Browse 10,000 Words May 2012 archives - 10,000 Words

Study: Number of Daily Twitter Users Have Doubled

Mona Zhang — Thu, 31 May 2012 15:05:43 +0000

A new study from Pew Internet finds that the number of daily Twitter users among adults has doubled since May of last year, even though the overall percentage of Twitter users has only grown 2 percent since that time. The authors of the study attributed the increase to a rise in smartphone usage—smartphone owners are twice as likely as others to use Twitter on a typical day. Young adults have had the largest increase in smartphone usage, which perhaps explains why 18 to 24-year-old Internet users have undergone the largest increase in Twitter usage: about one third of them use Twitter, and those who use it on a daily basis have doubled.

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3 Free Alternatives to CoveritLive

Elana Zak — Thu, 31 May 2012 12:44:16 +0000

If you use the free version of CoveritLive to live blog news and events, you may want to stop reading now. The company has made some drastic changes to its plan models, essentially eliminating the free version of CoveritLive.

Now, the only unpaid option is just the trial mode, which includes a measly 25 clicks per month. For $10 a month, you get “Starter” access with 250 clicks and the “Lite” plan, at $49 a month, provides 2,500 clicks.

CiL is a favorite tool in many newsrooms so the price change may have negative impacts on already tight budgets. Some may not be able to afford to pay for liveblogging software and are now looking for other options. The first alternative that jumps to mind is ScribbleLive, a platform used by tons of newsrooms. It is, however, quite expensive and not that affordable.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many free alternatives to CoveritLive out there but we scoured the web to find you some options. continued…

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How The Seattle Times Is Using Facebook Groups as a Crowdsourcing Tool

Elana Zak — Thu, 31 May 2012 11:07:20 +0000

In the last few of weeks, two pretty big names in the news industry have used Facebook groups to crowdsource reporting.

ProPublica started a Patient Harm Community Facebook group to create a “community of people … who are interested in discussing patient harm, its causes and solutions.” Adrienne LaFrance over at Nieman Lab did a nice write up on the group and why ProPublica went that route.

The Seattle Times use of Facebook groups in its recent “Recession Generation” package also stood out.

The paper wanted to profile young people in the Seattle area who graduated college in 2009, during the height of the recession. When it came to finding high school graduates from the class of 2005, Sona Patel, producer for social media for the news org, decided to turn to Facebook. continued…

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5 Things Your Online Journalism Portfolio Should Include

Meranda Watling — Wed, 30 May 2012 13:30:04 +0000

Recently, we covered five free sites to help journalists build an online portfolio here at 10,000 Words. The list included a good starting place with the following sites: WordPress, Cuttings.me, Pressfolios, Flavors.me and About.me.

So now you know where to build, but what do you include? This “what” is often the difference between creating an online portfolio and wanting to create one, but not having the initiative to figure out what it should be. Taking time to form a rough sketch of what you hope to accomplish and how you want to display it helps immensely in deciding which of those portfolio platforms works best for you and how much work you want to do to build and maintain it over time.

What does belong on your online portfolio? Joe Grimm of Ask The Recruiter posed this question to Marc Samson, co-founder of Pressfolios, recently in an online chat. From their discussion and my own experience, here are five things your online portfolio should include:
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6 Huge Mistakes Journalists Make in Social Media

Ji Hyun Park — Wed, 30 May 2012 11:27:18 +0000

No. 4: You don’t post often enough.

Facebook and Twitter might be the big boys, but people read news on LinkedIn, too. And, while Google+ might not be racking up a ton of active users, if you’re on there, you should at least share something every now and then. The point is don’t leave your profiles barren.

So, pick a schedule: maybe three to five times daily for Facebook and 15 minutes a day where you line up all your tweets using Tweetdeck. And check back regularly to see if people have responded or shared your posts. An application like Twunfollow can give some indication of whether you are annoying your audience with irrelevant content. And, whatever you do, don’t cross-link your feeds. Each platform has its own needs and different audiences.

Get remedies for five more common errors in The Biggest Mistakes Journalists Make in Social Media. [subscription required]

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Spain’s First-Ever Investigative, Data Journalism Master’s Program To Launch In Fall

Lauren Rabaino — Tue, 29 May 2012 10:41:51 +0000

The University Rey Juan Carlos of Madrid will launch Spain’s first-ever masters degree on investigative reporting, data journalism and visualization this fall, and Google will provide six scholarships that pay 80 percent of recipients’ tuition.

