links for 2008-05-01
May 1, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
When A Podcast Isn’t Just A Podcast
April 10, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
I had a great IM conversation last night with a podcast author regarding my post from a few days ago about the death of podcasting. He seemed to agree on many levels and was hoping for some advice because he’s feeling trapped in his current podcast network and not sure how to venture out on his own.
One thing that struck me in this conversation was that I didn’t mean to declare podcasts dead in the sense of being useless, they have a an excellent use as being a form of on-the-go media. What I don’t think is effective is having a podcast just for the purpose of having a podcast. A podcast on its own is lonely, and people want, and need context with their content.
In the semantic web context and conversation is even more important than it was 3 years ago when everyone decided that podcasts were the big thing. One newsroom that I work with has had a pod/vod cast in the works for 4 or 5 years and what I’m telling them now is that it’s probably not worth their time to try to play catchup and release them now, let’s just move on and work on something much more current like accepting public opinion and thoughts in an open forum on their web properties.
What spurred my post the other day was the abundance of “podcasting” sessions planned for NAB next week, if these news executives are just now learning about and thinking about implementing podcasts, then the public is going to suffer because the larger Internet world has moved on already.
If pod/vodcasting is an easy thing to implement within your existing organization and workflow by all means, start ‘casting! But if that process is going to be a long one and expend a lot of resources that could otherwise be directed toward more 2-way conversations with your community, then I think you should concentrate on doing that.
If you’ve made it all the way down here in the post you probably don’t need it, but here’s a summary: Podcasting is dead as a sole medium, it’s a one-way conversation and everything I’m seeing says that the public wants and needs 2-way communication with their news agencies to build trust and understanding. Pod/Vod casting makes a great complement to other tools but I don’t think it should be used on its own.
Are Podcasts Dead?
April 7, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
In case you didn’t know, I’ll be in Las Vegas Sunday-Wednesday for the NAB conference (National Association of Broadcasters). The Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism is sponsoring my trip so that I can present Contributr to the masses. (Let’s hope Contributr is ready, more on that tomorrow!)
As I was looking through the available sessions trying to schedule myself into some I noticed a recurring theme, podcasting. Now I hate to rain on anybody’s parade but aren’t podcasts dead? Haven’t they been deemed not conversational enough?
I mean sure, we all are subscribed to a few in iTunes, but how often do you actually listen to one? Let alone actively look for more? I know I don’t. I’ve moved on, I’ve moved on to try to create and examine the semantic web. And podcasts just don’t fit into that strategy very well. They may not be static in location but they are certainly static in content. One you publish an episode to a podcast it just sits there… and people listen to it… but what else? What’s the extra step? … Well I just can’t seem to find it.
So you might imagine my disappointment when I am going through the NAB sessions schedule and see multiple sessions on podcasting each day, and only 2 or 3 sessions on ‘blogging’ total for the entire conference.
Is this where journalism is? Is this what the journalism folks think is hot? Haven’t they found Twitter, haven’t they found Facebook, haven’t they found that conversations are the latest and greatest things to hit the web?
Apparently not, and in my conversations with Jen Reeves it seems that the ‘industry’ is doomed to be 5-years behind as she puts it. Here I am creating wikis, blogging daily, coming up with user generated content solutions, enhancing new-media workflows, and creating conversations around my own life and here is the Journalism Industry just now trying to figure out podcasting.
There’s disconnect somewhere. That disconnect is what is holding back journalism and the news media in general, they’re not in touch with what consumers are using technology for.
As all of my recent blog posts do, I’ll link this one to my current job-search. There are quite a few journalism web content editor and producer jobs out there. Frankly, they’re almost a dime a dozen, news organizations realize they need to staff “the web” so staff “the web” they do. But where is the innovation? Where is the commitment?
Part of the struggle I have faced in my job search is that there’s plenty of work to be had out there, but very few newsrooms and very few news people “get it”. It takes more than just repurposing content from your printed newspaper or broadcast TV show onto the web anymore, that’s just not enough. People want to have conversations, they want to change, edit, manipulate, share, and copy your precious content. Are you willing to see what your public can do for you?
That’s the future of journalism. Don’t just talk to the public, let the public talk to you. If you “get it” email, call, IM, or @jdcoffman me. I’m listening, are you?
