Video in the DigiWorld

Chapter 8 in Journalism Next does a good job explaining the importance of video in the digital reporting era.  The comparison of the two people was wonderful because it shows how different techniques can be acceptable when it comes to video content in digital reporting.  Each technique has an ideal audience.  However, when you try to report an incident without video, it is harder to keep your audience’s attention.

http://www.textalibrarian.com

Video Reporting adds to the visual qualities of News reporting.  Because of all the digital advances in our world, people don’t have the attention span to read past a certain point, so videos do a good job of completely reporting a story while keeping the audiences’ attention.

(BTW This was the very first package I shot and edited in college… Skills have definitely improved ALOT)

Crowd Sourcing

(http://www.infosurv.com/insider-blog/is-crowdsourcing-right-for-your-organization/)

This will be a brief post that talks about the importance of crowd sourcing.  I personally feel like crowdsourcing is important because it gets the general public more interested in the News industry.  When they see that they can contribute to the information being given to them, they want to pay attention and contribute what they can.  Interning at WSB-TV and working at the assignment desk, I have learned just how important tips from the general public and pitches from them can be.  They can generate huge stories.

Importance of Blogs

Chapter 2 of Journalism Next covers the importance blogging in today’s digital age.  I personally have failed at keeping up my blogs but I do know the importance of blogs.  It is a great way to build an audience even before you graduate and enter the work force as a journalist.  The good thing about blogs is that there are so many different topics that you can choose to concentrate your blog on and it would still be relevant experience for a journalism career.  The chapter said that many reporters nowadays also keep a blog on the side that helps them maintain their audience and also helps them with their stories.

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After reading this chapter, I definitely know that I need to go back and start up my blog again.  One thing that people forget about blogs is that it is hard work to maintain.  I definitely underestimated the amount of work it took when I started my blog.  You have to constantly come up with material to post and write it in such a way that relates to the general audience.

 

One great thing about blogs is that you are free to take any tone that you feel like using in your blogs.  It is not formal news.  As a matter of fact the more relaxing your tone is, the greater the audience you pull in.

 

I vow to start my blog again before the end of the semester… (BTW its about being young in the city, many lifestyle pieces and love and relationship trauma pieces. Wish me luck)

 

 

Track your Posts

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org

The News industry realizes that it must make a move from traditional News forms to the digital age and it is doing all it can to get there

More and More news media have been adopting the digital age.  They are reliant on digital reporting to boost their followings.  Many news forms post stories online on their websites; they post stories of social media websites and they have even taken to creating blogs and video blogs as forms on News outreach.

But posting these things aren’t the only things that need to be done for them to fully transition into the digital age.  They can post all they want but if they have no idea of how they are ranking and how they are doing among the consumer market, they cannot improve so News media have taken to tracking their digital presence in order to see their standing.  They do not just track their stories; they also track their employees to see what they are doing to increase their company’s presence in the digital age.  At my internship at WSBTV, I notice this during every morning meeting.  After talking about their presence and ratings amongst viewership on TV, they tackle their online presence.  They track every story posted within the previous day through them, whether on their website, Facebook, Twitter or even intsagram posts.  They talk track and talk about the traction they received on those stories and those with low traction they talk about what can be done to improve on them.  One day when I went to help a web lady post a video on one of their blogs, she showed me a tracker that predicts the amount of viewership that they predict the post will get.  This tracker goes up or down as she plugs in different title ideas for the post.  The idea is to use that tracker to come up with a title good enough to pull in viewers to reach or pass the predicted amount.  This was all surprising for me to see what all is done in a Newsroom to increase relevance and stay on top when it comes to viewership and following of the station.

Tweet Tweet!!

http://www.artensoft.com

I just viewed a presentation about twitter.  Much like the Google presentation, I felt like OK, I know Twitter.  The way that the presentation was set up, I feel like I did know most of what I needed to know about twitter.

