Ken Sands, online publisher at Spokane Review: Automation is key to everything we do. (has 2 web developers) We attempt to automate everything.
Amy Webb of Dragonfire (dfire.com) an award-winning non-profit online newsmagazine affiliated with Drexel University. (1.2 million unique users):
Does multimedia on every big issue. Uses pre-made Flash templates to automate - indeed, she handed out discs with several of them.Image cubesMaster of the winds, Journals of medicinel
Ron Parsons, of Yahoo! News:
Automation is the basis and the strength of Yahoo. Most automated functions are informed by human editors. Also takes note of the wisdom of crowds.But automation does not replace editors. Yahoo news began as almost completely automated. That only takes you so far. It now allows for feeds from dozens of partners, conent flows into appropriate templates and categories. can be automatically published and updated.
Automatically updating slideslows. Automatically generates several sizes of thumbnails of thousands of photos a day. New photos can be edited and added in real time, don't need photo editors to resize images.
It was open source software they tweaked (!) Extractions of stories is based on metadata, slugs, even headlines or lede. Tools sit on top of a system and allow add-ons, editors can modify as need be. RSS feeds automatically create a robust product, automated alerts for stale feeds, bad servers or bad XML alert editors to problems.Engaged enginners. Tools are critical to success of today's newsroom. Need to have lightweight flexible tools (but) editors still rule.
Adrian Holovaty, brilliant database builder, built Chicagocrime.org, the Washington Post's Congressional votes database, and Faces of the Fallen: (first two require NO maintenance unless the databases they pull the information from are changed, Otherwise they just run on their own)Tragedy in journalism is not declining circ, revenue, bias etc, (see his powerpoint presentation here, he whomped through the intro slides to effectively establish the backdrop for his remarks) but rather that we collect all this info an throw it out. Instead of narratives, we should record data in a neat organized way that has consistent meaning to a computer program.
Newspapers have huge infrastructures for collecting information, verifying it and publishing it. But they haven't leveraged the data.
Craig's List and Wikipedia just provided the great frameworks ready for data, users provide it. Newspapers have great data desperate for a framework. If data is automated, then you can automate stuff.
At Lawrence.com, they put everything into a database. Bars and drink specials, what restaurants are open late, local bands, their songs, their gigs, what other bands the musicians play in and what their songs and gigs are, cross referenced to the nightclubs and the specials and all that. So, if you are hungry late at night and want to know what restaurants are open right now, the site can readily tell you.
For Chicagocrime.org, every block in the city has it's own RSS feed pulled from Chicago PD website.
"I spend no time on it. It took 40 hours to make."
Congressional votes database updates six times a day, RSS feed set up for every member of Congress. No time maintaining it. There is an initial cost but no ongoing costs. "the key difference between local journalism and Google (is Google has organized, structured data)."
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Staffing and structure panel
The moderator, Neil Chase, has a job like mine, he was recently named the continuous news editor at the NY Times. He led two media panelists: Rob Curley, the wunderkind who put Lawrence.com on the map and had been working for the Washpost.com for three days at the time of the panel; Patrick Steigman of ESPN; and a consultant who is a change expert who I frankly got really nothing out of. (she said people can be resistant to change so you have to keep pushing them to change and then the change will happen and everyone will be OK with it.)
I was hoping for a discussion of staffing structures, instead it was more of a discussion about how Naples did a fabulous project, how ESPN works and about change in general. "Change is an organic process." (see above).
Curley, who is always fun to listen to, like his partner in crime Adrian Holovaty, said:"Own breaking news at the local level." Go hyperlocal.Database driven coverage creates additional value for material you collect. (more on this later from Adrian.)
"If we could have figured out in Naples how to beam content to your ass we would have done so."
"Extend the reach of your organization." Through online.
He was mostly talking about the excellent package Naples did on real estate costs, which they corroborated with a custom-built searchable online database of real estate transactions in the area. They hadn't intended to make it live, that is, to update it, but users demanded it. Reporters found subjects willing to talk about how much they make, how they afford -- or can't afford -- housing in Naples, did videos and stories. Also did lots of behind the scenes podcasts in which reporters did not opine but just talked about what they had found out through their reporting. Videos were documentary style, not like the nightly news.
"It was never about migration to print. If they (print) get it, great."The online staff played an active role in producing content for the newspaper. Worked because they had strong support from executive editor (also their print and online sides were never under separate management.)He said the Scripps Co., which owns lots of TV stations in addition to newspapers, was willing to pay for TV training, but urged them instead to learn on their own so it wouldn't be too polished and slick.
