Twitter for Elections Coverage

United States Mid-Term Elections are next week and  social media takes on a greater role than two years ago in the Presidential election.  It can be said President Barack Obama is the first POTUS to have used social media in a political campaign.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs leverages social media for his news briefings.  Gibbs uses 140-character jargon to solicit questions; a version of crowdsourcing.  His management style answers just one tweeted query on YouTube.

Civics is sociology and sociology benefits from tools of social media.  What creative utility have you considered for online social networks?

Whitney Matthews, online editor for the Lawrence Journal-World, offers a plan to use Twitter for election coverage; she writes for Poynter Online.  Matthews’ post has four points:

1. Make a plan
2. Get a local hashtag
3. Tweet poll checks
4. Add tweets to your website

Politicians and media covering them make excellent use of Twitter and other social networks.  This is the year of social media according to researchers such as Gartner, Edison and Nielsen.  Now is also the occasion we are expected to learn or begin to make money with social media according to a number of studies.

ABC News plans to anchor election night coverage from network headquarters in New York City and Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, CA.   ABC teams up with Facebook for elections coverage.  Social media for American elections is reality.

Here we’ve offered examples of using the big two social networks; Twitter and Facebook.  However there are others and more ways to use online tools to cover voting.  Google gets social with its elections center.  The search engine provides four services for voters:

1. Polling place locations
2. Registration instructions
3. Ballot information
4. State and local election office contact information

The question remains – how are you using social networks, new media and traditional media to serve voters of the United States this election?

James Rowe

Rowe and Company, LLC

Technorati Tags: White House,Robert Gibbs,Twiiter,Facebook,ABC News,Google,Poynter Institute,Lawrence journal-World

Mobile Strategy is Social Strategy

The case I present to broadcasters developing mobile strategy is without taking account for social media planning is incomplete.  A ReadWrite Mobile post, sponsored by Alcatel-Lucent, explores the developer ecosystem for mobile apps which covers software.  Technology is key, however, it should be considered last in strategy development.  First think about the consumer, the audience, the user.

The Pew Research Center publishes the electronic paper “Rise of the Apps Culture.”   The study postulates eight out of ten Americans use cellular telephones and that has aided development of the “apps culture.”

“Among the most popular are apps that provide some form of entertainment (games, music, food, travel and sports) as well as those that help people find information they need and accomplish tasks (maps and navigation, weather, news, banking).”

Pew Research cites year old data based on The Nielsen Company’s Apps Playbook but the Nielsen blog linked here has more recent stats.  Data for mobile apps and usage evolves daily.  Likewise, use of social media grows every day.  Urgency to get social and mobile is constant.

Developers are doing some really creative work with apps.  New programs for social networks and other media are developed at a rapid rate.  It’s a race to meet consumers on their turf.

I spent last Tuesday evening at Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism Lab learning about Knight Foundation’s News Challenge Contest.  The competition kicking off in days is titled “Knight News Challenge ’11: Mobile, Authenticity, Sustainability and Community.”  The challenge is built around developing content for mobile and social or community.  Knight funding realizes mobile strategy is social media planning.

Edison Research conducted a recent study calculating one hundred percent growth in daily usage of social media in just the last year.  Edison’s report on frequent social networkers points to a transformation in lifestyle for many Americans.

I tried to provide enough sources of data to support my assertion mobile planning is social media strategy.

James Rowe

Rowe and Company, LLC

Technorati Tags: ReadWrite Mobile,Alcatel-Lucent,Pew Research Center,The Nielsen Company,The Knight Foundation,Knight News Challenge,Nieman Journalism Lab,Edison Research

SBE – Interactive Radio

It’s fall and it’s time for the national meeting of The Society of Broadcast Engineers.  The 2010 SBE National Meeting is in Madison, Wisconsin this year and in a location where you can really focus on interesting subjects on the SBE agenda.  They’re gathering at the Madison Marriott West in Middleton on October 26th.  The meeting is in an area with some good restaurants and easy access to the highway for adventurous souls who will need to experience the capitol city.  I am quite familiar with Madison and the Marriott West.

SBE is calling this year’s meeting the “Broadcasters Clinic.”  I’m particularly interested in the very first session October 26^th, Tuesday, 9:15 AM CDT, on Push Radio.

“PUSH Radio is a term that we’ve coin[ed] to describe[s] the advances in technology that we have experienced over the past several years and how they push the boundaries of the traditional time based studio to transmitter radio content delivery concept and permit a more flexible, free form methodology for content delivery – it could be used to empower listener interactivity, link to web content, decentralize the studio and put more employees out in the street interacting with the listeners, among other things.”