They talked about the history of twitter, which was about the most new information that I gained from viewing this PowerPoint Presentation.  They talked about the four men that worked together to create twitter.  They spoke about the first tweet, which was sent out by Jack Dorsey, one of the four men who created twitter.  I also thought it was interesting that even though he sent out the tweet, Noah Glass was more invested in the twitter brand than Dorsey.

After this new information about twitter, I was excited to learn more new information, but I didn’t really get much else from the presentation.  I expected as much but I feel like if the presenters did more to make the presentation more snazzy, at least it would have been fun to see what I already knew about twitter.  More videos and clips could’ve made the presentation fun.

This goes back to what I said in a previous post.  Making things visually compelling, attracts more interest and viewership, regardless of what you’re selling or talking about.

Data Journalism

When most people think about journalism, they think about the writing or the “glamorous” television life or the radio.  Most people do not think about the grunt work in journalism.  They certainly do not think of data, statistics and numbers in journalism.

The truth is that data and statistics are very important in the world of News and Journalism, especially the rating system.  News ratings are everything in the world of news.  It helps the news companies know their standing, both amongst their competitors and in the general public.

It’s crazy cause just on Thursday, I sat with the producers during the morning meetings at WSB-TV (I was shadowing a producer YAY!).

The first thing that was addressed in the meeting was the data collected for the month of February and the previous day on their newscasts.  The data showed the percentage of viewership they had in the past month and their ratings compared with the ratings of CBS, 11Alive, and FOX (We kicked their butts, just in case you were wondering).  It was eye opening to witness how important these ratings were in the newsroom.  It was a way of evaluating the work that was being done to see if we needed improvements in some areas or not.  They also had data collected from the same point in time the previous year and they compared that data to the new one.  Just in the first 20 minutes of the meeting, adjustments were made in News styles and much more.

http://www.examiner.com

blogs.ajc.com

play.google.com

blogs.ajc.com

The producer even showed me how he changed the newscast and moved thing around during the Newscast.  I asked him why things were being swapped and he told me that he personally does it to boost ratings.  If he notices a salient story, he either moves it up or moves it further down and continues to ad teases in order to keep the audience watching to get to that salient story.

I personally was glad I got to witness this part of being a producer before I entered the workforce because it got to show me what I would be working towards as a producer myself.  I got to see just how important numbers and ratings are and how to work them in my favor especially while the newscast is airing live.

So I say all this to say… NUMBERS ARE IMPORTANT

Micro Blogging and Networking: The New Wave

Chapter 4 of Journalism Next talks about the importance of Micro blogging and Networking.  First of all Micro blogging is the act of delivering the news through social media in short and succinct sentences or pictures or etc.  One of the best examples of micro is the use of twitter to produce News updates.  Many stations use this to their advantage.  As an intern at WSB-TV I see the importance of their social media.  In the Newsroom, the social media team is typically the first to know about an update and they are typically the first to publish it throughout the entire newsroom.  They put grave importance into their micro blogging skills.  Most other news stations are very formal in their micro blogging but WSB-TV tries to identify with the masses by using current slang and lingo and delivering news and answering questions in an amusing manner.  This in turn is giving them more popularity and followers.  I know this because in my personal Instagram, I have seen instances where people have taken a screen shot of WSB’s tweets and posted it, talking about how amusing it is, and people love the posts and follow WSB on twitter so that they, themselves, don’t miss the WSB-TV tweet comedies.  Even though it is obvious that I’m biased cause I work at the station, it is still a great tactic that they are using to gain more audience while micro blogging.

NETWORKING

The chapter also talks about the importance of networking and techniques to properly network.  I know that networking is importance especially in this industry.  Nowadays, it’s about whom you know and who knows you.  If you don’t know how to properly network and keep those connections, it will be hard to move up in the industry. It is VERY doable to move up without networking, but harder.  I have my own personal steps to networking.  These steps work for me because I had to look at myself and find out what my strengths and in order to play them up.