When TV Listens To Its Viewers, Amazing Things Happen
April 28, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking at ways news organizations can connect and interact with their viewership. This morning I was greeted by a basic, but excellent interaction on Good Morning America.
I’ve got ABC turned on in my hotel room this morning for background noise and they ran a story about the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair which has some photographs of Miley Cyrus (Story here) scantily clad. Cyrus is a huge Disney made and owned child start at only 15. As always, the GMA web site is open to comments on stories, and they actively solicit “editorial” based feedback via email as well.
It’s now 8am EDT and the original story aired no more than 30 minutes ago, there are already 150+ comments on the story from people pro and against the photos and dolling out advice. This level of immediate feedback and interaction is awesome! What’s more, just a few minutes ago the Good Morning America talking heads came back from a commercial break and spent 30 seconds discussing the comments they were seeing on their web site.
This interaction and discussion online, and on-air has tremendous power, and I hope that it’s something your news organization is open to or considering doing.
On Email Organization
April 22, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
For the last month or so I’ve been on a rampage, an email rampage. I haven’t quite hit Inbox Zero but inbox 30-40 suits me well actually. Here’s what I’ve done:
- I now have only 2 visible email addresses, Gmail and my @jonathancoffman.com mail. Those other addresses (.Mac, Yahoo!, Mizzou, and my secondary Gmail) all now get picked up by my primary Gmail account, this way I only have two inboxes to check, and hopefully by responding to those with only one address I gradually get fewer and fewer messages going to those other addys.
- Combining the last two addresses, my primary gmail and my domain email isn’t yet feasible. I can’t quite take myself down to that level yet. Because they’re used for two very different purposes (personal and professional) the use cases will remain mutually exclusive for the time being.
- The downside to still having two inboxes: two sets of gmail tags/folders. My domain email is handled by GoogleApps (which I love by the way), so for now I have two identical but disconnected sets of tags.
- Account and Login Information
- Banking
- Bills
- Blog Conversations
- Contributr
- Current Projects
- Pipeline Projects
- Coupons and Discounts
- Job Hunting
- Journalism School
- Newsletters
- Personal (family)
- Private Betas
- Product Orders
- Service Orders
- Require followup
- Servers and Hosting
- Social Media
- Travel
- URGENT
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?
My Ideal Job
April 4, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
By way of looking introspectively at my self and my ambitions I have a pretty good idea of my ideal job is at this point. I’ve known for quite some time that being in the service of the public and working toward a greater good is in my blood. My mother was a teacher and my dad is a businessman. Between the two of them I acquired a passion for serving the public, and a business savvy entrepreneurial drive.
I’ve been on the path of working in the field of journalism for about 8 years now. Journalism attracted me in part because of the immense power of the press and how good journalism can be a cause for change. In addition, there are all kinds of cool toys that people in the news and information business can play with!
So that brings me to the ultimate point of this post, my ideal job:
- Serves the public interest, educating and informing them.
- Is collaborative with other smart people.
- Allows for the intelligent expression and discussion of ideas and suggestions.
- Brings people (both internally and externally) to have better, more efficient communication.
- Allows people to discuss and achieve.
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!
Why Your Business Needs To Focus On Relationships More and On Money Less - Dawud Miracle @ dmiracle.com -
March 4, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
(Via dmiracle.)
I’ve blogged many times before about the lack of effective monetization for news organizations on the web. It’s not just news orgs that need better ads and monetization strategies, believe me, I’ve been there.
Many of the web sites I built and sold have been ad revenue based, and none of it was easy. Some of the sites that i’ve built over the years didn’t even make much money, but they sold for more than the sites that were making twice or more. Know what the difference was? Heart, the ones that sold high I had put more time into them and they had ‘meaning’.
The web isn’t just about making money and taking names, it’s about building relationships and networks now. This is what web 2.0 is really about. It’s about the people. People make the mashable web go round.
The blog post I’m highlighting here talks about relationships and conversations being worth more than than the revenue your site is supposed to generate as it relates to businesses.
Now I understand that The Man wants to make his or her money from web ventures, but relationships and conversations can, and do, bring much more to the table. By gaining respect and ‘friends’ in the social web you’re able to use those connections and real people to your advantage.
There’s nothing quite like getting real, honest feedback from people who actually visit your site and have something to say about it.
So as you’re launching the next big web venture remember that, money is important, but the relationships are just as important, and often more important than the revenue.
