Mack the Flack

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Radio and TV reporters often have just 45 seconds to tell a story, so they don’t have the time to explain how each demographic group is affected in a story about the latest unemployment rate.

If you’re a newspaper reporter and you include all of the data in an article, the editor will curse you for writing a 300-inch story and then cut it to 30 inches so it cut it fits on the page. And that can be frustrating, especially if the editor chops the compelling paragraph about Grade 10-educated males who worship Ninhursag, the Sumerian earth and mother goddess, face 50 per cent unemployment.

Digital journalism is changing how we report large chucks of data like demographic studies.New types of journalists are telling stories using data visualization, also known as information visualization. They endeavour to display large chunks of complex data in an aesthetic, functional, intuitive and narrative format. It can also be interactive if it is presented on the web.

Have a look at The Jobless Rate for People Like You, published in the New York Times in 2009. This data visual uses just four demographic indicators – race, gender, age range and education level – to interactively show how various groups were effected by unemployment.

An example of a more complex data visual is The Top World Cup Players on Facebook, Day by Day, also published in the Times.

To learn more about digital journalism, enrol in the New Media Journalism Certificate program offered by Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies.

For more discussions and articles on digital journalism, go to SFU’s New Media Journalism on Twitter and Facebook .

Mack’s daughter turns 14 this summer.

Like teens of her generation, she’s a technology native with a smartphone that plays her downloaded music, provides instant communications via social media and searches the internet for news, research and information important to her world.

She’s a non-smoking, mostly healthy eating, good student who is interested in post-secondary education. She also loves animals and is passionate about protecting the environment.

Market research tells us this and much about her, a typical teen. She listens to Rihanna and Adele on her phone, loves Taylor Lautner (of ‘Twilight’ fame) and is less likely to use pot than teens of 30 years ago.

Mack loves her and she’s the apple of his eye. She loves him, but considers him to be one of the stupidest mammals to walk the earth.

Life is good.

Learn more market research and its role in PR at Simon Fraser University’s Public Relations Program

I think this graphic explains just how complicated social media and digital marketing can become. And by no means does it include all of the social media categories. Nor does it include all of the mobile social media platforms, channels, etc.

I found this graphic at www.businessinsider.com. You can view it here.

– Become a digital communications expert by enrolling in the Digital Communications Certificate program offered by Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies.

Digital journalism challenging the old school rules

The News of the World in England published its last issue after it was learned reporters had hacked into the mobile phone voice mail box of a missing 13-year-old girl who was later found murdered.

The best example is the sanctity of the newsroom. In the pre-digital newsroom, the news stories being produced for future issues were like trade secrets. Reporters who discussed stories in progress outside the newsroom walls risked being hauled into the editor’s office and berated or, worse case scenario, fired.

In today’s digital newsroom there are no walls. News is not protected until it rolls off the presses. Instead, articles are instantly posted to the news outlet’s website and shared through social media channels. Increasingly, journalists will use their own social media to develop a story. I know of one reporter who routinely tweets that she is about to interview a celebrity or CEO and asks her followers what questions they would like her to ask the individual, a practice known as crowd sourcing.

The web-first news approach and experiments in open newsrooms are a result of the changing media ecosystem. News outlets today compete against bloggers, tweeters and citizen journalists, who instantly post news. As a result we are seeing Ivory Tower journalism crumbling and journalism ethics evolving – yet many old school reporters are reluctant to change and cling to the past.

There’s been a great deal written about this topic. Here are a few of the better posts on the subject.

• Social media poses digital dilemmas for journalists – Journalism Ethics for the Global Citizen

• Ethical Challenges for Digital Journalism – Richard Gingras, head of Google News Products

• ‘Rules of the Road’: A conversation starter on digital journalism ethics – Steve Buttry, The Buttry Diary

• Online Journalism Ethics – Poynter Institute

• A Revolution in Ethics – Center for Journalism Ethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

To learn more about digital journalism, enrol in the New Media Journalism Certificate program offered by Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies.

Don’t forget to visit SFU’s New Media Journalism on Twitter and Facebook for more discussions and articles.

Why tweet, blog, post or pin?

Let’s start with the basics: what is social media and should I care?

The answer to the second question is yes.

As for social media…. it’s complicated.

Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, Pinterest, blogging, YouTube and Flickr are just a few of the social media channels available. Wikipedia defines social media as: “Web-based and mobile based technologies which are used to turn communication into interactive dialogue between organizations, communities, and individuals.”

What’s complicated about social media is the variety of channels, what they do, who are the audiences using them and how are they best used. For example, Facebook is used by about 900 million people. The most read Facebook posts are five lines in length and have a photo.

Twitter has approximately 350 million active users. When you tweet on Twitter your posts must be 140 characters or less. An ideal tweet is about 85 characters, allowing room  for retweets and comments.

