us lately, experience tells me that things will get a lot crazier soon.

Rob Curley: New Media Lecture Series

Summary

Wow. That was an amazing talk. I'm bummed that I wasn't able to attend in person and had to settle for the streaming video.
Rob is doing some amazing stuff with new media, and this is the first time I've heard someone talk about not just cool gadgets and gizmos and effects, but actually mobilizing communities and tapping into their passions. Fantastic. I'll have to link to all of these talks when they get archived.

Notes

Rob Curley, Lawrence Journal-World

appx 1 reporter per 1000 circ.




lots of database heavy backends...

game cancellations, information. text messaging for snow closings, basketball scores, tornado warnings.

put up rule sheets.

100s of photos a week. players of the week. (kids). created player cards for the little kids.

reverse published. game stories, photos, etc. in a print publication.

refill the racks every wednesday because of this print publication.

parents, kids, umpires; all blogging!

blogs were run as columns in the print edition.

"Game" now covers a bunch of sports. not just baseball.

Got the connection with the kids.

'Game' all staffed by two interns. Plus two people about 5 hours a week each doing proofreading, etc.

Sports webiste. to take on the 'official' site.
database of all scores. stats.
go to a player. beatwriter's notes on that reporter. stats. the bio looked very different.
- comparative scores.

reverse publish starting 5 stats into print for gameday.

basketball: stats -> last 3 games -> all games.

future-hawks: stats for high schoolers who had signed on.
call the mother of the player; get THEM to enter the stats.

Weather:

national weather service feed. But instead of just getting in the feed. pick 36 different landmarks. "wind blowing from 'blah'"


animated playbooks after each game.

fan said: you're giving away our playbook. (but they were reminding them fo the good plays)

live chats. cellphone alerts. 24,000 signing up for updates.

importance of mobile. sms.

bought an xbox. simulated a game. and pulled video from the XBOX game simulation.
every week, the stats of the players in the game were updated and accurate.

las vegas prediction vs. xbox prediction.

scanned in a bunch of old letters, old video footage.

regardless of the device, you should still go to the same place (newspaper) for information about KU sports.

naples, FL:

podcasting didn't really work in lawrence. how do we make the podcast sound 'real'?
copy desk put together the podcast.

only local news on the website. why bother trying to out-cnn cnn? in the print product, they're only getting a single product. but online, people browse a bunch of stuff.

so only focus on local news. forget the rest. (online).

the reporter that wrote the print story was interviewed for their story for the next day. as a podcast. became wildly popular.

"The internet is about people's passions" - if you have an uber basketball team in your backyard - you may want to cover that.

podcast was about 2 hours of total work if you added it all together.

high school game scores would come in via reporters calling in.
sms sent to people when scores changed, or at end of game, or whatever.

podcast had impersonations on it.

video podcast starting running on local cable. (really good quality)

some games shot with 5 cameras. most games shot with one camera.
videographer would interview the reporter at the end of it all.

suddenly a high school sports podcast turned into something that *everyone* was watching.

20:44

election coverage. the 'candidate selctor' - tool to help you pick the candidate!

per neighbourhood coverage : how did your neighborhood vote? (by voting precinct)

device independence. cellphones, ipods, psp.

naples wine festival. largest single day charity event. raised 13 mill in 2 hours. all to local charities.

'The story of record' - the longer story that didn't have to be on deadline, and made it into the archives.

- auction expensed by fancy dinners.
- dinners hosted by rich people.
- flash presentation about who hosted, who catered (which chef), which winemaker was flown in, what was being served for dinner, + video coverage.

reporters calling as things were being sold.

how to cover this event? start with how it's going to be covered in new media, and then work backwards - reverse publish to print.

looking for journalists that can do everything. audio/video/etc. fearless.

database of every home sale between 2003-2005. not enough zip codes though. Broke it into neighborhoods. Did each of the 100,000 home sales by HAND.

the database was built for the journalism but not for our readers.
readers want to know what the home next door sold for.

rebuilt the database so that it would updated weekly. serve the readers. not the journalists.

built by a single developer.

everyone contributed to this project. series that ran every 6 weeks.

