It’s a great example of how the design thinking school of innovation intersects well with the world of journalism. Good reporters should always be asking themselves “What don’t I know about this?” And great reporters take that question to a diverse group of collaborators and ask “What don’t we know about this?”

Here’s what my students and I don’t know:

Larger/legible version to download

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1. Welcome to JOMC 491: Public Affairs Reporting for New Media

Related posts:

1. Welcome to JOMC 491: Public Affairs Reporting for New Media
2. Online Class Discussions and Twittering Breaking News

But I do want to bring you another attempt at headlines I’ve culled from my tech/social filters… and yet still don’t have time to read. Mashable and Romenesko still caught my eye the most this morning, but TechPresident and the PBS/Knight Foundation MediaShift IdeaLab (or whatever that very good site should be called) also added some variety to the mix.

So, without further ado. I filter these to you. Please filter them back to me.

15 Sites That Were Before Their Time GREAT reminder that what seems crazy today is often just ahead of its time…. and that a good idea doesn’t guarantee success… and that what’s hot today may soon be Friendster.

Evernote.com I haven’t tried it. But want to. Any tips?

Yahoo Mail Comes to the iPad, HTML5-Style If I were hiring a designer today, I’d want her to be pretty darn good with HTML 5. Am I right about that? Also, I need to know more about the idea of local caching with HTML 5. After all, for text updates you don’t really need to be always jacked in to the Internet. You just need to connect when you want to send or receive new information.

Share and Track the Story of Any Object with Printable QR Codes The “Internet of Things” and QR codes fascinate me. Wondering how/whether journalists should help “things” tell relevant and memorable stories to humans.

The Chrome Web Store Is Coming, and Google Has Big Plans for It Dear editors, if you would today like to watch your newsroom developers flip out walk over to their workspace this morning and ask them to stop work on the iPad app and start working on the Chrome Web Store App. … Then go over and tell your publisher that the Google Chrome Web will give you 95 percent of the revenue from selling your app, rather than Apple’s 70 percent. Please Twitpic the scene and share it with us, won’t you?

Why Facebook and Apple Will Win the Q&A War and Meet Swingly, This Year’s “It” Search Startup [INVITES] I wasn’t even aware that there was a ‘Q&A War’ being waged. But I’m glad to hear there is. Unfortunately, I suspect most news organizations aren’t winning this war that they should be. Durn it if the smart/crazy question isn’t one of the only tools that really differentiates professional reporters from hobbyists and advocates. I’d love to see a news organization develop a news FAQ site (SEO magic)… but with the purpose of helping their readers ask more precise and more probing questions of each other.

Journalist’s Resource: New site to help journalism educators Haven’t yet checked out Harvard’s new site. What are the highlights?

Groupon-ing is relatively low-risk for magazine publishers, but… Groupon strikes me as a great idea for news publishers. For me (and I think for lots of folks, especially young people), news is no good unless it’s a shared experience. I need other people in my geographic or behavioral community to be informed as well. I’d push hard to get a group-rate on a subscription — especially if the news service was optimized for mobile and social.

Ushahidi Builds Community with 3 L’s: Listen, Learn, and Leverage I can’t learn enough about Ushahidi. I’m coming back to this first-person-account whether you filter it back to me or not. Ushahidi is all the rage among new media funders and pontificators, but remains relatively unknown among U.S. journalists (pro and am). I fear that most people will eventually be introduced to it when something bad happens “because” of it — I fear the impending arrival of a moment in Ushahidi’s life akin to the Web’s “child-porn” Time magazine cover moment or Wikipedia’s “Arthur Schlesinger” moment.

Daily Kos, the Email Program Thirteen years later and I’m still waiting for a good place that tracks and reports on under-the-radar targeted phone/email/postal mail political messages.

Greene: CSU fosters love of print journalism What to say? What to say?

Increased mobile Internet access dims the ‘app revolution’ Am I crazy to argue that only half of the attractiveness of accessing the Net via phone is mobility? I’d argue that phones’ “instant-on” (and thus limited features) are at least as important in driving this trend. Dear manufacturers: What I want is a big screen, with a real keyboard that boots in under 15 seconds. And allows me to download about 150 MB/day. For $5 a month.

NC not featured on must-read Tweet list Dear homestate members of Congress: Twitter isn’t about talking. It’s about replying and asking. Do that and you’ll make the list. Or my name isn’t Orville Redenbacher.

