Month: September 2010

In a news environment, editors see the big picture. They clean up copy, help communicate the message and direct and guide news pieces.

Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams make an argument in Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything that professional journalists cannot see past themselves. They argue that as journalists continue to assert the need for editors they are losing out on an opportunity to learn from the collective.

Any serious news organiation today should also allow its community of readers to join in the editorial conversation. The fact that all major media properties don’t already offer a parallel front page edited by readers is troubling. The technology has been available for a decade. A cynic might call it contempt for the collective intelligence of media consumers. In some cases, the cynics might be right. But in most cases the sclerotic pace of change reflects the cultural inertia of instutions steeped in the journalistic traditions of mass media.”

In this case, the authors believe in and trust the readers to choose the best stories. But, this was written in 2006. Since then we have seen on news sites that most popular stories are often about health, love and society, rarely about global politics or economics. That being said, social editing helps people find out what they want to know but not always what they need to know.

In Wikinomics, Judy Rebick says:

As long as the media thinks they know what’s right, they’ll never be in a position to harness people’s collective intelligence. It’s a completely different culture and a completely different way of thinking about knowledge.”

By this she means this hurdle is keeping journalists from innovating. In an older post, I argued that journalists could have and should have created services like Craigslist, Groupon, Yelp and Twitter. But, they didn’t. And because journalists did not look forward, or innovate, we the media industry are suffering for it and losing circulation and readers.

So, where then are we and is there a smarter way to blend what people want versus what they need? I want to find out.

Upon the Spanish-American war, a new sensational, thrilling, sexy and often false kind of journalism boosted sales.

“At the end of the nineteenth century, American imperialism and journalistic dynamism ame together to create one of the darkest moments in the history of the news media….

The changing news business attracted entrepreneurs who saw journalism as an exciting frontier worthy of their creative talents. Two publishing visionaries in particular dominated the era and ultimately changed the profession: Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph erst. After they revolutionized journalism, their bitter rivalry gave birth to a brand of sensationalism known as yellow journalism. Its toxic formula–one part news to one part hype–fueled the infamous Hearst-Pulitzer circulation war.”

–Mightier than the Sword: How the Media Have Shaped American History by Rodger Streitmatter

However, upon this time, as “dark” as it may be, it did indeed attract entrepreneurs. Pulitzer, “a mercenary fighting for the North in the Civil War” came to find himself a writer, reporter and journalist. He created the St. Louis Post Dispatch and brought news to people who had “been ignored by the comparatively staid sheets of the older order.” Streittmatter says Pulitzer believed newspapers cheap, written clearly, concisely and should actively crusade in the community interest.

Pulitzer changed journalism and laid down the building blocks for Twitter. The 140-character post microblog developers did exactly the same thing. Young entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to bring something to a community. Before Twitter, to be a blogger was still not casual. People would sit down in front of their glowing screens, write, edit, post and maybe edit again. Blogging was for writers whom many argued were not journalists, even if they practiced journalism. Twitter lowered the barrier for social journalists, people who wanted to broadcast their thoughts online.

How did Dorsey, Stone and Williams lower the barrier and motivate people to post, blog, write or broadcast online? They did what Pulitzer did. In creating a 140-character limit every writer had to become an editor. Their length limit forced people who may otherwise be overly verbose to write clearly and certainly concisely.

The other thing Pulitzer said news should do is “actively crusade in the community interest.” Social networks like Twitter and Facebook require our social journalists to do exactly that. When we follow someone who posts inane, offensive, boring or uninteresting content, we the community serve as their editor. We validate and approve their posts with replies, retweets, likes and comments. Poor posts get new feedback. Poor social journalists lose followers or get hidden.

When the New York Times came to your doorstep, you could not tell the delivery man to stop sending the Style or Sports section. The only way the reader could double as an editor (and I mean editor loosely) is to unsubscribe or write a letter. Now, good content (sensational or not) gets more validation, a boost in circulation which is exactly what Pulitzer was able to do.

According to The New York Times Bits Blog something is in the works. I hope my entire capstone has not just been built already.

We’re building something wonderful and amazing in the social news space,” said John Borthwick, chief executive officer at Betaworks.

Mr. Borthwick’s company has helped nurture TweetDeck, a popular desktop client for Twitter, and Web tools like Bit.ly, a URL shortener, and Chartbeat, a real-time Web analytics service.