Studio 55 - daily newscast.

all tv news from naples came from ft meyers.
but that wasn't enough coverage.

wanted to build a newscast that you could watch on the beach (while sunning yourself)

documentary is closer to what newspaper on video would look like.

training: one month of production before anyone saw it. don't fix your hair. just be a journalist. let the pretty boys be on tv. it was working. 1st segment ; trad tv.(it was going to run on tv)

2nd seg; longer interviews. 5-10 minutes with local conngressman. forget the weather. just say the his' and lows. and tides. a bad way of putting it., but almost like an infomercial for why the newspaper kicks butt.

washington post: on Being. videos every wednesday. blog.
has to be normal folks. 90 minute interview edited down to 2 minutes.

naples daily news; culture changed in one year. 5 people who would help us to start with. by the end of uit - 5 people who were holding out.

so what lead to the newsroom changing?
- first newspaper where the top editor really cared about online
- sports department bought in early, set an example, publisher rewarded them.
- lots of positive encouragement. treat them like rockstars. publisher would visit.
- debut of podcasts
- publisher ordered 50 ipods with custom engraved naples newsroom logo. 50 best online contributors got those. pretty cool.
- 20,000 bonuses.
- changed everyones title from writer to reporter. i would change it to journalist in hindsight.
- had to mention what new media stories would go with the story. photos? history? polls? you HAD to list that down.
- had to record all the interviews. just record. don't edit.
- read the reader comments.
- reporters would email the commenters. ask them for followups.
- reader comments turned into sources. happened every day.

- embrace the changing role of newspapers.

what does an online managing editor do?
- knew/coordinated when a story had to be posted early.
- live chats - it's harder to say 'no comment' to someone than to a reporter.
- know when a story needs additional content (poll, message forum)
- archives can help with current news. untapped asset.
- understand alternate delivery. tornado = send an SMS!
- need an awesome writer.
- just do it.


doh. couldn't make it there today so watched live stream. but i got cut off at the end :(

Multimedia Storytelling: Spring New Media Lecture Series

Multimedia Storytelling

San Jose Murcury News - Richard Koci Hernandez

12:31: Audio Viewmaster from childhood = multimedia. story with sound.

It's about the story. The technology, etc. is not important.

Frontline: Jeff Jarvis clip.

"My Camera Bag" - no more still camera. HD Video.

history of mercurynewsphoto.com

used to be lots of photos in the paper. then papers got slimmer, smaller. no room for photos. nyt, washingtonpost were visual leaders in term of multimedia a few years ago.

Knight said no. multimedia not part of the gameplan.

12:39

didn't know any html or flash anything. decided to do a mockup. hoarded fast computers for a while. on their own time. built a mockup from scratch.
no one wanted to put it up.
bought a domain name, paid for out of photo budget.

realized that they could track what people were looking at.

started being linked to from the main site.

100K unique visitors p month.

still paying a separate bill for hosting.

2 people in 'multimedia department'

find one thing you really like. focus all your attention on that piece. practice that.

HD frame grabs are important. running these on the front page.

Why Video?

one tool. many platforms. HD Video.

no one asks what kind of computer a story was written on. You're moved by the content. Same thing with this stuff.

"we are still storytellers"

mppa awards were not solely awarded based on the pictures. but on the entirety of the story.

"take your own approach, invent. we have an opportunity to change the rules."

(good advice. reporterist is doing just that)

traditionally the 'online department' were technies and not journalists. but they don't know how to tell a story.

just as photographers are learning to be better reporters, reporters are learning about photography. it's no longer us vs. them.

"good audio narrative is the foundation of great multimedia journalism"

Q: can you get good audio with the video camera
A: Audio equipment is expensive and you get what you pay for. $500 mic. Seinnheiser ME66. (not like cameras). Never rely on the camera's builtin audio mic.

resources:

soundslides (nyt,ap use it)
interactivenarratives
zonezero
transom.org
thedigitaljournalist
multimediashooter.com
lynda.com
book: in the blink of an eye, walter murch
book: the laws of simplicity, maeda

Tools

powershot s3
sony hvr aiu
olympus ds2
edirol r09 (don't get the black one - it has problems) - digital audio recorder.
sennheiser me66 - zoom lens for audio.
fission: $32 ; better than audacity
visualhub: $23 (video conversion)
slideshowpro.net
flashden.net

record at highest mp3 quality.
truth of the matter: most people listen to it on a pc speaker.

used to throw it into quicktime.
now use flash. (most people have flash)

MediaStorm: Spring New Media Lecture Series

Summary

I was nothing short of wowed by the demos that Brian did. And I love their mission: "to be the Life magazine of our generation." They're definitely creating some powerful stuff. And I could hear ooohs and aaahs from around the room. So there's definitely a market for his kind of journalism. I love that they are self funded and not VC funded. Definitely check out some of their work (I went back and added links to the pieces below, or you can just get to them from their homepage

Live Notes

Brian Storm from mediastorm

past: msnbc, corbis

storytelling, and what it means to be entrepreneurial.

20:00 what should mediastorm be?
- the life magazine of our generation.

collaboration. why can't one person do it all?
(demoing an interactive presentation)

everything done in final cut. want the television to be the viewing device.

