Google gadgets can make it easy to feed live totals straight from your internal working documents to your website.

Like most newsrooms, we track vote totals precinct by precinct over the course of an election night, with some precincts reporting almost as soon as polls close and others taking two or three hours. Our web platform includes a nice-looking election ticker function, which we’ve used in the past, but having to go back and forth from our spreadsheet to the content management system, entering data manually the whole time, was a time-consuming process and we inevitably fell behind.

This year, we used Google Docs for the spreadsheet, allowing us to share it between multiple users in the newsroom, and fed the data directly from the spreadsheet into a widget on our homepage. All you need is a Google account, a working knowledge of spreadsheet formulas, and the ability to embed wild HTML in your site.

1. Set up your tracking spreadsheet. We had one countywide proposal that we were tracking and a number of local races that only had a few precincts, so this made our spreadsheet relatively simple. For the countywide question, we had four columns for each precinct: Yes votes, no votes, total (calculated by formula), and a column where we would simply enter “1″ for each precinct as it reported. This last column allowed us to automatically display how many precincts had reported and also calculate the percentage reporting.

2. Set up the data you want to display. The area where you enter all your data will probably be far too complicated to display conveniently, so you’ll want to have a section where all the data is displayed exactly the way you want to feed it into the site. You can make this pull data directly from the area where you’re making all your calculations, so you don’t have to enter anything directly into this area if you don’t want to.

Create a gadget to display your data.

3. Create a gadget to display your data. Go to the “Insert” menu, then select “Gadget.” In the menu you get next, select “Tables” on the left, then select the gadget titled “Table.” Google will ask you to select the cells you want to display. Highlight those cells, click “OK,” then click “Apply and close.”

4. Adjust the layout of your spreadsheet if needed. We had to try several different configurations to get the gadget to look good — in particular, if we had a header above the first race, the gadget kept trying to grab that header as part of the header for the entire chart, so it may take a few tries to make Step 3 yield a gadget that looks the way you want it to. (It’s also possible to use a separate gadget for each race you want to track, or to add gadgets that display selected data as pie graphs, etc., but we found that sticking with a single gadget was more attractive and took much less time to load.)

As an interesting aside, we found that if the column we used for percentages had nothing but divide-by-zero errors at first, the “#DIV/0!” message showed up in the gadget, but if that column had even a single legitimate value in any of its cells — such as the 0 resulting from dividing by the total number of precincts — the error message wouldn’t show up in the gadget.

Choose "Publish Gadget" both to grab the embed code and to update your data.

5. Get the embed code for your gadget. Once you’re comfortable with the way the gadget looks, click on it and go to the “Gadget” pulldown menu right above the display. Select “Publish.” Google will give you a block of code that starts with “<script src=…” and ends with “</script>”. Copy this code into a blank text document. Toward the end of the block of code, you’ll see “&height=(number)&width=(number).” Replace the automatically generated height and width numbers with whatever is appropriate for your data and the region on your site where you’ll be displaying it.

6. Embed the code in whatever way is appropriate for your platform. This will vary depending on your CMS.

A Google gadget in action on lenconnect.com.

7. Enter your data and update your gadget. The data in the gadget will update whenever you change the data in the spreadsheet that it’s pulling from. Important: In order to push the updated gadget out to your site, you need to go the menu at the top of the gadget, select “Publish Gadget,” and click “Done.” The display on your site will not automatically refresh — your readers will still need to reload the page — but the updated data will instantly be there, without you needing to touch anything in your CMS.

Modified from a description originally written for GHNewsroom.com.

New reading material.

I just discovered, via Greg Linch, Lisa Williams’ blog about learning to program as a summer project. Despite the best intentions, I’ve fallen behind on my own plans in that area, so Lisa’s project inspired me to take stock of where I’m at and set a few goals.

There are three main areas I’m trying to learn more about:

• HTML and CSS.
• The ins and outs of WordPress themes.
• PHP scripting.

There’s one small project that I think I can take in stages that will hit all of those areas. It’s creating a “Quick Links” section below a site’s main navigation to add prominence to important pages without interfering with the logic of the site’s navigational structure.

A "Quick Links" bar on artalicious.org.

We have this feature on our website at work and it’s really useful, so I wanted to find a way to duplicate it in WordPress.  (The image above is from the website for Art-A-Licious, an art festival in downtown Adrian. Gratuitous plug: If you’re in southeast Michigan or northwest Ohio, come to Adrian on the third weekend of September. It’ll be a great time.)

My first step was the clunkiest: Going into the theme’s header.php file and dropping a block of HTML code in there. It worked. But navigation links are part of a site’s content, and any solution that requires you to edit the template files just to update content isn’t a very good one.

