BrianManzullo.com

The ups and downs of geolocation tools, and what we can learn from them

It seems many people are looking toward geolocation as the future of social media — that is, if it isn’t already “here” now.

The evolution of online networking has taken big steps the past few years. We’ve already nailed down connecting with friends and family (MySpace, then Facebook). We then nailed down connecting with random people and professional types (Twitter). Now we’re in the business of showing people where we’re at and where we’ve been (Foursquare, Gowalla, BrightKite, etc.). Twitter allows us to do this, and Facebook will, too.

Many people I’ve talked to think these geolocation apps are gimmicks — games that some people, especially social media hounds, will drool over, while others will stay content chatting on Facebook and Twitter. Fair enough. But like it or not, there are benefits of geolocation to journalists — although not without ethical and safety issues.

Developing technology

This past #wjchat, on Wednesday, was one of the better ones in terms of covering an issue from every aspect. The guest was Chad Graham, social media editor at azcentral.com (Arizona Republic), and the topic was exactly this: Geolocation. What are its benefits? How can journalists use it? What ethical issues surface from its use?

The reason why, in the first line of this post, I said if it isn’t already “here” now, is because in one sense, geolocation isn’t really “here.” Few people are using it right now outside of tech-savvy, public relations types and social media enthusiasts. Why? Besides the fact that this concept is still quite young, it doesn’t present the wide array of benefits that Twitter and Facebook did when they came along. Apps such as Foursquare can certainly connect you to people based on location, but most people ask, “Why should I make this effort to ‘check in’ to places?”

That’s a good question. Foursquare answers with the mayor label and an array of badges. Incentives (More on this later). So in a sense, geolocation is still developing, and it’s only going to go as far as its popularity. Unless people are given a reason to use this technology now, it’s going to grow slower than the wildfire growth we saw with Twitter and Facebook.

That isn’t to say geolocation will never fully catch on. It is right now, among a few demographics. And it is giving journalists another element to work with when covering stories.

Geojournalism

Graham pointed out several benefits of geolocation Wednesday, including an example on how a tourism reporter can use it. In essence, it allows journalists to easily find people who frequent certain places without having to perform trial-and-error on location.

Another great use of geolocation: Building your brand. Some news organizations, including the Grand Rapids Press (where I currently work), are working to geotag stories with locations, perhaps as “tips.” Therefore, when people are using Foursquare and are looking up places to eat, drink, dance, lay on the beach, etc., they will find written stories (or, even better, summaries with links) about those places. Foursquare organizes tips based on your proximity, so getting as many stories filed onto this tool (and hopefully linked to), the better.

What parts of the newsroom benefit most from geolocation? In my opinion, it’s cops and courts. The most underused element of any news site is the police log. One of the new features of Central Michigan Life’s Web site when it debuted last August (I was editor in chief at the time) was a Google Map embedded into a page that marked critical arrests and incidents based on data from several police departments. This is, by far, the greatest way to present police data to readers, especially if it can be mobilized and track recent crimes based on where the user is at. How many news organizations are still not utilizing this is beyond me.

The Mashable story I linked to above provides more ways of using Foursquare as a journalistic tool. You can use it to source information from tips, crowdsource news w/ badges, etc.

The “dark side” of geolocation

As to be expected, however, there are several ethical and safety concerns that arise when dealing with, you know, showing people where they’re at and when.

A PCWorld story I read recently gave some great reasons what companies can do with your data. The biggest concern? Having Foursquare bought out by another company and having the privacy policy you originally agreed to get thrown out the window. “Imagine the wealth of location data available to legal authorities now,” Dan Tynan writes.

The other great concern, obviously, is safety. Graham pointed out during #wjchat that safety comes first. I completely agree. Geolocation is not enough of a necessity in journalism, and is not recommended for people, including journalists, when there is a concern of safety. One way you can reduce the risk of stalking is by “checking in” to places right before you leave, but the obvious remedy is not using geolocation altogether. People choose to share location-based information, after all.