Poll: 25% of Americans trust print news Look, trust is down almost across the board. The only institutions trusted by a majority of Americans are the military, small businesses and police. How can skeptical journalists get concerned if they’ve created a skeptical public? To me, here’s the most frightening sentence in the report: “Younger Americans also expressed more confidence than older Americans in several other institutions tested, including Congress, the medical system, and the criminal justice system, suggesting younger Americans are more confident in institutions in general.”

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1. I Filter, You Summarize?

So here’s a new deal I’m going to start trying. I find the headlines and I ask you to filter back to me the new facts, missing info and impact of the stories. If you read one of the stories that pass my filter, will kindly post one comment if you find anything interesting in the articles themselves?

Here’s what passed through my filter today:

Mashable.com and Poynter.org’s Romenesko dominated today’s Thornburg filter. Mashable had nine stories and Romenesko got eight through.

Twenty SXSW panels that journalists would find worthwhile. I SWEAR I’m going this year. Very interested in the proposals about using design thinking in newsrooms.

‘Murdoch has has never succeeded in any digital venture he’s managed’ Always love a contrarian POV. Especially when they may be right.

Primack quits Thomson Reuters to join Fortune.com An niche daily e-mail with 60,000 subscribers. As a journalist, I’ll take that. Getting that many subscribers is one problem, certainly. But once I do, what’s your suggested business plan for me?

Journalists in Mexico forced to practice ‘narco-censorship’ Amid all the fluff we get in daily news media, let’s not forget the journalists who truly risk their lives to shine light in dark places, hold powerful people accountable and explaining an increasingly complex and interconnected world.

Washington Post Co. warns on Kaplan division Always worried about one of my favorite news (and education) companies. Kaplan’s been WaPoCo’s sugar daddy for a while. All newsrooms need a sugar daddy. Or a thin staff. And by thin, I mean they don’t eat.

Aspen Institute panel discusses health of nation’s media Durn. I was just in Breckenridge. How come I couldn’t find an excuse to stay in the Rockies an extra week?

Conservative columnist Kilpatrick dies at 89 For a new media guy, it surprises me how often I get nostalgic about an old media world I never really knew but that has shaped my ideas about what the American press can and should be.

The Future of Public Relations and Social Media Sometimes Mashable’s “tip” columns are useful and sometimes they are utter self-promotion. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to sort them out every day. So, please, Mashable, less chaff and more wheat.

Use Adobe Fonts in Your Own Web Designs Always interested in the ongoing battle between openness/interoperability and attractiveness/designer tyranny. ;)

Jim Barnett on Texas Tribune via Nonprofit Road blog Barnett is a smart guy and was kind enough to let me pick his brain when I launched my failed N.C. political news service in 2001. So I hope he succeeds at Texas Tribune and continues to share the lessons he learns as an old-school entrepreneurial journalist.

Hulu Serving 3x as Many Video Ads as YouTube The two things I want to know after reading this headline: Why? and Is Hulu also doing 3x revenue as YouTube? Plus, I’m always cheering for UNC journalism alumni like Hulu CEO Jason Kilar.

Gawker boss says Web media need to be more like TV Nick Denton gets the Web, and I’m not just saying that because I too think that Web media has been slow to pick up on the “right” lessons from TV news. I wonder if Denton’s reason for saying Web media need to be more like TV are the same as mine.

5 Trends Affecting How We Connect Through Social Media I’m only interested in this Mashable column if it has actual research and data. Anyone can do anecdotes and speculation. Even me.

iPhone App Makes Barcode Scanning a Social Experience Food pricing is an untapped social news product. You want to defend your local news market? Make grocery shopping part of your UGC strategy. (See, I told you even I could offer unsubstantiated speculation.)

How People Are Signing In Across the Web [STATS] Dear Mashable, if by “[STATS]” you mean actual research and information, then I’m all about this.

Slideshare Is Going Freemium I love and use Slideshare. And HootSuite, which is also “going freemium.” And I’m putting the word “freemium” as the center square on this month’s buzzword bingo sheet. (Also, I wonder if there’s a future revenue stream from turning your letters-to-the-editor and comments sections into “freemium” services.)

TV Guide Gets a Slick New iPad App OK, so it’s slick. But is it strategically interesting in any way? Is there any lessons to transfer to other news and information services looking to make the mobile leap?