(iraq)

20:10: audio + photo. real opportunity there. photo gives context.

this is the kind of piece that you need to see, maybe not want to see.

another piece "1976" - just music. about cuba...

20:13 - cuba piece has gotten a lot of traffic. brings people in and makes them look at the other stoies.

How do you get people to care about aids in africa? give them a voice. let the subjects speak for themselves.

Example: Bloodline (AIDS in Africa)

(the audio/photo mix is overwhelming)

20:26: bloodline was five years of coverage.

It started as prints on a wall, but it wasn't a narrative. there was no voice. let them tell it.

Q: Did she do all of it? (Kristin?)
A: yup - she shot video along the way. wasn't her focus. photography was. people need to do it with intent.

Revolution isn't in the photography medium. It's just the distribution cost and the cost of the equipment.

The sandwich generation. commisioned piece for msnbc.com. "20 million americans are sandwiched between kids and parents."
photo;/audio/video.

20:42: (that was amazing. very touching.)
a lot of writing goes into this. how did the narrative match the visual? in terms of technique. where he's shaving; audio + photo (but not the video). herbie was naked all the time :)

how do you use motion + moment best together (video + still). the apex of the narrative: he's losing his house. the sound of stuff crashing and then the still.


the mediasotorm platform:

MGM lion road = mediastorm logo. that turns into the page. tactile page.

transcript for hearing impaired. but also helps with the editing.

transactional process: buy the book off amazon. license images, buy film, etc. buy song: click on it, it goes straight to itunes.

viral email collab is key. also dig/deliious/technorati/etc. Special promotional images for bloggers.

Distribution:

- visual newsletters. try to live up to the brand.
- rss
- myspace: weird. but go where the audience is
- flickr feed of the promotional images

(one guy in russia created a viral effect for them)

podcast in itunes.

video is a great starting point.

iTunes: game changing.
apple tv: gets you to the 8' experience.

iPhone is twice the dpi 162 vs 76dpi (didn't know that)

Business Model

Multimedia Agency: allows them to syndicate content. License content. E.g. slate. promotion on msn.com AARP.

online auction to syndicate the premier. bid on the right to premier. just like ebay.

20:56 : flipbook about kurds in iraq.


21:01 : had the detail on each scene in the flipbook as well.

Production: working with a bunch of huge players: nat geo, msnbc, slate, aarp, la times, ...

Brightcodebrightcove - helps the video come in superfast. (showing a piece on Darfur)


another technique: vh1 popups-style.

21:04: nat geo project. wildlife refuge in chad.

21:14 able to take what was layed out in a magazine and give life to it. another interactive thing: google earth + zakouma = interactive.


Q&A

Citizen Journalism: Knight New Media Lecture Series

Summary

Training all the newsroom staff with multimedia paid off big time when the vtech shooting happened. People were at least somewhat familiar (if not proficient) with all of the equipment. But not being proficient was okay - the key was to help readers be part of the experience asap.

Sadly, there was actually no mention of 'citizen journalism' during the lecture. Maybe the talk was mistitled? The crooked road multimedia piece was pretty cool.

Notes

Hosts: Seth Gitner and Lindsey Nair from The Roanoke Times

- 97K circ
- 5 mill page views a month
- 400K - 500K visits a month

Find a person who's interested in online storytelling, train anyone who wants to learnt. Give staff the skills to think in a multimedia mindset. Reporters regularky recording audio with photographs.

Got reporter involved. Weekly piece called 'everyday heroes'

anyone in newsroom is already trained to tell stories. Apply that to audio + photographs. How to sequence it all together to tell a story.

(Note: I think I'm the only one blogging here. ironic)

Lots of experimentation required. Recognize the failure, keep trying. Audio podcasts didn't really work out for them. Moved it to video podcasts.

Interactive demo: The Crooked Road. Crooked Road - pretty cool - can listen to each instrument, break down the music into tracks. tourism podcast - drive the road yourself and listen to it when you get there.

Lots of people involved on one project. 3-4 month project. 5 day series with double-truck. but didn't get the feel of bluegrass.

Lindsey talking about the TimesCast

- home grown daily videocast. dec. 2005.
- volunteered for it

- sneak peek of stories.
- entertainment
- weather

watch the tone. important.

meant to be interactive. include a lot of links. polls, surveys. 'weather guest' everyday. salem highschool cheerleading squad, bands, animals from the zoo, all sorts of people.

reporter buyin - iffy at first. naysayers, iffy. compromising integrity. lighthearted. opinion changed over time.

- features reported, web producer, editorial assistant, online entertainment editor.

(showed an example cast)

get a teleprompter. it's worth the 2K investment.

greenscreen - can do some fun with it. (showed a demo of a halloween videocast)

only one person's main job. everyone else does it on the side. About an hour out of each person's day.

script in by noon. 11-12 guest. cameos in advance sometimes? 3:30pm is when it goes up.