The News.me product has been in the works for the last six months and is expected to be out sometime later this year, Mr. Borthwick said. It will initially debut as an iPad application, although a Web version may be introduced at some point.

Mr. Borthwick would not say exactly how the service would work, but he hinted that its name should give some indication.

The Indiana Daily Student newspaper printed a short piece previewing Ron Paul’s upcoming visit to Bloomington, Indiana. The great thing the editors coordinated was a little sidebox answering two questions “Who is Ron Paul?” and “Why should I care?”

This is what I want to do for my capstone, only better.

Background/Problem
I want to help people get a better understanding of why they should care. I want to give context to what is in the news. I want to answer the questions “so what?” I want to bridge the gap, the disconnect, between what is being reported and published to what is going on in our daily lives. We have more personal, intimate, publicly, legal, free data than ever before about about individuals. We now have social data. I want to use this informatin to bridge that gap.

Primary User Group
Moderate to heavy social media consumers and producers with a general interest in world events and news. These people likely don’t consume as much news as they would like to.

Client
New York Times Digital, LLC (and possibly Facebook Connect)

What is the anticipated final outcome
I will design an interface and experience that helps news and social media consumers answer the question “so what?” when consuming the news. My goal is to design something that fits into their daily lifestyle and does not require them to visit a new website or install a new program.

Readings

• We Live in Public (2009)
  • http://www.netflix.com/Movie/We_Live_in_Public/70112751
• When Social Media Became News (February 2005)
  • http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/james_surowiecki_on_the_turning_point_for_social_media.html
• The Hidden Influence of Social Networks (May 2010)
  • http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/nicholas_christakis_the_hidden_influence_of_social_networks.htm
• How Social Media Can Make History, Clay Shirky (August 2010)
  • http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html
• The Tribes We Lead, Seth Godin (February 2009)
  • http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead.html
• The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World, David Kirkpatrick (Reed Business Information, 2010)
  • http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company-Connecting/dp/1439102112/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280109901&sr=1-3
  • Simplicity Sells, David Pogue (April 2009)
    • http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/david_pogue_says_simplicity_sells.html
  • The Medium is the Massage, Marshall McLuhan (Reed Business Information, 1997)
    • http://www.amazon.com/Medium-Massage-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/1584230703/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280110095&sr=1-1
  • Select Papers from danah boyd’s collections
    • http://www.danah.org/papers/
  • The Ubiquitous and Increasingly Significant Status Message (Interactions Magazine, May 2010)
    • http://interactions.acm.org/content/?p=1357
  • Social Network Sites and Society: Current Trends and Future Possibilities (Interactions Magazine, April 2010)
    • http://interactions.acm.org/content/?p=1200
  • From Bowling Alone to Tweeting Together: Technology- Mediated Social Participation
    • http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1699775.1699790

Below are two quotes from The Facebook Effect (p 54). One thing that Mark Zuckerberg can attribute to much of Facebook’s success other than a well engineered product and a great idea is a clear vision. As I am learning from David Kirkpatrick’s book and my personal experience as an active Facebook user is the importance of a clear vision when beginning to develop a product.

When you understand your users (consumers, readers, viewers, etc) and know what exactly you are trying to do, everything must be so much easier. It must be so much easier to know when to stay no, when to drop features, when to change the course of action. For “Zuck”, Facebook always has and still is about connecting people, plain and simple.

As I begin two HCI projects, one related to sharing content and the other about social connectivity and news, defining, it’s nice to have a reminder to maintain a clear vision about what I want to do.

“A couple of Google executives came over to see if there might be a way to work with or even buy Thefacebook. Even at this early date, Google was well aware that something noteworthy was going on in Palo Alto. Zuckerberg and Parker were leery, though because of the risk of becoming subsumed by Silicon Valley’s Internet giant was real. If they wanted to do their own thing, they had to stay independent, they believed. Anyway, what they were trying to do was very different from what Google did. Their site was about people; Google was about data.

“Really great leadership, says Parker, “especially in a start-up, is about knowing when to say no–evoking a vision very clearly, getting everybody excited about it, but knowing where to draw the line, especially with products. You can’t do everything. And that’s a lesson Mark didn’t know yet. That’s a lesson Mark learned.”