robinjp / Robin J Phillips

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Page One, inside one corner of one floor of The New York Times

Pageoneposter
I saw Page One, the movie, last night.  

It's no The Front Page, but here are the similarities:  Men swagger, women cry.  And things are changing.

I love news and newsrooms and still get misty eyed watching the morning paper roll off the presses late at night. So Page One was a nice fly-on-the-wall look inside the hallowed halls of The New York Times during the 14 months it was filmed. The building is magnificent, but the scramble to make sense of stories and get them in the paper is the same as any newsroom I've been in. 

And it was all about getting stories in the paper.  There was one moment when Andrew Ross Sorkin ordered a story not be put "on the web" yet because he had to confirm something. Other than theoretical discussions about paywalls and blogging, that was it. We saw nothing else about the amazing work we know is being done inside The New York times by digital journalists. 

Director Andrew Rossi says the movie examines the ongoing crisis in journalism from inside the newsroom.  Uhm, nah.  It doesn't do that.  At least not any better than a 20-minute scan of my Twitter feed might.  

It would have been smart for Rossi to take 5 or 10 minutes away from David Carr's time (oh and he would have plenty left) to show us how Aron Pilhofer and his team get the news out. Pilhofer is editor of Interactive News at The New York Times and what his team is doing is the future of journalism Rossi was trying to explore.

In one telling scene a group of men, drinking beers in a bar, asked Tim Arango about his new assignment in Iraq. How was he going to begin? What had the editors advised? No real advice, he told them, except to go and fit into the well-oiled machine that's been working for 7 years. It sounded a little like just do what we've done before. Yes, it's war, but you'll figure it out.  

I could go on. There are some touching scenes during layoffs and David Carr truly has some funny moments.  He is an odd pitchman for such a lofty organization, but he is sent out to tackle criticisms from some rather goofy opponents.  Then executive editor Bill Keller (straight out of central casting) takes the tough questions.  

If you love newsrooms, go see it.  But then go home and watch The Front Page.  

Page One, inside one corner of one floor of The New York Times
Robin J Phillips

Twitter just isn't good enough to be my only news feed

People (well, journalists) keep telling me that Twitter is their news feed.  

"I wake to Twitter and get everything I need," one said last week.  And several more really smart people echoed those remarks last night at #wjchatPHX, an in real life gathering during the online #wjchat Twitter chat about web journalism. 

Surely that can't be enough.  If you rely on links that other people shoot to you, aren't you still getting pretty old news? Do you follow people on Twitter for their ability to read news sites and create tiny urls?  

I do get a lot from Twitter, but I need more.  And that's why I love google reader.  There are a lot of readers out there.  I've been playing with Pulse, which is fun and cool to look at.  But I keep going back to my google reader .. on the phone and desktop, on the bus or in a car, with a fox, in a ....  .   

 

Whyilikegooglereader

I still get the thrill of a cub reporter as I "discover" something just posted .. news, analysis, a funny photo or cool graphic .. and am able to shoot that out and get it in the info stream or, sometimes, share it with just one person.  

I curate my reader as I curate Twitter.  I add and subtract feeds and analyze my use frequently. I engage with the people I follow there and hit the "add to reader" button with them in mind.

This is why Twitter just isn't enough to be my news feed: 
I read a lot more than I share.  And I suspect the people I follow on Twitter do too.  

Awesome post after my session on cutting through social media clutter

Newslab

Deborah Potter wrote a followup to a session I gave a few weeks ago.   Wow.  Great to see how well she picked up what I was hoping to share.  

Deborah writes for NewsLab, an online resource and training center for journalists in all media that has one simple goal: to help journalists do better work by building their skills and broadening their thinking.
Here are three recent posts:

Thanks, Deborah.   I love surprises.  And I really love hearing that people are as jazzed about all this stuff as I am.  

Behind the scenes at #wjchat

Wjchatlove
 I'm thinking about pitching a session at NewsFoo to talk about #wjchat .. perhaps a talk about what co-founder Robert Hernandez, aka @webjournalist, calls our lightning in a bottle.

An amazing number of past guest hosts will be at NewsFoo, which is being billed as an unconference "bringing technologists and journaists together to move forward." If any of you #wjchat alumni or regular chatters want to join me, let's create a session.   #wjchat has been very successful.  We're nearly a year old. We've covered (among many other topics) tools, crowdsourcing, legal issues, corrections, comments, business models ....  and the occasional free-range chat.  But there is so much more we could do ... given time, money, brainpower.  