USA Today launches multimedia special marking five years since Hurricane Katrina Need to take a look at this and look for applicable lessons and suggestions for other newsrooms.

Web Faceoff: Freemium vs. Ad Supported Mashable – You’ve sunk my battleship!

Nine Questions on Patch’s New Push: National Hyperlocal?, SEO Sauces, and the Case of the Besieged Florist One journalist per 10,000 to 80,000 people. Compare that ratio to the typical newspaper newsroom ratio of five years ago. ( I think it’s 1-per-1,000, but I need to check Phil Meyer’s book “The Vanishing Newspaper” to be sure.) Also wondering if it’s time to start creating two cleavages for “community” sites — geographic AND behavioral/psychographic. One alone will not do. But do two cut the slices too small?

Please do share your thoughts.

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The goal of the class will be to develop a new online editorial product for the newspapers in Whiteville and Washington, N.C., that will help them provide be a comprehensive and highly engaging source of news and information for their communities. (Perhaps something like Everyblock.com)

So, the first thing to know about the class is that you will be expected to go to those cities — both about 2.5 hours from Chapel Hill — at least once and probably more during the semester. I’ll pick up the tab for your trips, but you will need to arrange your own transportation and schedule.

The reason we’ll be working with these two towns is that they are part of a larger effort being led by Knight journalism professor Penny Abernathy and funded by The McCormick Foundation (founding family of The Chicago Tribune) aimed at helping small newspapers make a financially sound transition to a digital economy.

So do you need to know anything about computer programming, or media economics or news reporting and editing? Not really, but you’ll probably be much better off if you’ve had exposure to at least one of those topics. If you haven’t then you’ll need to rely on your own curiosity, self-motivation and time commitment to ensure your success and happiness in the course.

The class is going to be structure probably unlike any other class you’ve taken at Carolina. First, it has the experiential service-learning component. That means less reading and note-taking from lectures. It means more class discussion and hands-on group projects. My goal is for this class to teach you — as much as anything else — how to clearly articulate and creatively solve messy, complex real-world problems. To do that, we’ll be using the context of improving public affairs reporting for the people of North Carolina by using new digital news tools and concepts.

What will you do in the class?
The first half of the class will be an introduction to the problem with the second half focused on trying out different solutions. In class, we’ll be discussing articles, brainstorming and prototyping (making models that can give us a better idea of how people might use our website). Outside of class, you’ll be keeping a 2x/week blog of reflections, reading articles, and working in groups to figure out what barriers stand in our way of building a great site and then figuring out for yourself how you will overcome those barriers. I promise to be your guide.

How will you be graded?
30% – You’ll launch your own blog and update it twice a week. Some weeks I will give you specific assignments (write a descriptive report about Whiteville, discuss the readings, etc.) but most of the time you’ll simply write about your experiences.

30% – Prototyping. In many classes, you may have been asked to write or create one big final project that demonstrates your knowledge of what you learned. But in this class, you’ll practice the art of “fertile failure” — trying a lot of ideas, making a lot of mistakes and learning from them. You will be rewarded for failing fast and failing smart. We will use everything from toothpicks to MySQL to build our prototypes. You’ll start by using the materials with which you’re comfortable and end the semester by using tools that terrified you just three months earlier. These will be different tools for each student.

30% – Participation. Come to every class with a lot of questions, fulfill your service obligation, participate in online discussions outside of class.

10% – Data management and public records assignments. A big part of our prototyping and brainstorming will be around how to obtain public records and make them useable in an online database. You’ll have a few projects to get you familiar with the basics of the technology and issues surrounding this topic.

I hope that gives you a rough idea of the class. I’ll be posting a full syllabus and calendar soon. But in the meanwhile, enjoy the rest of your summer and let me know if you have any questions.

Best,
Ryan

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Oh, their presentation was very good. Russial’s research about newsroom technology and roles is always enlightening. But a blog post from Alfred Hermida (who, by the way, is the conference’s best tweeter @Hermida) picked up on the presentation’s use of the word “convergence” and made me realize how broad of a definition that word can have. Hermida’s headline was “AEJMC: Newsrooms slow to move toward convergence” and he goes on to report that “Russial concluded that job specialisation remained the dominant organizing principle, with editors prizing depth rather than breadth.”