4 News Companies Ally to Sell Ads on the Internet - New York Times
February 29, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
4 News Companies Ally to Sell Ads on the Internet - New York Times
Gannett, Tribune, Hearst, and the New York Times company are joining forces to try to sell more advertising. And it couldn’t have come at a better time. This was release about two weeks ago but I didn’t get a chance to read into it further until now.
Basically, they’ve joined forces through a company called QuadrantONE which is providing a Google AdSense-ish experience where an advertiser can contact them, and place ads in news properties of each of those companies.
The focus of the agency is on local ads only, presumably to not step on the toes of the sales people at those organizations who acquire and foster the large national contracts.
I’ll Be Featured on Adobe.com in March
February 15, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
I received some good news earlier this week, Team Contributr, myself included will be featured on the Adobe.com DevNet site in the month of March for our participation in the Reynolds Journalism Institute/Adobe Inc. AIR Journalism contest.
For those who didn’t know, I alongside a team of 3 other developers created a modular application that simplifies the way the public interacts and shares information and content with news organizations.
We’ve made great strides already! We were named a finalist last September and were given $5,000 in development seed money to make our application come to life. We made some great purchases and put in countless hours, and we did it!
We really created quite a remarkable application, it runs on the Desktop using Adobe AIR technology, on the web, on your iPhone, and syndicates across the world as well.
Long story short, Adobe was a sponsor of the contest and now I’ve been chosen to write an article for their Dev Net site which will be published March 15. It’s early yet but I hope to get the article written in the next week or so.
My team is very excited and we’re proud that the Reynolds Journalism Institute and Adobe have been so supportive of our startup.
My iGoogle Homepage Favorite Things
February 9, 2008 by Jonathan · 2 Comments
The iGoogle homepage is my personal portal of choice, for a number of reasons, once I just like having the Google search bar right there waiting for whenever I want. I don’t keep a lot of widgets and tabs saved onto it, but enough to get me the latest headlines from my news organizations of choice, and weather (although usually my weather reports come from hitting the Weather icon on my iPhone.
A couple other widgets that I keep on my iGoogle main page is a ‘Daily Einstein’ quotes box (I’m a big Einstein fan) as well as a Joke of Day widget (I only glance at it every couple of days, but sometimes there’s something funny there!).
One other favorite thing on my iGoogle homepage is the Google Gadget Editor, for those moments when I get fed up with going to a website and just want a widget, I use an RSS widget template and roll my own! I’m sure this is what frightens some PR folk, people rolling their own content widgets, but gosh if they did them themselves audience numbers are sure to grow!
Very soon I’m going to roll out some widgets and other gadgets on my blog, mainly different ways to read and access the information contained in it. Some things I’m currently thinking of doing in the short term include a Mac OSX Dashboard widget, iGoogle homepage widget, iPhone application, SpringWidgets widget, and maybe some extra RSS feeds so you can roll your own (just be sure to send me a link, I love seeing what kinds of cool things people can do given some unique content).
The Future of Contributr
February 6, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
Contributr is a project that is near and dear to my heart, it’s an idea that I had several months ago and me and a team of 3 developers have been working on it since then.
Monday we presented our final product to a panel of journalism industry professionals, Adobe AIR specialists, and the good people at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. And I now have some bad new to report, Contributr didn’t win the big prize. So that presents us with some options and some ideas. I’m also interested in hearing what you have to say, so comment away.
Basically Contributr is this, it’s a solution to a problem that countless news organizations have, how to accept and process citizen journalism, otherwise known as user generated content. The workflows are complex, the technology is advanced, but with Contributr, those problems are minimized.
We created what I think is a great, and effective application. The company is setup as a Software as a service/ service as a service model which is gaining steam each day.
Furthermore, there have been multiple inquiries into the availability of Contributr for use in the ‘real world’ by large and small news organizations, something that I’m very excited about.
Here’s the issue now, we’re fairly confident that the Reynolds Institute is going to want to retain us to maintain and work on Contributr (they gave us a $5,000 development fund to work with over the last few months). But, here’s the kicker, since we didn’t win the contest, do they actually own Contributr?
From my knowledge of the law, I think it’s pretty clear-cut, despite their gift of $5,000 to further the development of Contributr, since we didn’t win the ‘contest’ I don’t think they have a claim to ownership.
Now of course, if their funding and support of Contributr is generous, we’d be happy to continue working with them, and would love the backing of such great people.
On the other hand, we’ve got a great product and one that we know for a fact there is demand for, so we could also probably do some tweaking, some redesign work and continue development on our own.
It’s a pretty complex situation but one I hope to resolve fairly quickly, we’ll be meeting with the Reynolds Institute to talk about further development and consulting opportunities in the next couple of weeks.
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