While it could be said that everyone uses Facebook, it is dominated by women in the 24 to 34 age range. Twitter users are most likely female and they tend to use an iPhone or smartphone when they tweet. The median age is 31.

All these things are important in digital communications if you wish to reach your target audience and engage them.

Here’s a few links that can explain things further. Mashable has a great post here providing tips on using Facebook to market your brand. In this post by Social Media Examiner they have nine social media tips for marketers and Social Media Today explains in this post who uses the main social media channels.

– Become a digital communications expert by enrolling in the Digital Communications Certificate program offered by Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies.

Mack is obsessed with preparing for the coming Zombie apocalypse (and you thought the recession was tough). He keeps his truck gas tank topped up and emergency supplies ready to flee the advancing hordes of undead.

So he’s pleased with the BC government’s new emergency preparedness campaign “Zombie Awareness Week”. The inventive campaign includes tweets, a blog and Public Service Announcements.

The message is that if you’re ready for zombies then you’ll be prepared for other emergencies such as earthquakes, tsunamis, fires or floods.

While many west coast residents will acknowledge the risk of earthquakes and tsunamis, an invasion of flesh-eating undead walkers is a stretch for most. But keep alert, warns Mack.

Learn more about crisis management, zombie related or not, in our Public Relations Program

At universities the exams are done, the books are closed and thoughts are turning to careers.

As the days grow longer and warmer the thought of going back to school may seem counter-intuitive. But if you’re addicted to social media, can’t part your smart phone, remain cool under pressure, and love to write (and edit) Mack has some good news.

A recent report by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism says PR budgets are increasing in US (and logically in Canada).

Social media continues to grow and PR owns it, the report states. Organizational leaders are increasingly on side with their PR folks and non-profits are embracing social media PR as a cost-effective communication strategy.

Now’s a good time to get into PR. Register for our PR Certificate Program.

Here’s a great quote worth sharing about the future of digital journalism:

“This is like a Gutenberg moment. We’re reinventing storytelling on a digital platform. Suddenly, we can use every form of storytelling in one place — pictures, graphics, words. If we need an interactive map, show me the map. If it’s a plane crash, show me the video. We see a new art form that’s going to be a much more dominant form of storytelling. That’s the exciting part for me.”

The quote is from Larry Kramer, former senior editor at The Washington Post, who just became publisher and president of USA Today. Kramer, a multi-millionaire, is taking over a financially-troubled USA Today but he sees nothing but upside.

Here’s a Politico.com blog entry on Kramer’s appointment, somebackground on Kramer in Poynter.org and an article from The Washington Post.

• To learn more about digital journalism, enrol in the New Media Journalism Certificate program offered by Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies.

• Don’t forget to visit SFU’s New Media Journalism on Twitter and Facebook for more discussions and articles.

Content about kittens, celebrities and super models is a form of traffic bait to increase page views.

More and more the role of many newspaper websites seems to be pimping out fluff news or, as I call it, news porn.

In a quest to garner page views, newspaper websites post links to videos of cute cat antics, photo slide shows of beach beauties and content from the latest celebrity red carpet extravaganza or scandal.

However, when you read the print version of that same issue, it’s unlikely you’ll find any of this news porn or traffic bait. Instead, much of the ink is devoted to teacher strikes, tax increases and other news that actually affects our lives.

Online editors know a good thing and are reluctant to change this practice of soliciting page views because it works. Students at the Harvard Nieman Journalism Lab conducted a brief study showing how this practice succeeds. It’s not because it generates more clicks – their study found hard news stories and news porn were equivalent in click ability. It’s because content about celebrities, kittens and super models is cheaper to produce, delivering a higher return on investment.

Here’s a link to the Nieman study. And here’s another link to an article that offers an opposing argument. It’s a posting from Gigaom that discusses how hard news is better than traffic bait because it attracts more clicks on advertisements and how advertisers would rather be linked to legitimate news.

• To learn more about digital journalism, enrol in the New Media Journalism Certificate program offered by Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies.

• Don’t forget to visit SFU’s New Media Journalism on Twitter and Facebook for more discussions and articles.

There’s a great example in the Columbia Journalism Review of how digital journalists need to find new ways to protect their  sources. The digital information we collect while reporting, such as video, recorded interviews and cellphone records, offer scrupleless governments a bread crumb trail back to the sources we may be trying to protect.

This example is a bit extreme and not something most reporters will ever have to deal with. It involves a British journalist conducting interviews with underground activists in Syria. Given the bloodshed unleashed by the Bashar al-Assad’s regime, any member of the press has a moral responsibility to protect individuals they interview.

In this case, things went sideways and the reporter was arrested, his digital information seized and used to track down the activists. Some disappeared while others had to flee the country with only the clothes on their backs.

Here’s the link to the article.

• To learn more about digital journalism, enrol in the New Media Journalism Certificate program offered by Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies.

• Don’t forget to visit SFU’s New Media Journalism on Twitter and Facebook for more discussions and articles.