My colleague Ron James noted how professional the graphics looked. Rob said they hired an able graphics guy to make the logos, which swirl like they were on Fox news, partly to hide the rougher edges.They spent $200,000 to create a TV studio. Their TV colleagues were smirking that they'd never be able to do it on such a small budget but they did things on the cheap.
How did they encourage people to contribute to online? (this is important for us) "We treated even baby steps with cheers." Made huge fuss over little things for positive reinforcement "It's OK to launch products for internal reasons (for learning)"What do you ask of reporters? They have to record audio, they have to read the comments posted on their stories."Look, if we don't know what we're doing, it's OK. (just don't fail on same thing twice and learn from it.) If it royally sucks we can take it off the server and deny it ever existed."
ESPN has 50 people working online, it's a working newsroom, disctinct from but aligned with the TV product. He was touting ESPN Insider, which is a pay-to-play proposition. Has 35 bloggers. (I did later tell Pat that one sign of his success was shown in a top Yahoo news story of the day, a man named his son ESPN, pronounced Espin. He said it was about the sixth such christening.) ESPN has an internal newswire, a common news desk that edits stuff and then sends it out for the various platforms.
Curley made a good distinction, something I was talking about in some detail with my new friend, Ashley Wells, who runs a Skunk Works lab at MSNBC.com: It's not just that you have a story and a video and pictures and sound, but that you have to "integrate multiple types of media into seamless storytelling." What Ashley was saying is that it's stupid to have a video that says the same thing as the story. I'd put it differently: why lead readers/users over the same ground twice?
I was hoping for a discussion of staffing structures, instead it was more of a discussion about how Naples did a fabulous project, how ESPN works and about change in general. "Change is an organic process." (see above).
Curley, who is always fun to listen to, like his partner in crime Adrian Holovaty, said:"Own breaking news at the local level." Go hyperlocal.Database driven coverage creates additional value for material you collect. (more on this later from Adrian.)
"If we could have figured out in Naples how to beam content to your ass we would have done so."
"Extend the reach of your organization." Through online.
He was mostly talking about the excellent package Naples did on real estate costs, which they corroborated with a custom-built searchable online database of real estate transactions in the area. They hadn't intended to make it live, that is, to update it, but users demanded it. Reporters found subjects willing to talk about how much they make, how they afford -- or can't afford -- housing in Naples, did videos and stories. Also did lots of behind the scenes podcasts in which reporters did not opine but just talked about what they had found out through their reporting. Videos were documentary style, not like the nightly news.
"It was never about migration to print. If they (print) get it, great."The online staff played an active role in producing content for the newspaper. Worked because they had strong support from executive editor (also their print and online sides were never under separate management.)He said the Scripps Co., which owns lots of TV stations in addition to newspapers, was willing to pay for TV training, but urged them instead to learn on their own so it wouldn't be too polished and slick.
My colleague Ron James noted how professional the graphics looked. Rob said they hired an able graphics guy to make the logos, which swirl like they were on Fox news, partly to hide the rougher edges.They spent $200,000 to create a TV studio. Their TV colleagues were smirking that they'd never be able to do it on such a small budget but they did things on the cheap.
How did they encourage people to contribute to online? (this is important for us) "We treated even baby steps with cheers." Made huge fuss over little things for positive reinforcement "It's OK to launch products for internal reasons (for learning)"What do you ask of reporters? They have to record audio, they have to read the comments posted on their stories."Look, if we don't know what we're doing, it's OK. (just don't fail on same thing twice and learn from it.) If it royally sucks we can take it off the server and deny it ever existed."
ESPN has 50 people working online, it's a working newsroom, disctinct from but aligned with the TV product. He was touting ESPN Insider, which is a pay-to-play proposition. Has 35 bloggers. (I did later tell Pat that one sign of his success was shown in a top Yahoo news story of the day, a man named his son ESPN, pronounced Espin. He said it was about the sixth such christening.) ESPN has an internal newswire, a common news desk that edits stuff and then sends it out for the various platforms.
Curley made a good distinction, something I was talking about in some detail with my new friend, Ashley Wells, who runs a Skunk Works lab at MSNBC.com: It's not just that you have a story and a video and pictures and sound, but that you have to "integrate multiple types of media into seamless storytelling." What Ashley was saying is that it's stupid to have a video that says the same thing as the story. I'd put it differently: why lead readers/users over the same ground twice?
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