200-500 viewership.

some spinoffs - MusicCast (band every monday), SportsCast (about 1 week lifetime).

first band - death metal. tiles in studio began to fall.

greenscreen: artists just draw a background and that's it. TalkSoup-ish feel. sports department comes in and watches. mainly because the two people already *have* an audience. get their audience from the columns onto the online side.

need to figure out ways not just to build this stuff, but to market it.
Bring in bloggers to do the weather. E.g. Aerobics blogger comes in and does the weather + an aerobics routine. She posts that on her blog. Maybe her fans will come to the roanoke site.

Viral - other means of getting an audience to them.

how does it fit into hard, breaking news?

- special series for election night.
- updates every half hour.

interview forum. conversation as the election progressed. 13 updates till 2am.

carbon monixide leak - no entertainment news that day.

vtech shootings in april - decision was to streamline things. drop all links. just have someone out there giving the latest updates.
- such a huge event for the paper - not sure how to integerate that into the timescast with all the other resources being diverted elsewhere.

how were the shootings covered froma multimedia side:

- escape of michael morva (inmate). went to hospital killed guard, and was on the loose in vtech. in august (?). killed some people. rolling news update at that time. reverse chrnological. served as 'practice' for tech shooting.

April 16 - 22
4mill pageviews, 1mill unique visitors. 1.5 visits.
normal: 6mill pageviews and 400K unique visitors in a MONTH.

They put all video on a sister paper's site.

(it sounds like they didn't know about amazon S3 - oh well :) )


roanoke times housee. students went out with video cameras.

huge media event. roanoke times tried best to cover it how they could. timescast, developing processes around that. getting news in earlier. the studio... all that infrastructure helped get the converage for the vtech shooting. because people were already proficient at that.

broadcast outlet called their editor. for footage. what's satellite? what's ftp? they weren't talking the same language. press conference. video featres. slide shows. 360 panoramic. trying all this stuff out on the fly.

cnn was doing all the latest updates. so they needed a different angle. 'hugs' clip.

also had a single point person who could pull in all the updates and coordinate. Not just writing straight news updates. but sprinkle in scene setting things - that are important to local readers but maybe not the national community. Voices from regular people.

Regular updates. It's okay to say "we don't know this." eg. cnn had an incorrect death toll; they updated it.

put up pdf's of the front pages. the rolling updates combined with the front pages made the updates a lot better. had all of the information there earlier. get new leads.

partnered with washington post. univ. video. able to use some of their content on another side. It's about getting the story out; doesn't matter where it came from.


Q&A:
-how did the rolling update work out?

summary at the top + rolling update with timestamps. worked pretty well..

what was the election coverage viewership like?
- not sure.

Q: test/measure/learn mantra is repeated. how do you maintain commitment of editors and landmark - how do you sell the business on the idea of keeping with this?

(they didn't really answer the question). plenty of opportunity to move with this and see what next. keep innovating. fortunately management understands that.

New Media Lecture Series

The New Media Knight center at Berkeley has a Spring New Media Lecture Series. I'm going to try to catch some of the events over the next day or two. I inadvertantly missed the first lecture; a little upset at myself about that. Hopefully we'll have some live-blogging coverage from a few Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism students.

I'm not sure that the topics are directly relevant to reporterist's mission, but they are certainly interesting.

Update: I live-blogged the first day of lectures. Videos are also being streamed live by Berkeley.

Here's notes from the first day:
- Citizen Journalism
- MediaStorm

Top 10 reasons newspapers are sinking online...

Mike Markson from topix has written an article about why newspapers are sinking online.

It's a great roundup. And even more reason why you should stay tuned for what we have to offer.

I really want to talk more about what we're doing because I'm just so excited about it. But as I've said before, one of the reasons I'm not is that time spent talking always seems to takes away from time and energy spent executing.

I'll let the product speak for itself when it's ready.

Update: I re-read the old post that I linked to above. I'm happy to report that the second reason I wasn't talking about the product (that we wanted to talk to customers and know that we're barking up the right tree) is now much less of an issue. I'm now quite comfortable that we are barking up the right tree.

Welcome!

Every company has a big dream - one that often supersedes its product and certainly its founders.

Even as the world around us constantly changes, we pine for the same information that our forefathers did when they opened their morning papers - depth, variety and truth. This is what we dream of at reporterist - the I-can't-live-without-it "morning paper" (though it may not be read on paper or in the morning).

To find out more, you'll have to stay tuned. We've been in stealth mode and super busy developing a product, meeting with potential customers, drafting workflow chart after workflow chart and surviving on that proverbial cup of coffee from the cafe next door.