They’re discussing administration and the audience, not to mention interactivity and getting out among listeners.  I think it’s a really good way to begin the national meeting.

Register for the meeting at the SBE website. Rooms at the Marriott may be taken by now but there are other hotels nearby and IMHO you will need a car to get about the area and the city.

While I’m expressing my delight with the SBE let me mention their Broadcaster’s Clinic page is social.  There are Facebook and Twitter buttons at the bottom of the page with the call to “Get Social with the WBA,” the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association.

Spread the word. Get social. Get interactive.

Let me add if you’re planning to attend the first meeting of the SBE 2010 convention you will be interested in the new service launched by Rowe and Company.  This link will take you to the website with information on curaYtor Production.

James Rowe

Rowe and Company, LLC

 

 

Technorati Tags: Society of Broadcast Engineers,Wisconsin Broadcast Engineers,Facebook,Twitter,YouTube,slideshare,Rowe and Company

New Technology Developer Seeks Partners

Developers of MyNewsVu seek partners among television stations, networks and vendors of television news automation products.  Roland Boucher and his co-founder Stevan Vigneaux have created a product they describe as “next generation on demand news-site software.”  Messieurs Boucher and Vigneaux say they are reinventing television for the connected age.

MyNewsVu offers a personalized rundown or playlist of news stories on a station or network’s website.  Recent research notes video is king of online content.  Other studies indicate user experience is the must have in presentation of media.  Boucher says MyNewsVu promises an “individually-personalized TV newscast to each and every viewer.”  Here are a couple of ways to check on his statement.  Engineers and techie types perhaps would prefer to watch the presentation of the technology and business case for MyNewsVu.  Editorial professionals bored with technical information, who just want to know how it works, likely would choose to test the service itself.  The links provide you both experiences.

In this age when Jon Stewart is probably the most trusted news source in the United States of America his Daily Show website is user friendly.  Stewart’s site offers an easy online presentation of his comedy channel program.  MyNewsVu proposes an interesting solution for broadcasters searching for new and friendlier methods to communicate with audiences, who demand content when and where they desire.

So for those interested, here’s an opportunity to get in on the development stage of technology to deliver personalized viewing experiences for television news and shape the user experience.  Boucher calls for partners to help polish MyNewsVu.  He says they are “currently seeking development partners from a major Network News Organization or a Newsroom Automation and/or News Production Systems Company wishing to extend their News Production Workflow to include Internet delivered TV newscasts.”  Help fashion the future and reach out to MyNewsVu.  Contact information is on their website and to give you a better user experience here’s Roland’s email address Roland@MyNewsVu.com.

James Rowe

Rowe and Company, LLC

Technorati Tags: MyNewsVu,Jon Stewart,Daily Show

New Media News Presentation

Burt Herman writes an opinion piece for the New York Times.  His words in the Times come immediately after announcing a new venture at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco.  WTF is Burt Herman and what is his new venture?

Herman calls himself entrepreneurial journalist and his new venture is Storify.  I think he has the coolest personal website I have seen.  Let’s begin with his NYT article “New Media Trust Sources.”

The entrepreneur discusses the megaphone everyone has with an Internet connection.  The people who are the new competition or ally to traditional (sometimes referred to as “old”) media.  In this decade the power to inexpensively reach global audiences burst into being.  Herman provides a new tool with Storify.

He points out in the Times piece:

“This democratization of media means anyone can reach out and find others who share their vision, regardless of geographic boundaries. Causes can spread at the speed of light, and “go viral” as they are shared on social networks.”

The “democratization” has exponentially created the same noise as cable television’s numerous channels.  So the audience is frustrated trying to find information that meets their needs among new and old media types competing for their valuable and short attention.

So far technology has failed to discover a way to filter noise and help people get to information they want.  Over the next two weeks Broadcast Newsroom Computing will present a couple new technologies answering the need.  The first is Storify which is perhaps best described as a noise filtering tool.

Herman defines new noise filters as curators; humans who package information in a consumable form and present it like paintings in a modern art museum. Let me lift another entire paragraph from Herman’s opinion.

“…a new class of gatekeepers has arisen, people whose reputations are built on their ability to highlight relevant information to their audiences. We are still looking for the right word to call these new gatekeepers, but so far “curator” is what appears most appropriate.”