The new program is organized by the journalism school of the media group Unidad Editorial and the University Rey Juan Carlos of Madrid. I caught up via e-mail with two people involved with the program: Marcos García Rey, investigative reporter and ICIJ member who will coordinate the master’s, and Mar Cabra, a module coordinator in charge of the data journalism aspect.

Here are the highlights from our Q&A, which is include below:

Data courses will teach students how to think about the paper trail, how to obtain data, and how to use statistics to draw basic conclusions
Data courses will include basic analysis tools like Excel, SQL and web scraping
Second semester will touch on how to choose the correct visualization to convey a story
Reporting classes will be more traditional in nature, though students will be posting to the web from day 1
They drew inspiration from IRE’s Eductaor’s Center, Columbia’s investigative program and personal experiences
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GO Far With The Right Travel Story

Ji Hyun Park — Mon, 28 May 2012 11:59:48 +0000

Writing query letters are painful — unless you know exactly what the editors want to read. Enter mediabistro’s How To Pitch series, where editors break down exactly what they’re looking for from word count to which sections are prime for pitching.

Jaime Lowe, executive editor of Airtran’s in-flight pub GO, says an email with links to one or two clips that show clearly why you should be given the assignment, based on your experience, will have her jumping at her desk. “I definitely think that writing one really tight paragraph that is incredibly gripping is the most important part. “It just has to catch attention,” she explained.

For details on which sections Lowe is looking to fill, read How To Pitch: GO.

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for as little as $55 a year and get access to these articles, discounts on seminars and workshops, and more.

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Apply Now to be a New Media Fellow at The Atlantic

Elana Zak — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:45:43 +0000

If you’re not only an expert at using Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook but can edit video with the best of them, you should take a look at The Atlantic‘s 2012-2013 social media/multimedia fellowship.

The ad was posted on The Atlantic‘s Tumblr on Friday. ~~Unfortunately, it doesn’t include details on whether the gig is paid or not~~ The post has been updated to say it’s a paid, year-long job based in Washington, D.C. This is a great opportunity to get some hands-on social media and video experience at a great publication.

In addition to emailing over a resume, the editors would also “love to see the following”:

Your Twitter / Tumblr / Vimeo / YouTube / etc. pages

Anything cool you’ve made recently

A video someone else made that you think is great

A blog that you think is awesome

A meme that you think is awesome

A GIF that you think is awesome

To apply, send your resume and a cover letter to video@theatlantic.com.

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Meograph: New Tool For Four-Dimensional Storytelling

Lauren Rabaino — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:58:56 +0000

A yet-to-be-launched tool called Meograph promises to let you easily “create, playback and share beautiful stories in the context of when and where.” It’s a tool that’s still in pre-beta, but journalists and news organizations can get priority access for an invite.

Meograph released a demo of what the tool can do, using the fictional KVWM San Diego TV station as an example use case. Based on the examples, I wouldn’t yet call the resulting product “beautiful,” but the storytelling format is a compelling mishmash: timeline + audio + Google Maps + images + video+ hyperlinks (for adding more context and linking to stories).

Misha Leybovich, founder and CEO, told me this via email about Meograph:

Meograph helps automatically create, share, and watch interactive multimedia stories. Our first product pairs Google Earth with a timeline and multimedia overlays to tell stories in context of where and when.

Authoring is structured into a few simple prompts on an intuitive interface. Viewers get a new form of media that they can watch in 2 min or dig into for an hour. Sharing is easy: the two most viral types of media are videos and infographics … Meograph is both.

I’m not quite convinced that there are many use cases where this exact mishmash of media is the most powerful way to tell a story, but if you have any ideas, let me know in the comments. If you’re interested in testing the tool for a news organization, email journalism@memograph.com.

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The New Yorker to Tweet Entire Short Story

Mona Zhang — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:47:27 +0000

Long form writing has found all sorts of outlets in our digital world of tweeting and blogging. There are curators like Longform and Pocket, Kindle Singles for novellas and non-fiction exploration, and digital publishers like the Atavist and Byliner. Now, The New Yorker will tweet the entirety of Jennifer Egan’s latest short story—all 8,500 words of it.

