1) Mobile Layouts 

I know that everyone keeps saying that mobile is the future, and it is, of course. Fine. But I still don’t know how I’m supposed to work on a tablet. The old Gawker layout was optimized for a desktop experience, with the main blog post and a scroll down menu of new and trending posts. You could pick and choose, hop around the site before getting back to whatever you were avoiding before you came to Gawker in the first place.

The new Kinja layout is clean, sleek and modern. Everything you want a digital experience to be — except that you have to scroll around too much. I find myself reading many of the blurbs without actually clicking on a story. And when you do click into a story, that’s it. You have to work to browse. 

On a tablet, the Kinja reading experience makes more sense. Video and ads and posts all come together in one, non-annoying, continuous roll. My reaction to reading the new Gawker on my laptop is the first time I ever felt old. And why can’t you Tweet single posts? What’s the deal, Denton?   continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We’re crowdsourcing investigative stories on Reddit. Join in: propub.ca/10trVsF

— ProPublica (@ProPublica) March 26, 2013

Now Reddit, which has been around for years, seems to be having a heyday these days. I mean, even the President did an AMA (Ask Me Anything) during the campaign! But for ProPublica, it’s part of their Get Involved strategy, according to senior engagement editor Amanda Zamora. She discussed it in a Q&A over at Niemen Journalism Lab, in which she talks extensively about user engagement and where the Reddit channel fits in. I think she nailed it with this point on why places like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc. matter not only as a reporting source but as a story source:

…[W]e still pay attention and use social media to build a general audience for our work. We are using it to get the word out about what we report. But we’re just as concerned at using these tools to help attract people who want to participate in our work. We’re doing a lot of community building.

In other words, if you want to know what the story is, or if there’s a story people in your readership and your community think is uncovered and important, why don’t you ask them. Engage them in the reporting process before there’s a reporting process.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

That happened today when NPR’s Andy Carvin —  a senior strategist and reporter whose work on the Arab Spring, primarily through his Twitter account @acarvin, led the Washington Post to call him a “one-man Twitter news Bureau” — dispensed helpful advice about digital journalism and production on stories that occur thousands of miles away. His hour-long AMA gave great insights into his own reporting style, and the toll of covering the Arab Spring.

Here’s a roundup of some of the highlights.

On Authenticating Video

The most import thing to do is look for context. Is there something visible in the background that can be IDed, like a building or other landmark? If people are speaking, what kind of accents do they have? If there are weapons involved, what kinds are they? Does the timestamp of the video match the weather forecast, or the location of the sun and shadows? Etc, etc. Fortunately, I have a lot of Twitter followers who love this type of detective work. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

(L to R) David Carr of The New York Times, BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, WaPoLabs Chief Strategist and Editor-at-Large Rob Malda, and Flipboard Editorial Director Josh Quittner.

In an event hosted by New York University’s Center for Publishing and the School of Continuing and Professional Studies last night, social media experts discussed the shift to social content and what that means for the media industry. Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, Rob Malda, chief strategist and editor-at-large of the WaPo Labs, and Josh Quittner, editorial director of Flipboard, opined under the moderation of the New York Times’ David Carr. The mood was decidedly optimistic—as Quittner said at one point, “I think we’re all techno-optimists on this panel.”

The Social Epiphany
The conversation started on the shift to social. “I don’t really surf anymore,” said Carr, “most of my content… comes from somewhere and it’s like this vast, human enabled RSS that is pushing things towards me.” According to Smith, there was a dramatic change between 2010 and 2011 in terms of BuzzFeed’s traffic. Within a year, their biggest referrer went from Google to Facebook. As people change their media habits from seeking content to more passively getting content in the form of their Facebook or Twitter feeds, will they be able to stay well-informed? continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We here at 10,000 Words have covered what the act is about before and why it would matter for journalists. But this net-wide protest by some of the Internet’s biggest names is big news, and will hopefully bring attention to the masses of people who will be affected by the restrictions it would impose but haven’t yet heard of it — those people who visit these sites but don’t follow Congress or Internet/media industry news.

Here are just some of the plans from big names (fyi, these links will probably be broken Wednesday):

• Wikipedia: Plans to black out its English site for 24 hours for the first time.
  
• Google: Doesn’t plan a blackout, but does plan to use its homepage to protest the law.
  
• Reddit: Plans to take down its site for 12 hours in protest and instead post information about the measure, including video of the house hearings/testimonies taking place.
  
• BoingBoing: Announced last week it will go dark for the day and has been sharing tips since on how you can join the crowd.
  