The next step was to remove the need to go into the template to edit the content. Following one of the lessons in Smashing WordPress Themes, I added a widget area to the header in the Twenty Ten theme (basically retyping lines of PHP from the book without any real understanding; the comprehension comes next). But all the styling for the Quick Links menu is sitting right there in the widget, just waiting to be messed up by a typo or a mouse click in the wrong place. So what’s next?

The next step is to learn how to move the styling into the theme’s stylesheets, where it belongs. But after that — how much better would it be if, instead of having to manually type all the a href=blah blah blahs into the widget, you could use WordPress’ existing menu functionality to reduce the entire process to a drag-and-drop operation?

And after that, how much cooler would it be to create a plugin that would allow anyone to add a Quick Links menu to their site, without needing to write a single line of code?

So that’s the project. I’ve loaded up on books and I’m becoming good friends with the W3schools website. It feels good to learn something new. And if anyone has any great beginning PHP books to recommend, please let me know.

The post includes a list of some good plugins for news sites using WordPress, some of them written by the BDN for this project. The blog about the transition is an interesting read.

I also spent an afternoon this weekend going through about four years’ worth of archives on Mario Garcia’s blog, including posts about experimenting with front pages, designing better ads, and completely rethinking a newspaper’s organization.

OK, sure, they’d hang out on Twitter and Facebook, and probably serve as the primary moderator for story comment threads. But that could easily end up being only a fraction of a community engagement editor’s work week. If I were designing the position of community engagement editor for a newspaper, here are some of the things I’d put on the list:

1. Manage the news organization’s social media accounts and serve as an evangelist for social media use among the staff, holding workshops to teach interested staff members how Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools can help them with their work.
2. Teach staff members about curation tools they can use to enhance their reports.
3. Moderate comment threads — not just by monitoring them for inappropriate comment, but also by getting timely answers for reader questions posed in the threads.
4. Work with section editors to identify places where reader-submitted material can be used to enhance the newspaper’s content.
5. Reach out to schools and community organizations, holding meetings with their staff members to show them how they can get their content into print and onto the news organization’s Web site.
6. Organize free community workshops on topics like photography, with the goal of increasing community awareness of the newspaper’s interest in reader-submitted content and improving the overall quality of what’s submitted.
7. Identify and recruit people who would be willing to serve as occasional correspondents. The parent who’s bringing a camera to the game anyway and can send us pictures, allowing us to get art for games we aren’t able to staff; the running store owner who might be able to take charge of sending in results from 5Ks and other races.
8. Serve as a point of contact for reader-submitted content, giving regular contributors a familiar face to interact with and piloting the flow of information.
9. Hold regular “office hours” at places like coffee shops and restaurants to increase interaction between the newspaper staff and the community. When possible, invite another editor to come along.
10. Take charge of staffing booths at county fairs, chamber expos and other events that provide an opportunity for interaction with large numbers of people.

That’s my list so far. What would you add?

Robin Sloan writes at Snarkmarket about the economics concept of stock and flow and relates it to media:

Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind peo­ple that you exist.

Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the con­tent you pro­duce that’s as inter­est­ing in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what peo­ple dis­cover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, build­ing fans over time.

Ryan Sholin writes at Invisible Inkling about how this relates to online news:

“Breaking News” is the treadmill. It’s the “flow” that keeps your audience engaged, coming back, checking your site or your blog, turning on the TV, visiting your national news site on their phone first thing in the morning to check if anything has blown up overnight, subscribed to your hyperlocal blog’s e-mail updates, checking their RSS feeds to see what’s new. And that’s crucial to building and engaging online news consumers.

But it doesn’t last. The stuff that does last? The most obvious answers include investigative and enterprise reporting, but I think there’s room these days for great infographics and data visualizations, too. …

Recommended: Find the balance, online producer, between churning out a steady stream of content and taking time to build something of lasting value beyond the next few hours.

For a lot of sites, it probably wouldn’t take more than a few hits per day for a piece of “stock,” over the course of a year, to yield just as much traffic as the average “flow” story.

The disastrous error that newspapers made early in our digital lives was treating online advertising as a throw-in or upsell for their print advertisers. Helping businesses connect with customers was always our business. We were facing new technology and new opportunities and we did next to nothing to explore how we might use this new technology to help businesses connect with customers.

We just offered businesses the same old solutions that we offered in print, but pop-up ads and web banners somehow didn’t work as well as display ads. Which was just as well, because we told our business customers the ads weren’t worth much by the way we treated them.

For a long time, the way much of the newspaper industry handled the Web made about as much sense as trying to run a TV news broadcast by sending a newspaper reporter out to write a story, then feeding the text into an Amiga and making people watch as it scrolled across their TV screens. Or trying to make a TV commercial by pointing a camera at a Sears circular and filming as someone turned the pages.

