10 things that could go into a community engagement editor’s job description

March 31, 2010 by Erik Gable · 2 Comments
 

This Nieman Lab post about Voice of San Diego’s search for an “engagement editor” got me thinking about all the things somebody in that kind of position could do — and just how far the potential extends.

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?

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Why my new year’s resolution is to learn about programming

January 30, 2010 by Erik Gable · 3 Comments
 

I’ve found myself quoting Steve Buttry a lot lately, particularly his posts about innovation in the news business. In an August 2009 post titled “Newspapers’ original sin: Not failing to charge but failing to innovate,” he wrote:

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:

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Notes on Pew’s “where news comes from” study

January 11, 2010 by Erik Gable · 1 Comment
 

A “where news comes from” study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that the vast majority of original reporting on six major news stories in Baltimore, Md., came from newspapers.

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:

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The news as food: An analogy for the citizen journalism debate

December 9, 2009 by Erik Gable · 5 Comments
 

Jay Rosen recently interviewed Dirck Halstead, editor and publisher of The Digital Journalist, about that publication’s December 2009 editorial, titled “Let’s Abolish ‘Citizen Journalists’.”

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

grocery storeI’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

brownieSome 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

tomatoesDoug 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

bake saleThe 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.)

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Stop lamenting — the printed word isn’t going anywhere

November 3, 2009 by Erik Gable · 1 Comment
 

In a New York Times column titled “Lament on the Fading Culture of the Printed Word,” Susan Dominus joins the ranks of those bemoaning the state of today’s media landscape:

Over the years, how many people have read Joan Didion’s pointed, moody, celebrated essays and come to New York in the hope of writing some of their own? The path of those would-be writers is patently stubborn, given the tone Ms. Didion strikes in the essay so many name as their favorite, “Goodbye to All That.” It is a famous elegy for the passing of youth, but also a catalog of Manhattan’s enervating clichés, and, implicitly, a rejection of the New York literary scene she inhabited.

I went back and reread the essay the other day because the title, final and nostalgic, has been reverberating through my mind on a regular basis. I hear it, for example, every time I go to a party and run into a writer or editor I admire who has recently been laid off. So many people in the world of book and magazine publishing greet every such piece of news with a flash back to 12 or 20 years ago. Back then, if anyone with a flair for stringing sentences together lost a job, it was a given that he would land quickly on his feet at an online publication or a small publishing house. But now, goodbye to all that. I have the same thought when some 22-year-old wants help placing a 6,000-word article: Goodbye to all that. When old friends and colleagues from the industry meet up at some sort of gathering, we look at each other and laugh and shrug and marvel at the changing landscape. We mourn more seriously in private.

Here’s the thing.  I don’t know anything about the New York literary scene, but I’ll tell you this: In small and mid-sized markets around the country, the printed word is alive and well.

Out here, we live in a different reality from the culture Ms. Dominus describes at places like Conde Nast: being encouraged to eat out and put the tab on your expense account; being reimbursed up to $15 for eating lunch at your desk.  If you’re used to that kind of atmosphere, which Ms. Dominus accurately describes as “glittering, gluttonous self-indulgence,” then yes — you’ll probably be disappointed when it all comes crashing down.

But is the culture of the printed word fading? I don’t think so.

I have, sitting on my desk, a copy of a local lifestyle magazine we publish. The cover story is an interesting, well-crafted feature by Sue Van Fleet about two Dominican nuns who have built a reputation together as first-class designers of churches and other sacred spaces across the country.  Would the topic impress the Manhattan cocktail set? Maybe not. But the care that went into crafting that story demonstrates nothing but reverence for the beauty of language, the nuances of words.

Looking to place that 6,000-word article?  Well, if it’s 6,000 words worth of self-indulgence, I wouldn’t bet on your chances.  But if that 6,000-word feature is well-written and relevant to a community’s life, you’ll find a market.

And maybe that market won’t be a Conde Nast publication. But it just might be one of the many small publications that cover the nation outside New York — there is a nation outside New York, you know! — and that in some cases are managing, even in a brutally punishing economy, to grow.