#wjchat is a web journalist chat on Twitter.  We need on Wednesdays, 5 p.m. Pacific time.  In February, we celebrate our One Year Anniversary. 

#wjchat sprang from a disenchantment with another chat on Twitter called #journchat.  Many of us checked out #journchat expecting it would be a time to discuss journalism, but it is much more PR-focused than the name implies. 

One evening in February 2010, a group of four web journalists began talking (on Twitter) about wanting to share stories, tips, ideas, experiences and quickly came up with #wjchat.   A couple of early writeups:  The birth of #wjchat | DIY and passion give birth to #wjchat 

We have a team of seven people and each Wednesday's event is our weeky miracle.  We all work full time and we volunteer the time it takes to organize and run the weekly 90 minute chat. 

Here's our most recent archive:  #wjchat Dec. 1, 2010.  Guest host Burt Herman, CEO of Storify.com. 

I am the only one of the seven at NewsFoo this weekend and feel honored to represent them.  Yet, we are all very aware that we get the hosts, come up with questions, run the @wjchat Twitter feed, but #wjchat belongs to the web journalist community.  They tell us that all the time.

So come on by if we do a #wjchat session.  And if not, look out, everyone else at NewsFoo. I'm on the hunt for guest hosts for #wjchat Year No. 2!

 

Open letter to Evil Man, aka Robert Hernandez

Roberth

 

This note is in response to Robert Hernandez'  aka @Webjournalist 

Robert wrote in part in response to a wild, crazy day at ONA10. Robert's part is described here by Cory Bergman

Robert:  

I began Friday at ONA having breakfast with Josh Williams, who did remarkable work at the Las Vegas Sun. He now teaches Web publishing at UC Berkley.

Josh talked about the lightning bug magic that happened during his time in Las Vegas.  He and a talented team did great work because they had a boss "who wrote a big check."  

You did great work in Seattle ...  (remind me to ask you what magic made that happen). And today you are awesome at articulating concepts that will help us navigate this crazy realignment of journalism we're in.  

Your enthusiasm about the tools is always fortified by your passion for journalism, storytelling, ethics. At the center of what you do is a reverence for the legacy we carry.  

You and Josh now teach students who will end up in the newsrooms you describe in your Jerry Maguire post ... (see above...)    where, as you say, "In fact, these amazing people are on your staff right now. But, because you don’t understand or approve it, you don’t see it."

Don't get stuck. Either of you.  Learn what you can there. Teach what you can there.   

But then get back in a newsroom.  Teach managers and executives how to recognize the value of web storytelling.  Teach them how to trust the people they hire.  

We want them to write big checks.  But we also need them to become web journalists too. (There will be no other kind.)  

We need them to feel as passionate as you do.   And we need them with us.

Journalism and the need for 1,000 True Fans

I keep thinking about Kevin Kelly's ideas about the need for people who create to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living. 

Kelly explains: 

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

Truefans-1
In journalism, we think of our audience or reader. More and more, I'm thinking in terms of our True Fans.  Kelly's idea is that for us to rise out of the flat line, we want to convert 1,000 Lesser Fans into 1,000 True Fans.  

Maybe in journalism there is a stronger category a category that recognizes the need for engagement. I'm going to start thinking about 1,000 True Collaborators.  

Did P. Diddy rip-off famed graphic design for a Sean Jean T-shirt?

Seduction_pentagram_pdiddy

 

Canadian graphic artist Marian Bantjes says P. Diddy's new T-shirt design is a “a straight rip-off” of a poster she designed of Yale’s architecture school.  
In an article for  Fast Company's Co.Design, Suzanne LaBarre writes:

Obviously, designers sample from each other all the time -- it’s inextricable from the creative process. But Bantjes reckons Sean John crossed the line. “[C]ustom lettering is not a font,” she says. 

 Puff Daddy's corporate offices would not return calls to talk about the design, LaBarre said. 

What interests me in this story is that the designer and architecture world called out P. Diddy three days ago and that's it.  Co.Design, Shuttervoice,  and the Yale Alumni magazine are on it.  But that's it.  No celeb sites. No gossip publications. Not even any fashion writers have done anything on the story.  

I can only imagine this story, which I admit would be great link-bait, has been overlooked only because no one is looking. This is a reminder to me that interesting stories are everywhere.   