But was this due to a failure of imagination on our parts — or was it something else?

Here’s what I keep coming back to:

If somebody in our building comes up with a unique idea in print — whether it’s for editorial, advertising or both — there are at least a half dozen people in the newsroom, and a half dozen more in the composing department, who know how to make it happen. But if it’s a unique idea for the Web … well, none of us are developers. Maybe we could make it happen, but maybe not.

The first newsroom I worked in after college had four full-time people in the newsroom. Every single one of us knew how to use QuarkXPress; every single one of us could lay out a page. I imagine it’s the same way at nearly every small paper: Working there and not knowing how to design a page would be almost unthinkable. But the chances of a small paper having a Web developer on staff are slim to none.

Most newspapers, regardless of size, are equipped to try new things in print. We have the tools, and we know how to use them. Online, not so much.

So this is my goal for 2010: to become as proficient with HTML and CSS — and Flash would be great as well — as with the tools of the print medium.  I don’t need to become a programmer or developer, any more than I can currently claim to be a graphic designer.  (I can’t, because I’m not.)  But I want to reach a level of basic competence, enough so that if somebody says “Hey, can we experiment with this new way of doing something?” I can confidently say “Yes, we can make that happen.”

Further reading:

• How Programmer/Journalists Are Changing the News, by Leah Betancourt. Mashable, Dec. 11, 2009.
• The programmer as journalist: A Q&A with Adrian Holovaty, by Robert Niles. Online Journalism Review, June 5, 2006.
• 10 ways that ad sales people can save newspapers, by Paul Bradshaw. Online Journalism Blog, Aug. 29, 2008.
• A Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection, by Steve Buttry. (With related posts.) Pursing the Complete Community Connection, April 27, 2009.

A nice little ego boost, certainly, for those of us who work for conventional media outlets. But what does it really mean — and what doesn’t it mean?

What it means:

• That the bulk of original journalism on important news stories is still coming out of large organizations — primarily, though not exclusively, those that produce pulp-and-ink newspapers. (Although there is some disagreement on whether the study’s definition of news is valid or leads to the study being a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

What it doesn’t mean:

• That the bulk of original journalism comes from newspapers because pulp-and-ink newspapers are inherently superior. Let’s not confuse the organization with the medium here — presumably most of the news organizations in question operate Web sites as well. Why give sole credit for these stories to the print medium? (A partial argument for this interpretation can be made by noting that, at most organizations that operate both a print product and a Web product, the print product still generates most of the revenue. But that’s not necessarily the way it will always be.)
• That original journalism would go away if pulp-and-ink newspapers went away. To reach this conclusion, you would have to assume that no other medium would ever be able to fill that gap. It’d be like saying “Microsoft Windows is on 91% of all computers, so if Microsoft went away, computers would go away too.”

I love newspapers. I always have. I also believe there’s value in the existence of large newsgathering institutions with plenty of resources.

But, hey, old-media colleagues — let’s not make this study out to mean more than it really does, OK?

Further reading:

• “Study Finds That Papers Lead in Providing News Information,” by Richard Perez-Pena. New York Times, Jan. 10, 2010.
• “The state of the art of news,” by Jeff Jarvis. BuzzMachine, Jan. 11, 2010.
• “Agreeing (mainly) about the future of news,” by Howard Weaver. The Weaver Wire, Jan. 11, 2010.
• “Old media find comfort in study of Baltimore media (they didn’t look very close),” by Steve Buttry. Pursuing the Complete Community Connection, Jan, 11, 2010.

Headlines were mostly handwritten, stories were mostly typed on a manual typewriter, printing was done by photocopier, and the paper was illustrated primarily by clip art. (And I don’t mean the Microsoft Word kind of clip art — I mean the kind of clip art that had to be literally clipped from a page.)  Sports stories were accompanied by hand-drawn illustrations; we didn’t run any photos until the final issue, in 1992.

At the risk of being self-indulgent, here’s a collection of pages from The Waldorf Weekly, from the first issue to the last:

[View with PicLens]

 

Others have done a far better job than I can of addressing the editorial’s arguments (see both story links above), but I want to zoom in on one particular passage:

We advocate abolishing the term “citizen journalist.” These people can call themselves “citizen news gatherers,” but it is no more appropriate to call them citizen journalists than it would be to sit before a citizen judge or be operated on by a citizen brain surgeon.

That analogy struck me as a poor fit. I believe in the value of what journalists do, but it’s just not analogous to the work of a judge or a brain surgeon. So I started thinking: What comparison would make more sense?

Here’s what I ended up with. I think it demonstrates both the function and value of citizen journalists and the reasons why those of us who get paid to do journalism full time don’t need to find the concept of citizen journalism threatening.