As for an ethical issue, here’s one, via Graham: Would reporters checking in to places be seen as an endorsement? A former colleague of mine, Chad Livengood, a reporter now with the News Journal in Wilmington, De., addressed a similar issue — “liking” pages on Facebook — by writing this:

NOTE: Because I am a political reporter, I sometimes will become a “fan” of a certain politician, just to see what he/she is writing to constituents and voters. In no way does it mean that I endorse or support any politician or public official. It also does NOT mean I am necessarily a “fan” of them — or vice-versa.

Perhaps a note such as this would quell that issue on Foursquare? It’s an interesting dynamic, for sure. Feel free to comment if you have a take on the matter.

Conclusion

Like it or not, geolocation is going to play a part in the future of social media and journalism. The future of news is hyperlocal and personalized, both of which geolocation plays a part in. Whether apps such as Foursquare or something down the road catch on like wildfire or not, we need to acknowledge that proximity plays a factor in news and what’s going on around you. It always has, in some sense.

There are other little things we can learn from these tools, too. For example, Foursquare’s incentives idea (mayors, badges) should be applied to other areas, such as comments sections (I’ve talked about this before, with Huffington Post’s use of it). It’s a great way to get people a little more motivated to participate in conversation, and it also can allow people to self-moderate the comments area for you.

My hope is that every news organization is experimenting with geolocation and, if it isn’t, it should start as soon as possible if it wants to remain relevant among its readership. After all, if you’re not trying new technologies and staying ahead of the game, you’re falling behind and quickly losing relevance. Just be wary of the safety and ethical implications that arise with this new technology.

One final thought, thanks to Dorrine Mendoza, online content producer for North County Times: Geolocation tools are “like finding a $5 bill, you get unexpected rewards.”

Continue reading...

Michigan news media aggregating an unlikely earthquake

A little before 2 p.m. today, an earthquake (epicenter near Ottawa and Montreal) seemed to shake Michigan, mostly the eastern side of the state. That’s where I happen to be right now, visiting family.

I didn’t feel it, probably because I was driving home when it supposedly happened but, as soon as I read about it on Twitter, I looked for more information.

Here are some of the things I found, mainly from Michigan media, within a span of 40 minutes following the tremors:

• AnnArbor.com was among the first on it. Along with updates on its Twitter, it posted a story and a map of the epicenter, but also incorporated a Twitter feed searching for “earthquake.” That’s a great way to centralize content and conversation on its site.
• The Detroit News Twitter account started simply with this: “Did anyone else feel that?” It would be retweeted nine times (as of me writing this post). However, its site update doesn’t link. (At least not as of 3:07 p.m.)
• MLive.com, initiated by the Grand Rapids Press, posted a story with a lot of aggregation. One of my first thoughts following the quake: Does that happen a lot in Michigan? They were right on top of it with a link. (Michigan’s earthquake history here, thanks to a good friend of mine, Justin Engel)
• The Detroit Free Press had a story online with some aggregation at 2:07 p.m. It would later update on Twitter and Facebook, asking followers what they felt.
• The Globe and Mail in Toronto is all over it, too. There’s a story, a Twitter feed, a live blog and even a Google Map with the epicenter marked. (Have I ever mentioned that Google Maps is still one of the most underused widgets on news sites?)
  
  My favorite part: in the live blog, someone posted a video in the aftermath of the quake, from Ottawa. That happens when you build a strong community around you.

Overall, despite the earthquake being such an unexpected event, it’s nice to see a lot of media around me pick up the story, run with it and think of other ways to incorporate reader discussion. We might forget about this quake a month from now (assuming nothing else happens), but the important thing is readers were talking about it. And they probably will throughout the rest of the day. Progress!

Continue reading...

What reporters and newspapers can learn from the Phoenix Suns

First, a disclosure: I’ve been a Phoenix Suns fan since the mid-’90s, the days of Charles Barkley, Dan Majerle and Kevin Johnson. So I’ve been following them a long time, and especially now, since they’re in the Western Conference Finals.

The Suns also reached the conference finals in 2005 and 2006, both losing efforts — but this year has been a particularly interesting experience. On the sports side of it, it’s because when this team is doing well (I say that because this series hasn’t exactly shown much of it), it is contagious to watch. The Suns play at a fast pace and with some of the best chemistry I’ve seen in a long time out of the NBA.