The story, called “Black Box,” will be published in next Monday’s magazine. But starting tonight at 8 p.m., @NYerFiction will be tweeting the story every minute for an hour. This hour of story-tweeting will last 10 days, and was born out of the author’s inclination to explore serialized fiction. As Egan writes on The New Yorker’s Page Turner blog, “This is not a new idea, of course, but it’s a rich one—because of the intimacy of reaching people through their phones, and because of the odd poetry that can happen in a hundred and forty characters.” continued…

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Join Mediabistro’s Summer Online Literary Festival & Workshops

Guest — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:30:19 +0000

Meet leading authors, editors and literary agents and get your writing project professionally critiqued in our online Literary Festival & Workshops, July 16 – August 1, 2012. In our innovative, interactive online event, you will:

Hear from accomplished authors, literary agents, and editors
Workshop your own creative project with writers and editors
And make connections with other writers and book lovers across the globe in our summer reading group.

Come celebrate the publishing world with us and get inspired to finish the book project you’ve been working on. continued…

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Lola Ogunnaike on the Journalism Degree Debate

Ji Hyun Park — Wed, 23 May 2012 15:43:03 +0000

Whether you’re a graduating senior or a professional switching careers, you know the debate over the true value of a journalism degree is always ongoing. In mediabistro.com’s So What Do You Do? interview, freelancing heavyweight Lola Ogunnaike settles the score.

“If you studied journalism in undergrad, then I don’t think a graduate school degree in journalism is necessary,” said Ogunnaike, who has penned more than two dozen cover stories for everything from Elle to Rolling Stone. “But if you’re new to the craft, I definitely think some education is required.”

Ogunnaike, who earned her Master’s degree in journalism from NYU, says it’s not crucial to shell out $70,000 or $80,000 to understand the intricacies of the field. “I think people underestimate how difficult journalism is. It’s not just sitting at your computer and spouting off your opinions about Beyoncé’s dress at the Met Gala. There is a structure to it, and I feel like that is sorely lacking in a lot of what’s being passed off as journalism today.”

Read the full interview.

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Get inspired by journalists’ graduation speeches

Meranda Watling — Wed, 23 May 2012 14:38:39 +0000

Amid the journalism industry’s doom-and-gloom, it’s hard to remember sometimes that there are thousands of young journalists ambling to enter this profession each year even if many young journalism students bail for a different profession even before graduation or soon after. So, what better way to inspire them — and other new graduates — to fight the good fight than with a inspiring speech from a stellar journalist?

Several of my journalistic idols delivered speeches this year, and others I don’t follow also imparted very wise words on the class of 2012. The beauty of technology is I can catch up on all of them and watch most of them on video. With graduations coming and going this month, Poynter’s Andrew Beaujon did a great job rounding up some of the commencement speeches from journalists this year. I won’t try and repeat it, so visit their list.

While some of the speeches have been gloomy, here are three of the speeches that spoke to me:
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Editors With Multimedia Skills More Likely To Be Promoted

Donya Blaze — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:00:14 +0000

If you’re a regular 10,000 Words reader, you know that multimedia skills can do wonders for your journalism career. Not only can you use your Twitter savvy to land a social media job, but if you can hip your bosses to the benefits of infographics or prove that page views increase with slideshows, you could get bumped up the masthead.

Marie Claire features director Lea Goldman didn’t go to J-school or take any workshops to learn how to create content for the iPad, for example. She hit the ground running.

“I am a big believer in just getting out there and doing. It’s thinking, ‘Oh, instead of an article, maybe we should do an interactive graphic or maybe a video would be great here.’ You really have to be willing to do more than just write and edit. If that’s all you’re interested in,” she added, “you’re probably in the wrong business.”

To find out how other magazine veterans got promoted, read How To Become an Editor-in-Chief.

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4 Questions With Anjali Mullany, Social Media Editor at Fast Company

Elana Zak — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:12:20 +0000

“Four Questions With …” is a monthly series of interviews with different social media and community editors in the news industry.

So, what is it like to be a social media or community editor? What are the job responsibilities and how does one end up landing such a gig? The goal of “Four Questions With …” is to answer some of these questions and to give insight into what is a new and constantly evolving field.

For the month of May, we chatted with Anjali Mullany, the social media editor at Fast Company. Previously, Mullany was social media editor at the New York Daily News. She started working with the Daily News in 2009 while a master’s student at New York University’s Studio 20, ultimately becoming the Daily News’ social media editor. In April, she left to become the social media editor at Fast Company.

Here are Mullany’s thoughts on social media, journalism and how technology is changing innovation in the field. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.