Yesterday, the New Yorker launched an anonymous tip box. Excuse my skepticism, but I’m not sure why any newsroom wastes their resources on those things. (Sorry, boss!)

Instead of being a useful, secure tool for the public to use as a means of contacting an organization, tip boxes are in reality just a kitschy, spammy, and not particularly secure design element. I get why we have them — to make a show of transparency — but how many leads have you ever gotten from the tip box?

Every time I glimpse one of the notifications from ours in my inbox, I half expect the Syrian Electronic Army to pop out. But it’s usually an insult, jibberish, or a well meaning publicist with a request to cover an event entirely unrelated to the theme of our blog.

The key element here is safety. No one in their right mind– or at least the kind if people you’d want to be conversing with concerning a potential story– is going to try to contact you via the tip box. It’s like calling someone on a landline: intrusive and unlikely to result in a timely connection. It’s called email, or at this point, even a Twitter DM. 

If it weren’t for the disturbing news this week about the Justice Department’s seizure of AP’s phone records, maybe I could find room in my heart for the tip box. But if phone records aren’t safe from our own government, why would anyone leak something through an online tool such as the tip box? Perhaps I’m still just in shock and feeling vicariously betrayed, but the digital anonymous tip box is akin to the charming little crinkly noise my Kindle makes on my iPad. It’s a cute reminder of the more idealistic days of yore — the ones we like to think existed or hope for. But it’s all sort of a farce, isn’t it? 

A week ago, the World Press Photo of the year award went to a digitally enhanced photo taken by Paul Hansen. It’s a really compelling photo, one that SpeigelOnline writers Matthias Krug and Stefan Niggemeier write “conveys a beauty that seems almost innappropriate.”

The fact, though, is that every digital photographer enhances their pictures. Even just adjusting the colors to make it pop on screen is changing the story, altering reality. Of course, in a newsroom, any blatant manipulation of a picture — even one of the protagonisst of Krug and Niggenmeier’s article, Claudio Palmisano of 10b Photography in Rome, notes that they never ‘alter pixels’ — is a violation of journalistic ethics akin to making up quotes or sources. 

But in a digital landscape, where catchy headlines and niche journalism seem to be key components of profitability, it’s hard to distinguish between what’s bias and what’s best practice. 

Is adding a dramatic light just an attention grabber or an opinion? I’m not so sure. The nature of storytelling through words or images is such that just by picking a subject, it becomes interesting or ‘newsworthy.’ The only underlined sentence in my undergrad copy of Susan Sontag’s On Photography is this:  Read more

Citizen journalism is a lofty little term thrown around by interweb idealists.* This week, Trevor Knoblich wrote a column on PBS’ MediaShift blog asking “Can Citizen Journalism Move Past Crisis Reporting?”

No, no, it can’t. 

The first lonely comment under the article was from an editor of CNN’s iReport, championing the organization’s efforts to help citizens gather and report stories that are meaningful to them and their community. The idea is a noble one, and it’s executed pretty well. They give tips on good storytelling and provide free music clips you can use with your video. There’s even an Assignment Desk where editors ask for submissions on a given topic (this weekend it’s ‘Show Off Your Mom Tattoos’). 

It’s not that I am against any of the actually very good work iReport can curate. It’s that most of the contributions have the “not vetted” by CNN label which means they’re the equivalent of a YouTube video about your student debt, the plight of tipped workers, or, your mom tattoo.

Remember the editorial pages of your local newspaper? Read more

When Facebook released their Best Practices guide for media last week, I admit I thought it was cute. In my world, I consider Facebook sort of my ‘private life,’ a space I reserve to share thoughts and internet things with people I actually know, whereas I consider Twitter my more public persona, where I follow strangers’ opinions. Facebook’s advice seemed like they were pointing out the obvious (‘have your content creators use the ‘Follow’ button’) in a last ditch attempt to make the social network as relevant as Twitter, especially in the wake of the all the ‘social media as wire service’ talk since the Boston marathon bombings and manhunt.

But that’s sort of a fallacy. In fact, one billion people still use Facebook, all the time. When I’m honest with myself, my newsfeed is just as full of wedding photos and lunch break musings from my real-life acquaintances as it is new posts and headlines from my favorite media outlets, just like Twitter. And Facebook is starting to get savvy about helping those publishers garner traffic and reader engagement. It’s not a bad product. 

Slate is the best example of a using Facebook to successfully engage their readers; it’s even the case study in the handbook. They’ve doubled their Facebook referrals between the second quarter of 2012 and the first of 2013. Read more

As if researching, writing, and publishing a story isn’t enough work, we have to promote them, too. It’s easy enough with social media, especially if you have a social media guru in your newsroom. But it’s also easy to get caught click baiting on Twitter. Noam Cohen of The New York Times wrote about the Twitter account @HuffPoSpoilers this week, which tweets summaries of Huffington Post stories, which are usually tweeted with vigor — and lots of buzzwords. Often, the story isn’t as interesting as the tweet.

Don’t fall into your publications tweeting traps. Let them tweet what they will, but take matters into your own hand, too. 

Whatever your platform, I think what comes before the link should be treated with as much care as your lede and 140 characters should suffice. 

•  Remember the 5 W’s and the H. It’s hard not to bait your followers, but don’t make me wonder where, say, that earthquake hit. If it’s so far away from your target reader that they may not click on the link, you’ll have to live with that.

• Unless you work for TMZ, lose the crazy adjectives. Did the congressperson really ‘explode’? Is Marissa Mayer really leading a ‘revolution’? Check yourself. 

• About retweeting. I often fall into the trap of tweeting story links with a vague, one word response. But I’m making a pledge to all my social media friends to start being more useful. If you tweet a story that’s not yours, tell me why I need to read it. ‘Right on,’ or ‘This is naive,’ are click-bait cliches. The short links give you so many characters to describe the story to me — use them wisely! Give me a reason to bookmark the link and read it later. Be your brand, and venture to have an opinion of your own now and again.