This year, there’s another side to it: The networking side. The Suns, from the organization down to the players, are showcasing a great use of social networking and communication.

I’ll explain, starting from the top.

The organization

Every team in the NBA and other major sports has a Twitter account they use to link to stories, provide updates and sometimes retweet players and fans. The Suns organization uses theirs better than most. It uses a universal account, @PhoenixSuns, and it doesn’t just use it to spread team news. It regularly does promotions, holds contests for tickets (even to playoff games!) and retweets its fans, among other things. There’s no face to the account, but the organization still gets on ground level and interacts with its audience — a lot.

The Suns’ vice president of interactive services, Jeramie McPeek, explains on Twitter interaction (watch the entire video, it’s a great peek at what they do):

Be relevant, be transparent, give them sort of a behind-the-scenes look into your world … and after awhile, they’ll start to appreciate that and feel connected to you and want to follow you and tell their friends about you, and it just kind of spreads virally from there.

Another thing I love: The Suns organization gets its employees involved, too. Have them be “brand ambassadors,” as McPeek says.

All of this needs to apply to more organizations, particularly in news. When I look at a newspaper’s Twitter feed, I don’t want to see a rehashed RSS feed of headlines. If I want today’s headlines, I’ll go to your Web site. What makes Twitter so useful, as we’ve established, is how it allows us to connect with millions of people on a simple interface and interact with them. Mix in some news headlines every now and then, especially breaking news as it develops, but get your followers involved by talking with them, retweeting, holding promotions/contests, etc. Easy.

The players

Another dynamic to the 2010 Suns’ playoff run: Now I can follow players on Twitter, such as Steve Nash, Grant Hill, Amar’e Stoudemire, Jason Richardson (who’s from my hometown of Saginaw, Mich.) and Jared Dudley.

Typically, players will use their account to interact with friends, other players and sometimes talk to a fan or two. But I was really impressed by one of Jared Dudley’s tweets Friday night (right).

The Suns, down 2-0 after two tough losses in Los Angeles, were basically back to the drawing board last week. They had little success in shutting down Kobe and the Lakers’ big men (Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom), and their shooting rarely got going, except for a run in the third quarter of Game 2 that tied the game entering the fourth. So they went to work in the three days between games.

Dudley comes off the bench for Phoenix, but he has quickly become one of my favorite players, in part because of his interaction in interviews and with fans. Most professional basketball players wouldn’t think of asking fans what they think their team needs to do to win. Not only did Dudley do that, but he retweeted several responses. He said he received more than 600 replies and said his teammates would read them as well. The adjustments they made, whether influenced by fans, seem to have paid off so far — the Suns won Game 3 and have a chance to even the series Tuesday.

Interaction is key

Newspapers around the country are trying to find ways to better connect to today’s audience. While some are having success at using their Twitter account with some versatility, many really should take a page from the Suns’ playbook.

What they are succeeding at is bridging unity between the organization, the players and the fans.

The Suns are closing the gap between themselves (including the players) and their audience, the same sort of gap that is ever so wide between news companies and readers. And the timing, with this being playoff season, is impeccable. While reaching the Western Conference Finals certainly helps liven up a fan base, so does reaching out to them and listening to them. The more connected the fans feel, the louder they’ll scream at games, the more loyal they’ll stay to your organization.

The Phoenix Suns — from the top of the organization down to the beloved players on the court — are setting a standard news companies should achieve.

Oh — and to the team — good luck the rest of the series! I’ll be watching a couple thousand miles away.

Continue reading...

Linking the print product with the online product: Do your readers know what you offer online?

One part of the online battle for journalists is building an effective Web presence. But it doesn’t mean much if your readers know little about it.

Admittedly, one of Central Michigan Life’s struggles throughout the past year has been consistently promoting its online content. Like most other student newspapers around the country, our only effective promotional tool is our newspaper. And in Mount Pleasant, a city of less than 25,000 people, our print product is still our readers’ main source of news.