• WordPress.org: This blog host plans to take its main site dark in protest, and even posted instructions on how its users can take down their WordPress blog for a day as well, with links to the many SOPA-blackout plug-ins available.

  This is by no means an exhaustive list, but there are a few people keeping such lists, including All Things D. Politico, apparently, estimates as many as 7,000 sites will go dark. There’s also a pretty good list here of tech companies that have expressed opposition to the bill (not all are protesting, but it’s an interesting list to take into consideration).

  New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

  ]]> Meranda Watling http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/big-names-protest-sopa-plan-to-go-dark-wednesday_b9991#disqus_thread http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/big-names-protest-sopa-plan-to-go-dark-wednesday_b9991 http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/?p=9991 Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:53:04 +0000 Reddit is an Internet firehose, a repository of the good, the bad, the silly and the shocking.

  Online journalists should make it a habit to look at Reddit from time to time. Not only can it be a great way to promote work, but there always seems to be a good story waiting there. Sometimes it’s prominent, and sometimes it’s in an obscure corner of the site. The fact that the site’s slogan is “the front page of the Internet” is telling.

  While Reddit still has a niche audience, the stories that are popular on Reddit probably have some potential to be popular elsewhere. If the story fits your site, you should consider writing something similar.

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  New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

  ]]> Ethan Klapper http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/reddit-story-ideas_b8643#disqus_thread http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/reddit-story-ideas_b8643 http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/?p=8643 Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:03:07 +0000 Let’s face it: the Internet can be a big, scary place, so it makes sense that people seek digital communities where they can congregate with like-minded users to discuss the stuff they care about. Online communities like Reddit and Tumblr frequently develop their own lingo, inside jokes and topics du jour, but these “insidery” snippets often stay confined to the communities from which they sprout. Until now, that is. A new online venture, The Daily Dot, is seeking to bring a voice and platform to the stories for and about online communities.

  “The Daily Dot gives a voice to the Web’s communities,” reads the site’s About page. “We report on the most important and relevant topics from within, applying tried-and-true principles drawn from community journalism to the growing cultures of the Internet, and allow our audience to read the Dot across multiple platforms, where they live, online.”

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  New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

  ]]> Jessica Roy http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/the-daily-dot-aims-to-be-the-internets-community-newspaper_b6298#disqus_thread http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/the-daily-dot-aims-to-be-the-internets-community-newspaper_b6298 http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/?p=6298 Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:22:36 +0000 News can break at a moment’s notice, and whether you have the exclusive scoop or not, chances are that readers coming to your website to read the story will want to share it with their friends and family. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and other social networking services can help give your story a greater platform, especially if you use their social media buttons to facilitate sharing. But is your organization’s website overusing these widgets? Or worse, are they there for the wrong reasons?

  

  A few months ago, a screenshot circulated on the Web of an article from The Washington Post showing nearly a dozen links to Facebook; the different links allow users to recommend or share the article, or to become a fan of their Facebook fan page. CNN’s articles include buttons for Facebook and Twitter with their articles, along with a general “Share” button including links to other services. These buttons are meant to increase engagement between users and their friends, but these examples may show that sometimes news organizations need to fill whitespace on their pages, and they do so by adding additional social widgets.

  

  Whether or not the user experience of using social media buttons on news sites is good or bad, the overall numbers show that good content is the fuel of the social web. A recent study by AOL and Nielsen shows that 23% of social media messages include links to content (published articles, videos, and photos), which equates to roughly 27,000,000 pieces of content shared each day. A number like that may be a case for including as many share buttons as possible on your website, but less is more when it comes to adding these social sharing buttons for a few reasons.

  

  From a marketing standpoint, it’s important to make sure that an organization’s social media sharing options are focused based on their audience’s demographics, and minimalistic enough so that the user doesn’t have to spend too much time figuring out their next step for sharing the article. That not only includes the quantity of social sharing buttons, but also the placement of these buttons. The New York Times does a great job with their social networking buttons, including Facebook and Twitter and a button to more services in a simple box near the top of the article. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also takes the simple approach to content sharing by having only one social sharing button with each article. The other benefit of having a minimum of sharing buttons for articles is a shorter load time for the page.

  Have you seen any good (or bad) implementations of social sharing buttons on news organization websites? Share your findings in the comments!

  New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

  ]]> Maurice Cherry http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/social-sharing-buttons-facebook-twitter-widgets_b4311#disqus_thread http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/social-sharing-buttons-facebook-twitter-widgets_b4311 http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/?p=4311 Thu, 26 May 2011 21:21:31 +0000