Month: November 2007

If you haven’t read about the things the San Jose Mercury News is doing to try to make itself more relevant to readers, you should.

It’s fascinating. And, I know some of my friends might blow milk through their noses at this next comment, but I find it very admirable.

Here’s a link to the PBS MediaShift blog about it. And here’s a link to the newspaper’s ongoing blog about the project.

Normally, I don’t write about things like this on my blog, but this evening I got a message through a friend on Facebook that I should install a new app called “Rethinking the Merc.”

I rarely install Facebook apps unless they either mean something to me professionally or they mean something to me personally, which means I only have a handful of Facebook apps on my profile. And though I’m not sure where this app falls under those guidelines, I installed it anyway.

I love that the San Jose Mercury News is reaching out to readers this way.

As of right now, it’s too early for me to tell whether the app is any good or not. I just haven’t spent enough time with it. My first impressions are that it’s basically just a Flashified RSS feed of recent blog posts about the subject from the Merc’s site, which isn’t probably the best use of a Facebook app I’ve ever seen … but not the worst, either.

Just as I feel The Mercury News’ “Rethink” project seems admirable, I also find it admirable that the newspaper has tried to reach out to its readers via Facebook.

Good or bad, at least they’re trying and there is a whole lot to be said about that.

About ten days ago, I started writing a blog post about my updated thoughts on recent J-School grads and what skills I think aspiring journalists should be acquiring.

I promise I’ll finish that badboy soon (mostly because I’ve already got a ton of work in it), but I wanted to comment on a somewhat related post that I saw this morning on PJNet. I encourage you all to read that post.

A lot of what I’m blogging about today I also sent in an e-mail to Leonard Witt at PJNet.

Here goes:

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My message to young journalists hasn’t changed in years:

Be able to write and report your ass off, and have a great mindset when it comes to how we might need to tell those stories — regardless of the current technology or methods of distribution. I believe in my heart that the key to being a successful journalist now (and in 25 years) will rest in a reporter’s ability to write well.

I would encourage you to read this old post I wrote earlier this year, which is basically an answer to an e-mail question Bryan Murley sent requesting thoughts for collegiate journalists for a piece on Murley’s great “Innovation in College Media” site.

I think you’ll see my message is quite strong about being very good at the core journalism skills:

“Know how to write. Know how to tell a story. Know how to conduct an interview. Know how to research your ass off.

“When you combine strong traditional journalism skills with a great mindset, you’ve got a journalist who’s going to be fine regardless of what new things or technologies come our way.”

When a J-School that I worked very closely with a few years ago changed its curriculum to be more “converged,” the most distressing thing I noticed in the school’s students was a deficiency in basic writing and editing skills … and I wasn’t quiet about it.

My biggest problem with a lot of young journalists is that so many of them have the crappiest attitudes on the planet. So many of them are so close-minded that it’s shocking, especially if these folks represent the future of our industry.

To be honest, I’d love to give them all the writing test that all members of our new-media team have to take just to show them that they’re not nearly as hot as they think they are.
🙂

But let’s get back to the post on PJNet that started this ramble: I’m not really sure today’s journalists have to pitch and catch. I honestly don’t know.

My best guess is that it’s about them knowing how to do one of those things extremely well, and then understanding how important the other positions on the field are.

And that’s where most of them seem to fall flat.

My biggest question to J-Schools now is why are your students so dang close-minded? Where was that instilled, and what are you going to do to help them graduate with a degree and a mindset that will keep them employed as long as they want to be members of the Fourth Estate?

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Well, I gotta go now. I’ll try to come back later today to look over this post again to make sure that I haven’t embarrassed myself too much.

Besides, the Jayhawks are on TV right now. Priorities.

Our company’s chairman, Don Graham, is probably as big of a Facebook fan as you will find.

Though he’s only had a Facebook account since probably July or August of this year, the guy knows more about how the site works (and more importantly, what it means) than probably any other traditional media executive in the country. And he hasn’t just jumped on the bandwagon — he’s been talking up Facebook for at least two years that I know of.

The guy flat-out gets it.

So, as our team here at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive was building our company’s first Facebook app — The Compass — back in May, there was no bigger supporter of the project at The Washington Post than Don Graham.

And he really liked The Compass, probably as much for the risks we took in building it as for what the app actually did.

But Don is a news guy. And he really wanted our team to build a real, honest-to-God news app for Facebook. He even had a concept for it.

I’m guessing the first call or e-mail about it came from him in September. He wanted us to build what he called a “news tracker” that would be powered by the content from The Washington Post, but integrate seamlessly into the Facebook environment.

We learned a whole lot about the Facebook universe with The Compass, and our biggest misconception was that the Facebook crowd wouldn’t want news content.

Though I still believe it’s true that the vast majority of those who turn to Facebook multiple times a day aren’t going there for traditional news content, I didn’t fully understand that you don’t need the vast majority of the Facebook community to like something in order for it to really work. It’s such a big place, you only need some of them to want or like it in order for it to still be quite effective.

Kind of like a newspaper.

You see, the monthly numbers to Facebook are so massive it’s hard for most newspaper sites to grasp them. A recent story in Wired magazine said the site is signing up nearly 1 million new users a week, and currently has more than 36 million users. More importantly, the story said, “the fastest-growing segment of Facebook users is over 35, a group that represents 11 percent of all site users.”

I’ve often heard that Facebook generates more than 40 billion page views a month. And you only need a fraction of those folks to want news in order for something like a “news tracker” to make a difference. So, we set out to build one.

The premise was simple: Enter one or multiple search terms and the app will search not only washingtonpost.com, but hundreds of other news sites to see what’s out there right now. The app would also show a search cloud of your Facebook friends’ search terms, and then throw in some breaking news from The Washington Post just so you’d know the latest.

And because it’s a social-networking site, we’d make sure all of those elements could be shared and commented on throughout your Facebook network.

Then, after having been blown away by some of the things that Bob Cauthorn is working on with his suite of CityTools features, I knew I wanted to ask him for help on the app, which he graciously provided.

Though Bob did so much behind the scenes to help us on this app that I’m a little embarrassed to list all that he did, one of my favorite parts of his CityTools site became one of the features of our news tracker. He calls it “ambient” news. On our app, we call it “Hot News Topics,” and what it essentially does is look at the most common words that are showing up in news stories around the world and then builds a tag cloud from them.

The actual “newsTracker” app was built by WPNI programmer extraordinaire, Deryck Hodge, who did an amazing job with it. In all the years I’ve been lucky enough to work with Deryck, this is one of my favorite things he’s ever built.

The design, which I think is amazing, was done by Jesse Foltz, who once again has shown that he’s a master at making something look really elegant while keeping things imminently usable. Jesse is a genius at building intuitive user-interfaces.

One of my favorite things that these guys accomplished in building the “newsTracker” app is that it’s simple to use, but if you’re a real news junkie, it has lots of other cool features to help you.

But my favorite part of this app is that it’s not done.

Once we launched The Compass, our team had to move directly to another project. It only took about 24 hours for us to realize we wanted to make several tweaks to that app, but we simply didn’t have the time.

For the “newsTracker,” we’re going to continue tweaking this badboy and we aren’t going to stop until it’s exactly like we want it.

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You can add the “newsTracker” app to your Facebook profile by visiting this link.