We have to use our print product to link our content with the Web, just like we would link in stories online. It’s pretty simple: if you don’t do a good job of telling readers the benefits of regularly checking your Web site, they won’t go to your site. (It kind of goes without saying that they won’t go if you don’t deliver on those benefits, either)

A couple signs I’m seeing that point to readers not engaging enough with us at the moment: Zero responses on many of our conversation starters on Facebook, and fewer constructive comments on the Web site’s stories (although the Leadership Institute story we ran generated a lot of talk).

Over break, I tossed around a couple ideas on what CM Life can do to better tell readers what they can find online that they won’t find by reading the paper. Obviously, you want to promote your videos, slideshows and other multimedia content. But we’re also active on Twitter and Facebook, too, and want to find ways to interact as much as possible with the community.

The “What’s on the Web” rail on the right was what I came up with (full paper here). It’s right on the front page, along part of the left side. In a nutshell, it pinpoints a discussion topic on Facebook, who to follow on Twitter and why, and what’s new in multimedia. Since we don’t have a live chat scheduled yet, we asked for readers to submit suggestions to our Online Editor on who they’d like to talk to.

We’ll more than likely customize the way this looks as we go along the rest of the semester, including a variation that runs along the bottom if the design calls for it. I may look to add something related to Web site comments (Comment of the Day, perhaps? We already run featured comments on our Voices page) But this, basically, was what I had in mind — a starting point for the discussion and important campus issues to go online. We’ll also continue working toward linking print stories as much as possible with extraneous online content (whether it’s multimedia, PDF documents, etc.).

I’ll probably update later this week or next week on whether we’re seeing any sort of response from this initiative. It may be a difficult thing to measure, but it’ll be interesting to see how print-only readers respond. I’m looking for more Facebook/Twitter interaction and, hopefully, more involvement in Web site comments.

If you’re working for a student newspaper, feel free to share what your staff is doing to promote Web content. Do you find your audience responding to a heightened Web presence? What else is your newspaper doing to promote Web content/discussion?

Continue reading...

When news organizations use – and abuse – social media

I finally had a chance to join in #journchat on Twitter last night. It is a conversation among journalists that takes place from 8 to 11 p.m. EST on Mondays in which @journchat, the moderator, introduces questions (some of which come from other chatters) for journalists of all concentrations to discuss.

The fourth question was this: When is social media NOT the answer for your industry?

Like many of the #journchat questions, this one got me thinking. Despite the obstacles a news organization faces in terms of creating a social networking policy, there are very few disadvantages to social media in the journalism industry. It’s yet another way to reach out the Web, connect with readers and aggregate your content.

But there’s still a strategy involved. In my mind, one of the bigger disadvantages for news organizations using social media is when they abuse it – that is, when they post content recklessly without thinking about how to get more people to click and read.

Hence, my response:

“When news orgs spout 20 tweets to news stories at a time, thinking people will actually click on all of them.”

See the example on the right (the best I had at the time of writing this). While I greatly respect the staff at The Bay City Times from visiting its newsroom several times, its Twitter usage could use some work. It tends to roll off between 5-10 tweets at a time to its news stories throughout the day, particularly in the morning. Not a good strategy when you’re trying to connect people with your content.

You should aim for people constantly clicking and retweeting what you link to rather than simply hooking your account up with, say, Twitterfeed and plastering the site with consecutive links. As a Twitter user with a short attention span, the more consecutive links I see, the less value I see in each. They’re just Web updates.

Back to the #journchat. Fellow journchatter Sue Anne Reed brought up a point in response, when I said the “Twitter abuse” is a problem: “If ppl are annoyed, they will unfollow. It’s a great barometer on whether you’re doing something right or not.”

That is true — to an extent. I haven’t unfollowed @BayCityTimes. Therefore, I raise this question: If I’m following @BayCityTimes but not clicking any of its links, how much value is there in me being a follower?

This is why, I think, follower counts are overrated. Following on Twitter is a click of the button. That’s it. It is easy, particularly for new users, to start following people and not interact at all with them, whether it is through replying to their tweets, retweeting or clicking on their links. Unfollowing somebody takes more legwork, and most people don’t care enough to do it.

Want to truly gauge how effective your Twitter account is? Track your bit.ly links, for example, and see how many retweets you’re getting on your stories.