Does the analogy work? Let me know.

SCENARIO: GABLE’S GROCERY AND DELI

I’m the owner and proprietor of Gable’s Grocery and Deli, a nice little store in Analogytown, USA.  I employ a dedicated team of talented sandwich artists who can make you the best lunch you’ve ever had. I also have a supplier who sends a load of delicious, fresh produce to the store every morning for you to buy and take home.

The grocery and deli: A traditional news organization. The sandwich artists: Reporters, photographers and editors. The produce supplier: The Associated Press.

CASE 1: MRS. JOHNSON’S BROWNIES

Some of my customers would love to have a little dessert to polish off their lunches. Now, I have limited oven space … and besides, my small staff doesn’t have enough hours in the day to add baking to their list of responsibilities. Since profit margins in the grocery business are generally pretty slim, I can’t afford to hire anyone else.

But I happen to know that my neighbor, Mrs. Johnson, makes excellent brownies. She certainly wouldn’t mind a little extra income, so we enter into a little business deal: Every night, she’ll bake a fresh tray of brownies, wrap them up, and bring them by the store in the morning for me to sell. She benefits because she has a place to sell her products; I benefit because I can offer my customers something I couldn’t before; my customers benefit because now they can buy brownies to go with their sandwiches.

Mrs. Johnson: A correspondent or freelancer.

CASE 2: DOUG’S TOMATOES

Doug owns a big patch of land just outside town. He’s known for his huge vegetable garden, where he spends at least two or three hours a day.

This year, Doug has a bumper crop of tomatoes. I mean, the yield is huge. It’s way more than he and his wife could ever eat, even if they canned some for winter. He tells me he’s thinking about setting up a little roadside stand to sell off some of the excess, but I ask him if he’s like to sell his tomatoes inside my store.

Doug: A citizen journalist.

CASE 3: THE HIGH SCHOOL BAKE SALE

The students at Analogytown High School want to hold a bake sale on Saturday. (They’re raising money for new SAT prep materials — just because they live in Analogytown doesn’t mean that stuff comes easy.)

They could set up in the school parking lot or in somebody’s front yard, but let’s face it — they wouldn’t get much traffic besides a handful of parents. So they ask if they can set up their table outside the grocery store. All Saturday, they do a brisk business, and so do I.

The bake sale organizers: Again, citizen journalists.

WHERE IS THIS LEADING?

As the owner of this fictional grocery store and deli, I can respond two ways to, say, the idea of a high school bake sale or Doug selling his tomatoes at a roadside stand.

I can immediately go on the defensive: “What — somebody else selling food in the area? That’s competition! Why would I let you use my property?”  Maybe I can even make a stink about them not having the appropriate permits, and tell people that amateurs getting into the food business will ruin everything.

Or I can realize the advantages I could reap by hosting to the bake sale and bringing Doug’s excess tomatoes into my store. In the case of Doug’s crops, people will remember that my store is where they got all those delicious tomatoes last summer. In the case of the bake sale, chances are several of the students will have a parent or grandparent stop by … and not all of those parents and grandparents will be people who’ve been to my store before, meaning I have a chance to get them hooked on my award-winning Reubens.

Am I going to consider laying off my purchasing manager on the grounds that now I have Doug bringing in tomatoes? Of course not. Doug’s tomatoes are great, and they’re a valuable addition to my store, but they’re only available a few weeks out of the year.  I need both that seasonal variety and the dependence of year-round produce to make my business healthy, and I know it.

We can view the development of more and better tools for citizen journalism as a threat — or we can see it as an opportunity. I think I have a pretty good idea which way will turn out better.

(All photos from stock.xchng. Grocery store by OBMonkey, brownie by tazzmaniac, tomatoes by edmondo, cupcakes by tam_oliver.)

I say: “What’s a print job?”

Newspapers and magazines are considered part of the print publishing category. Which makes sense to a large extent. But I suspect most news organizations have very few people who can be defined as working exclusively in “print jobs.” Which means that even though “internet-based jobs” are excluded from the count, the characterization of everything that remains as a “print job” is not entirely accurate.

I’m looking at The Daily Telegram’s staff directory right now. Except for a few people in circulation and the press room, there’s hardly anyone whose job is exclusively focused on print. In the newsroom, there’s not a single person who isn’t engaged in producing content for two different platforms. But because our jobs span two platforms, they’re apparently considered “print jobs” (and thus, if we get laid off, anyone who’s pushing the print-is-dead narrative will have another statistic to feel vindicated by).

So, do I have a “print job”? No, I don’t. I work for a news organization that operates across more than one platform, and my job is to produce and edit content — no matter what medium it’s distributed in.