He writes at the heart of the new approach is social media where people congregate based on shared interests.  Storify is a utility to gather information of common interest and present in a playlist fashion.  So I created a Storify story on social media business cases as example of both new medium and the new tool.  Here’s the link to the story.

There you have it; Herman’s new venture Storify and new approach to presenting information in the new decade.  Can I write “new” again?  Maybe next time when BNC reports on another such tool for gathering news and presenting it based on audience preference.

James Rowe

Rowe and Company, LLC

Technorati Tags: New York Times,Storify,Burt Herman,TechCrunch Disrupt 2010 San Francisco

Tweet

Driving Audience to Traditional Media

The cinders outside of Boulder, CO, scene of recent wildfires, have burned out, but lessons to learn remain.  The editor of “Lost Remote,” Steve Safran writes stations and newspapers in Boulder did a good job of covering the fires but their best coverage was not on their websites.

The website editor made a substantial point during breaking coverage of the Colorado fires.  A point many news executives may have missed regarding how to exploit the huge increase this year in the use of social media.  Safran wrote about the wildfires:

“…the real news is on the station’s Facebook and Twitter pages, where moment by moment updates are flying.”

As a reporter, I spent decades in the field covering breaking news; natural disasters and all.  Traditional media has tremendous experience covering developing events.  Social media and user generated content are changing newsroom practices though.

Mainstream media has to break the circle of wagons and use the power of new media to deliver news and drive viewers, readers and listeners to traditional media for long form reporting.  New thinking has to begin in editorial meetings and travel to the assignment desk and into the production process.

Just as news executives plan teases, bumps, graphics, etcetera; they need to plan new media status updates for Facebook, Twitter, and their websites.  Here’s a suggestion from Safran, who wrote for the Radio, Television, Digital News Association blog.

“…whenever there’s a big event in your  community, snap up the Twitter name.  The media outlets should have snapped up twitter.com/boulderfire and used it as a dedicated feed.  Instead, they put the information on their standard twitter.com/wxxx feed.”

He argues the name of the event draws a larger audience.  A station’s website can use a widget to aggregate the stream of topic related tweets.  You can use lists and hashtags as well to gather user generated information readers and viewers will understand is unsubstantiated.  With the station’s branded Twitter account direct the audience to your website, where they’ll collect all sorts of information from users and reporters and learn about your station’s coverage.  “If it’s good enough for social media,’ Safran says, ‘it’s good enough for regular news.”  I second his advice on branding and placing user generated content in context.  Recent studies affirm traditional media is still the most trusted source of information.

James Rowe

Rowe and Company, LLC

 

Technorati Tags: Lost Remote,Steve Safran,Twitter,Facebook,RTDNA

News 3.0

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press releases a 145-page study every news director in the United States of America must read. The director of the Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, Tom Rosenstiel, suggests we call the findings “News 3.0.” The Pew report is titled “Americans Spending More Time Following the News.” Download it and set aside a lot of time for an education on news consumption habits gleaned from telephone interviews with more than three thousand Americans in June of this year.

There are more ways available for people to get news and the report indicates because of the plethora of sources more Americans follow the news. Television still leads in consumption and radio and newspapers are ahead of Internet news sources according to research. However, Rosenstiel’s commentary, in the report’s conclusion, argues “the best way to understand what is occurring today with the way people interact with the news and technology is to think of it as the end of our digital childhood.”

In a report from Pew Internet & American Life Project in the first quarter of this year on “Understanding the Participatory News Consumer” researchers write “the Internet and mobile technologies are at the center of the story of how people’s relationship to news is changing.”

The March, 2010 report sampled less than 23-hundred American adults to determine a “revolutionary shift” in how news is consumed has taken place over the last five years. The research claims social networks have an increasing role in how Americans receive news information. Online news consumption falls behind newspapers (third in the contest for consumption). The earlier study indicates three fourths of Americans gathering news online do so through email or social network posts.

What does it all mean? Back to the interpretation from Rosenstiel – Pew studies present “signs of a new phase, perhaps even a new era, in the acquisition and consumption of news.”

Heads up news executives, it’s time to pay attention to the work of the Pew Center and download and study their voluminous reports.

James Rowe

Rowe and Company, LLC

Technorati Tags: The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press,Pew Internet and American Life Project,Tom Rosenstiel,news,Internet,radio,television,Pew Center Project for Excellence in Journalism

New Tools Old Practices

In newsroom management, years ago, I stepped up to the task of teaching the entire news staff how to use personal computers; newly introduced as their desktop workstations. One of the memories of the period was brought to my attention over ten years later when an anchor commented among his cherished possessions was the certificate I awarded him for completing a course in newsroom computing.