Furthermore… while I see a place for news organizations having Twitter accounts and centralizing content on the Twittersphere, I still don’t think it’s the most effective way to connect readers with your content (see my earlier post on giving Twitter “the human touch”). You have to put a face behind the tweet. It comes right back to personal branding and putting yourself on ground level with your community.

During a staff meeting last night at Central Michigan Life, I asked every reporter and editor to begin using Twitter, if they haven’t already. The benefits of using Twitter as a journalist is a topic beaten to death. But another benefit is to put extra faces behind retweets of @CMLIFE work. Every click counts.

Continue reading...

The Digital Roundtable: The beginning of live chatting on cm-life.com

Mid-September, I talked about one of my goals for the semester being the beginning of live chat discussions regarding Central Michigan University.

Well, we are well under way with it. We wrapped up our second “Digital Roundtable” discussion earlier tonight with CMU’s Dean of Students Bruce Roscoe, Director of Student Life Tony Voisin and Director of Academic Advising and Assistance Michelle Howard. We discussed a variety of subjects over one hour, including the football team, what we’d like to see in the next University President (we currently have an interim), graduation rates for students (in four years or more?), ways to promote the university’s academic programs and more.

Our first one was on Oct. 5 with our student body president Jason Nichol and vice president Brittany Mouzourakis.

So far, the Digital Roundtable is going pretty well (we use CoverItLive). CM Life hasn’t promoted these discussions as well as I would have hoped, but I think it’s a good idea to get our feet wet with this whole thing and look at ways to improve on it. Our next Digital Roundtable will have the desired promotion, I think.

But from doing just two of these one-hour chats, I’m already seeing the benefits of starting these live chats. Here’s three big ones:

• Reader input. People getting involved in our chat range from CM Life staffers, current students and alumni, and everybody is pitching in with good questions and ideas. For example, Chad Livengood, a former CM Life editor, pitched a great idea earlier tonight for the university to get more involved in recruiting:

  “I have a pretty simple idea for recruitment: Get some of your most enthusiastic alumni together (I’ll volunteer) and professors together and send them out into high schools. Since graduating in December 2005, I’ve sent a few students toward CMU’s journalism program who were contemplating going to Michigan State. I think glossy magazines and admissions recruiters can only do so much to explain individual programs. For journalism, one event that CMU faculty, alumni and current students who attend is the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association’s annual conference. I spoke at this event in the winter of 2008 when I still worked at the Jackson Citizen Patriot and was very disappointed to not see a single representative from CMU’s journalism school with a booth at the Lansing convention center.”

• A good connection between the university and students. While not as many students have gotten involved yet with these chats, these Digital Roundtable events provide a convenient way for students to connect with university officials, since not many can always make it out to an open forum. Many have expressed interest in the live chatting when they got involved, which is nice to see. My hope is we can get interim University President Kathy Wilbur in to one of these soon, since she’s starting open forums with students in residence halls.

• Story ideas. This is probably one of our bigger benefits as a newspaper. In the first chat with SGA, we were tipped off to the creation of an ad hoc committee to work with CMU Athletics on the controversial new tailgating policy. This led us to finding out the external sound system ban was lifted. In last night’s chat, we came up with a couple nice story ideas: How CMU is working with the expected decrease in enrollment, and (kind of related) the appointment of a CMU representative in Chicago to recruit prospective students.If you guide the discussion correctly, you can definitely mine out a couple really good story ideas per chat. Another great incentive to start them.

If you are the editor of a student newspaper, or an online editor anywhere, I’d recommend starting these discussions. Talk to university officials, student leaders, anybody – get them to join these chats. I mentioned three huge benefits of doing it, but there are several more that could benefit you that I might’ve forgotten about.

I’ll provide updates on the Digital Roundtable, as well as updates on other goals I set last month.

Continue reading...

My aggregation experience: The Michigan government shutdown

Four years ago, aggregating at Central Michigan Life was virtually unheard of.

Staff policy was fixed on reporters and editors doing the legwork themselves – as in, make the phone calls, cross-reference and analyze. Don’t base your reporting on another newspaper’s reporting. Every story at CM Life required 2-3 sources at least before it could even be considered for publication. That was just part of the learning process.