Convergence of the Future
March 19, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
News makers keep talking about backpack journalists and having reporters be good at everything. Now we all know that’s just not possible, but it hasn’t stopped the visionaries from proclaiming convergence journalism the future of news.
Convergence of the media is already happening of course, and convergence is the future. No longer is a television station just a television station. Or a radio station, just a radio station. I’ve been interviewing with news organizations trying to find a full-time gig after graduation and I recently met with a newspaper editor from a small-market.
He said something to the effect that “I’m not just running a newspaper, I’m also a TV station, Radio station, podcaster, blogger, information resource, and that’s on top of the seven printed products my newsroom produces”. This is what convergence is, its one media taking on and challenging the other media forms.
Back in the early days of my Journalism School experience they taught about how the Internet wasn’t the end-all of media, much to the contrary each individual media had its own benefits. Well, yes that’s true in part, each form of media (broadcast, print, online, social, etc) does have distinct advantages and disadvantages, but that’s the great thing about the Internet, it allows each of those media to succeed and distribute their product in an open-market of consumers and viewers.
The Internet brings all of those competing old-media technologies and pardon the cliche, it creates synergies between them. No longer is a newspaper just a newspaper, but instead its a radio station, tv station, web site, and a community in and of itself.
This is the Real future of convergence journalism, a combined news product that reaches all people equally and in multiple formats. We’re already doing this in many cases but news makers haven’t taken it far enough yet.
Convergence journalism to me is all about taking advantage of the things that make a particular medium what it is. Television is immensely visual for instance, but a 30 minute newscast can’t begin to touch the detail a 1,500 word article in a major newspaper can. The power of the Internet changes all that.
The power of the Internet creates an open marketplace of ideas from which news consumers can ingest and even create their own news and information resources. One of the goals for my Contributr project is just that, make the communication between the public and a news organization easy for both parties so that both are more likely to interact and create even better news for the communities (and the world) that they serve.
If you’re interested in hearing more of my ideas on the future of journalism and the things that can be right now, subscribe to my RSS feed right here and always get the latest blog posts.
As always, comments are always open on this blog (although the first time you post I may have to approve it to make sure you’re not a spam robot) so join the conversation!
Removing the Newspaper Moniker
March 18, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
A more recent than not change in the newspaper world is the lack us the word “newspaper” to describe the business. This is as much public fluff and PR as it is anything else.
It’s all great and good to move forward and evolve a little, but its another thing altogether to wake up and not be a “newspaper” anymore. Quite contrary, there’s a lot to be said about semantics and the way people perceive words, but I fear that these newspapers aren’t doing anything more than fooling themselves.
There’s a lot more to being an “information source” or “data center” than meets the ear. To truly evolve into a product that people want to interact with (yes I said interact, just reading text and viewing images and video isn’t enough anymore) newspapers need more than just a new motto or mission statement.
Sure changing those things I’m sure is a shock to some people in these newsrooms but what they’re not saying as much about it the dramatic change in culture that is required of a shift from one focus (a printed product with an online product as a second class citizen) to another.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s going to take more than these semantic changes to “save” the newspaper industry. It takes more than just information to hold an audience. It takes conversations, transparency, and interaction to have ANY effect on people.
There needs to be a massive shift in culture and personnel before newspapers can truly change into information centers and local resources in the online world. This can be achieved in many ways, but its going to take more than just removing the newspaper moniker from the vocabulary of the newsroom.
Recent Facebook Application Launches
February 28, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
I recently launched several Facebook applications and thought I’d share them with you. All of them are essentially the same application with different content, they parse RSS feeds from blogs and newsrooms that I work with.
While these aren’t examples of huge viral applications, they have been gaining viewers and interactions day by day. (I might also add that these are in a sort of perpetual beta until further notice 
)
- KOMU News Headlines
- KBIA News Headlines
- Columbia Missourian Headlines
- Jonathan Coffman Blog Headlines
- The Convergency Room Recent Posts
Have a look and let me know what you think!
Facebook Developers = Old Boys Club
February 10, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Facebook Platform Developer Forum / Need some quick adjustments made to my very basic app…: “”
Alright, I admit I was being a little facetious in my post, but I was genuinely wanting to hire someone on a fair wage to help with a couple Facebook Applications I’m launching. The responses I got were rude, inconsiderate and defensive. This certainly is a good example of how NOT to foster a community of inclusiveness.