Keep your eyes open.  RSS feeds are good.  But being curious as you roam around the web is better. 

I found this P. Diddy design rip-off story like this: 

==> Channel surfing, I caught a piece on the Sundance channel about SVA's BFA Advertising/Graphic Design Department. 
====> I Googled a couple of the designers who were praising their department founder/chair Richard Wilde to admire their work.
======> Designer/instructor Paula Scher is a partner at Pentagram. 
=========> Quick links on Pentagram led me to LaBarre's article on Co.Design. 
==============> So I checked out Twitter and decided to follow  @SuzanneLaBarre  because she breaks design news.

SO. JOURNALISTS: 

Roam the web with intent.  Be curious.  While away the time looking at bright shiny objects on the web.  But remember people write about their passions.  Stories are everywhere.  And they are there for you to pick up and develop. 

Should reporters post full interview transcripts online?

Ezra Klein has proposed an idea that brings up issues of journalistic transparency, making the best use of what you've got, and the role of reporter as their own first editor.

Klein, Washington Post economic and domestic policy blogger, suggested that reporters put the full transcripts of interviews online, taking advantage of  the bottomless pit nature of the Internet. | Klein on  'Wasted interviews'

In a post early last month, Klein said he'd just read the New York Times piece Volcker Pushes for Reform, Regretting Past Silence, which was set around "a wide-ranging, on-the-record interview with Volcker himself" but which contained just a few isolated quotes from the former Federal Reserve chairman.

Jumble of letters"This is a baffling waste of good information," Klein wrote.

OK.  There is more room on the Web than in a newspaper.  And many people would want to read the sort of inside baseball that could be gleaned from an extensive interview, if there was an affordable service that could transcribe a long interview into text for the Web that was readable.

Or would Klein accept dumping an audio tape .. and we all know how rambling they can be .. from an extensive interview online?

Julian Assange, editor of whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, has crticized the media for not making use of the huge amount of space available online to make primary source material more readily available.

Is a data-dump or a full transcript of an interview really a sign of a more complete free press?

Joel Gunter, in British blog Journalism.co.UK, suggests that "news organisations considering such a move would have to weigh any potential increase in traffic – and any respect garnered by increased openness – with what is surely, for most, an unwelcome level of transparency."

Yes, it would be great to be able to have a super-long sidebar which includes the best of a full, wide-ranging interview. But is there really a need to move the reporter aside and offer readers raw quotes, raw data?

EarlyBird1, the first commenter on Klein's post, throws down the gauntlet .. perhaps tongue-in-cheek:

"Great idea!!! Why not lead by example? If you start doing it with success and other writers at the Post follow, it should spread to other organizations."

I'm curious about what other reporters think about the idea.

This was also posted on my day-job blog BusinessJournalism.org.

Timing of Pulitzer-bound Top Secret America reflects brave new thinking in American journalism

The Columbia Journalism Review has a post title It's Morning in "Top Secret America" about the Washington Post's massively ambitious project which launched today .. MONDAY... in the paper and on WashingtonPost.com: Top Secret America.

Yeah, yeah. It is a massive project, a public records-based investigation of America's national security apparatus post-9/11. Co-authors Dana Priest and William M. Arkin spent more than two years on what was kept pretty secret even in the newsroom.  And the package of findings that are on the Web are amazing.  

But what no one has mentioned is that it is MONDAY.   Not Sunday, the day that newspapers traditionally launch Big Projects, Pulitzer-bound packages.   One reader asks why.  And Dana Priest's answer is significant for the future of journalism.  

Q. TIMING OF ARTICLE

Why was your article run on Monday and not Sunday? There are many more subscribers for the Sunday edition. Thanks.

A.
DANA PRIEST WRITES:

Because many more people go to the website on Monday rather than Sunday and this project was designed from the start to be very rich on the web. You should play around with the database to see what I mean.

– July 19, 2010 1:11 PM
 
That is an awesome change.  And very smart.
 
While I was at azcentral.com, we often talked about how our big Sunday A1 packages were lost on the Web on Sunday mornings.  No one was reading them then.  But the paper (and others, The Arizona Republic is certainly not alone in this) was slow to change the timing of newspaper/Web publication.  There is no reason except tradition that timing of the print stories and Web stories need to be tied to each other. 
 
Timing a package like this, massive in its size, depth, potential, for the Web audience is a great step forward.