In these days of Web 2.0, things haven’t changed too much. We still require reporters to get 2-3 sources for stories. But, in cases of breaking news on cm-life.com, especially in big statewide or nationwide stories, aggregation can be key.

Case in point:

Last week, at midnight Thursday (or Wednesday, depending on how you want to look at it), the Michigan government shut down for two hours because it could not finalize a temporary budget nor a final budget for the 2009-10 fiscal year. It was the second shutdown in the last three years for a state that, really, has one of the weakest economies in the country.

Unfortunately, our political reporter(s) weren’t on the story. But I took matters into my own hands (I apologize for the cliche).

The link above will take you to the final product of our coverage. But it started at about 12:15 a.m., when I posted one quick graph on the government shutting down. It linked to the Detroit Free Press story (link’s broken now):

“The state government is shut down as lawmakers could not agree on a state budget by midnight Thursday, according to the Detroit Free Press. Keep checking cm-life.com for more details as they unfold.”

Immediately after posting, I tweeted it, Facebooked it and told everybody to keep checking cm-life.com for updates.

Every update from here on out would be simply aggregation from the Detroit Free Press and other sources. I updated with the consequences of the shutdown, the latest developments, little details and, most importantly, more links. I tweeted every time there was a new update, particularly with the portion of the state budget that concerned students the most (the Michigan Promise scholarship to thousands of students).

This continued for about three hours, all the way until the end of the shutdown. I didn’t talk to one physical source- all information I got was from other reports.

The results?

• The story earned our site more than 500 hits on Oct. 1 (the morning it was posted/updated) and was retweeted eight times.
• Google News crawled our story and mixed it in with the other government shutdown stories on the Web.
• We had 12 comments, several in the early morning hours.
• Most importantly: We successfully informed our readers of the state government shutdown as it was happening and its impact on them (mainly college students with the Michigan Promise scholarship money).

Like I said, we still require reporters to get 2-3 sources for stories. Nothing replaces those connections. But the lesson here is this: Sometimes, when you have no sources to talk to, you just need to roll up your sleeves, do your duty of informing your readers and centralize the content other news organizations are getting. Even if you are mixing those links in with sources you’ve talked to.

Continue reading...

Quotes to remember so far from ONA ‘09 livestreaming

Unfortunately, Mount Pleasant, Mich., is thousands of miles away from San Francisco and Online News Association 2009 at the Hilton.

But I did take some time today to check out two keynotes from today, via ONA 09’s Livestream. Here are some of the quotes that caught my ear, and they should for any journalist/media entrepreneur … some of these also were pulled from Twitter feeds, following #ONA09:

Evan Williams, Founder/CEO of Twitter (also started Blogger)

On the dips Blogger and Twitter went through at one point: “There was something I just knew in my gut in both cases, and my team knew, that this was worth doing. … As embarrassing as it is to go through those times, the alternative is worse. … That didn’t seem as painful as stopping. Giving up. That would be more painful longer term because there’d be this question and potential regret.”

“I get motivated somewhat by the world telling me I’m going to fail.” (Words I would live by.)

On managing uncertainty in what you’re doing: “It’s sort of the nature of the game that you don’t know where you’re going. It doesn’t bother me a great deal. That’s not an excuse for not having a vision where you want to go. But you don’t know what it’s going to look like. You know your vision is wrong in some ways. If I wasn’t comfortable with that, then I wouldn’t done most of the things I’ve done.”

Leo Laporte, host of syndicated tech talk show “The Tech Guy Labs”

(I didn’t catch a lot of this quite yet, but here are some quotes I found on Twitter that stood out to me)

“We’ve trained our audience to sit down and shut up. Now we have to train them to stand up and be heard.”

“Twitter is the first iteration of the Internet’s nervous system.”

“Podcasting is essentially dead. It’s just too darn hard.” (Couldn’t agree more.)

“Advertisers have tasted the crack of Google and Facebook; no longer like that shake weed that the networks are offering.”

“The bad news is that there’s no money in gathering facts. You journalists are the monks of the online world.” (He also said we do it for a passion with low pay and we sleep on rocks.) “But we need you.”

Continue reading...