I agree with Jacqueline Carney when she writes:

To the wanton greed I say, with relief, “Goodbye to All That.” But unlike Dominus, who concludes that “even the most jaded among our ranks are not ready to say goodbye to all that,” I say I am. and I am ready to welcome the era of the internet that will hopefully put more commercial endeavors on an even plane so that the executives and the foot soldiers are equally rewarded. The essence of cars–transportation–will not disappear; and the essence of literary culture will be just fine. People, by their very nature, crave to tell and read stories, to fantasize, to learn and to opine. So while the paper industry and the bookshelf industry might suffer, the new scene–the internet and the electronic media–will enable literature to thrive on an equal, if not larger, scale and it will be possible to make a living providing it. We just won’t be able to gorge on the pocketbooks of the general public like we used to.

To the folks in those literary circles — please don’t think that the demise of the things you’re used to means the demise of literary culture or the end of valuing the written word.  Sure, the future may not be what you’re used to. Maybe you can’t get paid handsomely to spend your evenings kibbitzing about literature over cocktails anymore — but that was never the reality outside of a tiny little circle anyway.  The printed word is not dead, and if you spend more time looking at the possibilities of what’s new and less time complaining about what’s been lost, you might find yourself pleasantly surprised.

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The death of narrative? Not really.

November 1, 2009 by Erik Gable · Leave a Comment
 

From Dan Conover comes a great essay titled “Narrative is dead! Long live narrative!”

In case you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the piece Conover is responding to: a Washington Post story complaining that “in our modern click-and-skim world, there’s dwindling time and space for the expertly crafted narrative.” It’s a lament I’ve heard before, whether from people mocking USA Today for its charts-and-graphics approach to the news, or from people under the impression that Web users are nothing but a bunch of espresso’d-up 14-year-olds with ADHD and the attention spans of gnats.

There are two problems here:

1. The assumption that in order to be serious journalism, a piece must consist of inches upon inches of dense prose.

2. The assumption that inches upon inches of dense prose, even when they’re appropriate (and I do think there are times when they are), can’t grab the attention of today’s reader.

Here’s Conover:

The current mainstream assumption is that we have to dumb down journalism to survive in the digital era. Dave Kindred seems to have reached that conclusion and accepted it in a column that made me want to reach through the screen and shake him. The answer isn’t dumbing down, and Baseball Hall of Fame sportswriters ought to be the first people to understand this.

Did the invention of the box score ruin sportswriting? No? Why not?

Could it be that human beings process different types of information in different ways, with different needs at different times?

… Do you get it now? Today’s revolution isn’t about killing narrative, but about inventing box scores for actions that don’t take place in ballparks.

Narrative isn’t dead.  If we see less of it, that’s because we’re finally figuring out that there are times when it’s appropriate and times when it isn’t. And I believe readers will continue taking the time to read long-form narrative — if we’ve proven that we respect their time enough that we won’t ask them to sit through 2,000 words of copy unless it’s really worth it.

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“I was there when …”

August 18, 2009 by Erik Gable · Leave a Comment
 

Just a little late-night philosophizing.

Twenty or thirty years from now, what will we tell our children, grandchildren or students about journalism in the first few decades of the 21st century?

Will we look back with a wistful sigh and tell them we were there when journalism died?

Nah.

Will we remember these years as a golden age?

Nope, not that either. That phrase implies something that’s developed, mature, thriving, flourishing — like the Age of Pericles or the Pax Romana, a time when things were going great, but not a whole lot was changing. No, definitely not that.

But we’ll remember this period as an exciting one. Scary? Absolutely. Terrifying, even. The grit-your-teeth, reach-for-the-Rolaids years. But exciting. We’ll remember it as a time when everything we knew was starting to crumble, and so we tried everything. When we tried a whole lot of things that failed — but most importantly, when we tried a lot of things. When we didn’t know exactly what to do next, so we experimented like crazy, coming up with one plan after another … sometimes throwing them by the wayside, sometimes trying them only to watch them crash and burn, and sometimes making them succeed.

Again: We’ll remember that we tried a lot, and we failed a lot, but most importantly, we tried.

We tried, and we learned.

Is anything more exciting than that?

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