Now I’m not a huge fan of Facebook anyway, it just takes too much time. But I recently launched some basic apps for some newsroom clients of mine that just displays items from their RSS feeds, pretty simple stuff.
There are a couple small features that I’d like to implement on those Facebook Applications so I read through the Facebook Developer Docs and wiki, to no avail, this stuff just isn’t documented well at all (they’ve had this problem for months!)… so I registered and got an account on the developers discussion board hoping to pay someone a little cash to write up these changes. From what I can tell by the docs, it’s not really a bid deal, most of the code is there already… I just don’t know how to implement it.
So, it doesn’t look like I’m going to get any bites from that forum thread, anyone know a Facebook Developer who’d be willing to help me out a little? I just want an ‘invite’ page (in php), and maybe a drop-down box to give the user a selective way to change the ‘feed’ in their profile.
Web Design and Buildouts
January 23, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
As a web designer I have a small bit of experience ranging from e-commerce and mail-order companies, to micro-sites advertising goods and services, to blogs, discussion boards, and a philanthropic site. I’ve built a wide variety.
I’m passionate about online communities, and in order to positively affect change you have to remember who you ultimately are serving, the almighty user. Enhancing user experience is vital to any project whether offline or online.
You’ll find links below to some of the sites I’ve designed and built over the years. The methods and the technology has changed, and so have I. Design and development went from largely Photoshop comps hard coded into HTML sites to standards based XHTML, Flash, and Content Management Systems.
All of my projects strive to be standards compliant and I especially enjoy working with people who believe in open source software (Drupal and WordPress are my favorites) the benefits to both the developers and the users when taking advantage of open code.
News and Journalism based sites:
- Smart Decision 2008
- KOMU Blogs and Boards (online community, still in development)
- KOMU News Base (online training and tutorial site for newsroom employees)
- Kansas City Pets (WDAF-TV micro site)
Personal and Professional Sites (many of these sites are simply archived copies, some links may not work on them):
- Creative Celebrations (2002)
- FunFunFun For Kids
- CB Designs
- Family Guy Quotes
- How You Can Volunteer
- Perennial Podcast
- JonathanCoffman.com Version 1
Local TV News Online
January 23, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
I worked at KOMU-TV8 in Columbia, Missouri for 3 years. All of that time I have been involved in content, design, development, editing, and producing for KOMU.com. I started as a web editor writing and producing content to go into a new content manager that the station had licensed (Avid Active Content Manager). From there I build up quite a list of stories that I worked on, over 1,400 before leaving to concentrate on social media and online community building.
In addition to the daily editing and producing work, I periodically managed teams of reporters and field producers to ensure that online and new media needs were being met in the field. My management and producing skills allowed KOMU.com to see a lot of growth and new online features including slideshows, behind the scenes video, raw interview footage, and the beginnings of an online community building effort.
Here are some examples of stories and web packages that I worked on at KOMU.com:
In addition to working for KOMU News, I also have had a summer internship with FOX 4, WDAF-TV in Kansas City, Missouri. While with WDAF I,
- Researched, developed, and launched a Kansas City Pets micro site
- Implemented and wrote a Before You Go daily email update
- And worked breaking news like the Kelsey Smith Murder case, all while moderating blogs, discussion boards, and chatrooms.
My sound news judgement has allowed me to take on leadership, and team cooperative roles in television newsrooms. Through my creative and entrepreneurial drive I’m able to take stories to a higher and more interactive level for online and on-air viewers.
Television News
January 23, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Television news has been a passion for me since I was in Junior High School. Throughout my younger years I was always enamored by ‘the news’ and wanted to be a part of it. I’ve always been big on conversations and the knowledge you can gain by talking to people.As I went through high school, my journalism bug got worse, I was the News Director of the schools television news magazine program, award the National Student Television Network journalist of the year, was Editor in Chief of my highschool’s nationally award winning news magazine and more.It was only fitting that I then attend the world’s first and finest journalism school, the Missouri School of Journalism. There I was able to hone and develop my journalism bug and gained a lot of news judgement and leadership skills.My time at the Missouri School of Journalism is accentuated by the numerous opportunities I was afforded to work in real newsrooms on real news products. Including at KOMU-TV8.Here are some of the convergence packages I reported, produced, or edited for KOMU News.
- PetAssage
- Columbia Regional Airport Woes (airport microsite)
- Risky Hands (poker addiction microsite)
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OtherProfiles