He was the journalist who stood up in class in anger and exclaimed “I’m 50-years old, why do I have to learn this now?” I asked him to relax and take break and return when he was prepared to resume. He did and he learned. He made me proud these years since because he confirmed my strategy to educate the staff and reward them for growing.

Using new tools is a matter of survival for journalists. I notice radio reporters learn to edit video, television news people edit and print journalists use audio for more than notes. Broadcast Newsroom Computing writes often about the blurring of skills among old divisions of discipline in news production. It is a subject of continuing growth.

The changes are evidenced in the verbose techcrunch report on Adam Penenberg’s new journalism. The New York University professor returned to daily reporting briefly to break a story traditional media overlooked. Fourteen paragraphs deep into the techcrunch post blogger Paul Carr tells how Penenberg used Twitter to bring to public attention a story other media, new and traditional, missed. The professor forced everyone into “scoop recovery” mode.

Carr writes Penenberg may have developed a breaking news procedure for new journalism in the style he tweeted about Ford Motor Company’s $131- (m) million dollar settlement with the family of Brian Cole. Cole was a New York Mets’ prospect killed in the rollover accident of his Ford Explorer.

Penenberg used old wire service procedure for breaking news. He released short blurbs of information; each adding another layer to the story. The educator’s method was the same way wire services released confirmed information until a write thru of facts could be delivered. The practice allowed broadcasters, in particular, to get word out immediately and build suspense in anticipation of a full report.

The urgent bell rings on wire machines are long gone, replaced by beeps and now, beyond wire services, audible Twitter alerts on workstations to announce breaking news from alert journalists.

 

James Rowe

Rowe and Company, LLC

Technorati Tags: techcrunch,New York Mets,Brian Cole,Adam Penenberg,New York University

Law and Order for Social Media

Social media audiences are growing and aging reports the Pew Research Center’s Pew Internet project. The law and order crowd is growing at double the rate of older users involved with online social networks last year. The attention given social media in traditional media in the past year grew as much from my observation. So, do you know who the audience is? It’s a significant question given the latest research and fresh changes.

A previous post on Broadcast Newsroom Computing announced free one day online meetings for social media planning to explore methods to control images, brands and digital lives. The slide presentation from the webinars evolves into an eBook – “Secrets of Social Media Planning.” The new eBook is posted online. The eBook “Secrets of Social Media Planning” is the companion to the whitepaper “Social Media Simplified” and the video short “Social Media Thinking.” All are posted online.

Here’s the video:

The eBook, whitepaper and brief video are recommended to media organizations searching for simple rules to planning and governing use of social networks and new media technologies. Often myriad new technologies frustrate planners. The free eBook and companion paper bring some order to the development process.

The eBook is an easy, informative and entertaining read. The whitepaper is straight forward with some different sources. The video short is simply a nice respite.

Be social and share the eBook, whitepaper and video with family, friends and associates. Get everyone thinking about professional and beneficial uses of social media. Let’s use the new tools to improve everyone’s life.

In a fun style the eBook promotes simple rules for law and order among vast online social networks and overwhelming number of new media technologies. Mobile telephones and entertainment devices connect users to the Internet and family, friends and associates more immediately and persistently than ever. The always connected nature is changing all forms of media. Click here to answer our Polldaddy question – do you know who your audience?  You can always comment here, too.

Online social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn alter ways friends and family interact. So perhaps a few simple laws are in order to keep everything civil and to make best use of new technologies and new ways people communicate.

 

James Rowe

Rowe and Company, LLC

Technorati Tags: LinkedIn,YouTube,Polldaddy,Facebook,social media,new media,traditional media,Pew Research Center Pew Internet project,scribd,docstoc,slideshare

Social Media Simplified Webinar

Join us tomorrow for no cost Internet sessions on how to think about and plan social media for small businesses, medium businesses and community groups.

There are three sessions tomorrow and you can register now for the dimdim webinars.  Invites are limited to 20 for each session and if the meeting you want attend is unavailable we’ll make you aware of new schedules.

Register right now, right here at our dimdim site.

You’ll learn business processes to organize social media strategy.  Register today and do share; pass this information along to friends and associates.

Answer a few questions for us at SurveyMonkey.  Help us serve you better and please respond to the question “How can we serve you right now?”

James Rowe

Rowe and Company, LLC

Technorati Tags: dimdim,SurveyMoney,webinar,social media