On Twitter, the unfortunate headline has been in circulation. I say it’s unfortunate because I think it misrepresents Russial’s presentation in a way that the rest of the blog post does not. My impression was that Russial’s research found that convergence IS happening in newsrooms, but that it is happening at the organizational level rather than at the individual level. He didn’t address whether convergence was happening at the story level.

And if you had to read that last paragraph a few times, you know why I don’t like to use the word convergence.

That said, I think Russial is right about the level at which convergence is happening. His findings are supported by the paper that Ying Du and I presented at the same session and they are supported, too, by an earlier unpublished study I did of online journalists in North Carolina.

The North Carolina study found that, on average, online journalists say they have had nine different duties at least once in the last three months. More often than anything else, a respondent said he or she had five different duties. But it also found that not everyone is doing everything. There is specialization of “new media” skills.

And in the paper we presented yesterday, online journalists said that the concept most important to their job was “multitasking”. (Journalism instructors however, ranked multitasking as seventh out of 10 concept. Leading to the challenging question: How do you teach multitasking?)

I didn’t research this, but I suspect that photographers are also shooting video. Reporters are blogging. Designers are animating. Copyeditors are producing story packages in a CMS. It’s not convergence as much as it is metamorphosis. And we aren’t seeing caterpillars becoming ducks. Not surprisingly, we’re seeing caterpillars becoming butterflies.

There are some roles in the newsroom that AREN’T converging. In the North Carolina survey, journalists who write original stories for the Web, edit text for content, and work with databases tend to perform very few other tasks.

I don’t have enough data to support this, but I also suspect that role convergence is much more likely to take place at small news organizations while specialization (and diversity) of roles is more common at the largest news organizations. And because students tend to start at small organizations and later join large organizations, this distinction is important (if indeed true). Understanding it can help journalism educators better frame the choices they have when dealing with curriculum change.

So, what does that mean for journalism education and curriculum change? I think a few things:

• Every journalism student should have a basic introduction to a broad variety of skills – writing/editing, reporting, photography/design, computer programming/algorithmic thinking and law/ethics.
• Journalism students should become proficient in a particular set of concepts and skills that we some define as being similar.
• “New media” skills should be incorporated into core classes. That means squeezing audio-video information gathering into reporting and design classes. It means that every class should talk about using social media for gathering and distributing news. If there is a specific class in “social media” or “animated graphics” or even “magazine design” or “sports writing” they should be advanced courses that students take after getting a basic introduction to them in earlier classes.
• The purpose of incorporating new skills and concepts into core classes comes at a cost of spending less time on the traditional skills that are still so valuable. That’s why further specialization is so important.
• Journalism students should also have a broad education that introduces them to economics, art, history, science, politics and all the rest. And students should also specialize in a subject area. (Again, I suspect that as newspaper staffs shrink that the place where we’ll find the most convergence in beat assignments. At the same time, the brand disloyalty of the online news audience is promoting beat specialization and the development of new niche topical expertise.)
• The purpose of the broad-based core curriculum – and the reason for including “new media” skills and concepts into those course is to give journalism students the vocabulary and news judgment they need to collaborate with specialists.
• Finally, as Russial pointed out in his presentation, the adoption of newsroom technology has tended to follow a pattern. First, technology leads to automation. Journalists whose careers are built around their expertise in quickly and accurately performing a rote task and not around thinking creatively and critically will lose their jobs. But then, technology leads to specialization. As new tools become available not everyone can be equally skilled at each one.

Dealing with the unresolved debate over convergence or specialization was one of the biggest challenges of writing my textbook. I dealt with it in a way that supports the solution I’ve begun to outline here: we need both. How’s that for convergence?

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But you know what happens to you and me when you assume things, so I checked it out. Turns out I was mostly right. I’m going to put together a summary of information that got reported about this race, but it got me wondering about this question: How much information – and what kind – of information do North Carolinians need about downballot statewide primary races? Are they getting? From where? Or why not?

After all, if journalism’s worth saving it’s only because of the impact it has on public life. I’ve long been curious about the connection between information and citizen participation. The presumption – not always right, as Samuel Popkin and Michael Schudson might tell you – is that the more information voters have the “better decisions” they will make.

A little more than 700,000 people voted in those races. Some of them might have wanted more information than others? How many had enough? How many would have changed their votes if they had had different information?

And, if we can figure out who needs this information – and what information they need – is there any business model that gets it to them? Do we need independent reporting on downballot races like this or is informing voters the job of the State Board of Elections and the candidates themselves?

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