Why Life Has Been Crazy: My Huge Job Announcement
May 23, 2008 by Jonathan · 3 Comments
Over the last few weeks I’ve been dropping hints on Twitter, but it’s about time I just came out with it. I’ve accepted a position at the Public Broadcasting Service. In case you’ve been wondering why the big move and road trip from Missouri to Washington DC was happening, that’s why.
I’m joining the ranks of those working full-time on social-media. Social media is such a huge part of the Internet now, and it’s not going anywhere and I’m here to make sure of that!
My title and job at PBS is Assistant Product Manager for PBS Engage. PBS Engage is the social media initiative funded by grants from the Ford Foundation and the Knight Foundation to get people to engage and connect with all of the great content that PBS distributes (like the awesome new series Carrier!).
The PBS Engage team is only a handful of people and the fate of social media is in our hands! 
Well ok, social media isn’t going anywhere regardless of whether or not we’re pushing for it, but I can dream right?
Feedback and response to Engage has been tremendous already with tons of comments on the Engage Blog, and lots of Twitter followers across PBS shows and communities.
At PBS I’ll be working with some really brilliant minds to come up with new ways of enabling participation, engagement, and conversation based around PBS content across the country. In addition to thinking of great ideas, we’re also building social tools to make things like social-networking even easier for PBS viewers regardless of the distribution channel used.
I’m really excited to be joining the PBS family here in the Washington DC area and am looking forward to seeing all of the progress we make in the next year.
With this new position I’ll be relying on YOU even more than before, so keep those @jdcoffman’s, dms, emails, and Facebook messages coming. Without YOU, there is no social-media.
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.
What Newspapers Can Do NOW To Gain Readership
March 20, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Newspapers have a bad reputation of being reactionary (although much of the American media is quite reactionary in nature) but here are some things I think newspapers should do NOW to gain readership and credibility in the communities they serve.
- Update your website more than 3 or 4 times a day, information is always becoming more clear as stories develop, let that be reflected on the web. I would even suggest time-stamping updates to stories so that your readers know that you are WORKING for them.
- Don’t ignore stories after they’ve been reported once. Make sure your reporters know how to edit and change web stories, have them post followups and additional information even after they’ve moved on to other stories.
- Open comments on your web site, in order to gain any credibility you need to allow and embrace commenting on stories, sources, and reporters by the public. Let the public have a voice. While it may seem very scary, it’s more necessary than you think right now.
- Let the public report on their own stories. No one else knows more about what the public wants than the public itself. Allow them to contribute news, information, text, images, video, and more to your news organization… Then publicize it and let them see their own work.
- Editors and filters don’t have to be out of the picture with user generated content, but stringent rules and regulations and fears of the public do need to be out of the picture.
Those are just a few of the many ideas I have about what the newspaper industry need to do in order to gain readership and respect in this new age. It is in no way exhaustive, and there are many other steps, tools, and advice I can give on those subjects.
Here’s the real lesson: Transparency, Participation, Conversation, and Trust.
Online Reputation Management for Individuals
March 6, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
Online Reputation Management for Individuals: “”
(Via Online Marketing Blog.)
I’m a big proponent of online and personal branding, it’s one of those topics that you can talk on and on about, but not really accomplish much. If you’re new to the personal branding and online personality management arena, check out the blog post that I’m linking to up at the top of this post.
It covers a lot of the basic issues as to why you need to manage your online persona, and how to do it using free or mostly-free tools. It doesn’t take much, but doing just a little bit of in house ‘public relations’ on yourself is a good thing.
Surveys are now saying that over 65% of HR personnel and recruiters use the Internet to search and find information about potential hire, and yes I’m talking about searching Facebook and Google for you to see what you’re like.
I participate in a lot of social networking and other online sites where personal information about me is public, and much of that participation is planned and choreographed by me.
That’s not to say it isn’t true, but that it is certainly meant to put me in the best possible light.
One thing that I did recently not directly related to my own personal brand was to go ahead and register the .com versions of my siblings names. They aren’t using them now, but I’d hate for them not to have the chance to take advantage in the future when someone else grabs their NAME.com. Just something to think about!
Jonathan’s Twitter Updates for 2008-02-25
February 25, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
- @jowyang yes I’d say so. #
- I’m tracking ‘academy awards’ are you? #
- #aa08 montages always rock! #
- #aa08 I could do without the Titanic song #
- #aa08 yeah for iPhones! #
- @iellie wasn’t it wonderful? LOL #
- #aa08 don’t think I’ve seen any of the animated movies #
- #aa08 wonder why there hasn’t been a Netflix commercial yet? #
- #aa08 Steve jobs wins again with the rat movie. Gotta love Pixar! #
- #aa08 katherine is beautiful #
- #aa08 havent seen this winner. #
- Of like to see Enchanted #
- #aa08 thank Disney for the academy awards’? ABC/rat/this song #
- @brb there’s ur in! #
- #aa08 this is the first academy award iveseen since being press for it 3 years ago #
- Think Twitter can handle the awards’ tonight? #
- #aa08 the rock is a Disney star as well…. #
- #aa08 stupid golden compass movie #
- #aa08 now a walt Disney quote? #
- #aa08 my Netflix queue is seriously growing quickly, I feel bad that I haven’t seen these movies. #
- @annier consider it done/added! #
- It’s events like this when I love Twitter SMS, and my unlimited Texting plan on my iPhone! I’m sure I’ll hit 1000+ incoming tonight #
- @kindushinski geez, i’m up to like 60 I think (although many of those are HBO series’ that I want to see in addition to movies. #
- #aa08 Michael Clayton was good, it’s one that I actually saw. #
- @waydbot participating in the #aa08 Tweeme-a-thon and watching the Oscars. u? #
- @mariosundar definitely so! #
- #aa08 just because it’s user-generated… doesn’t mean the Dove commercial can’t have good production value, come on people! #
- @aa08 very tastefil binoc. and scope montage
# - @rabeidoh agree that the girl is good. #
- @chironae yeah she can #
- @sonnygill indeed, this one is pretty good, song is just ok though. #
- #aa08 Owen, boring and monotone much? #
- Didn’t see Beee movie either, didn’t really look all that good. #aa08 #
- sooo…. are American filmmakers that bad that these are all foreign films? #aa08 #
- @annieR I haven’t been out to the new location yet, I figure I might see a couple shows at the film fest this coming weekend. #
- #aa08 hmm, worst dressed nominee? #
- @sturlington you got that right, geez #
- by the way, I ordered a new case for my iPhone today, I’m going with the PDO TopSkin http://tinyurl.com/ypyfvu #
- @aanier I’ll have to head down and get tickets tomorrow afternoon maybe. #
- This is the first time I’ve watched TV ‘live’ in a long time, I almost always wait until 20 minutes after the hour to start a 1-hour show. #
- Miley is so bubbly, gotta love her #aa08 #
- This rendition is pretty funky-fresh #aa08 #
- I wish Oprah would give me a big bundle of cash, I’d love giving it away too. #
- Angelina joke is a new classic, I actually LOLd #aa08 #
- Bourne did have GREAT sound editing #aa08 #
- Seriously? come on AMPAS #aa08 #
- "Thank you life, Thank you love" is the official quote of the year. #
- I’ve never played a wii, anyone want to invite me over for a game? #
- This song sounds really flat #aa08 #
- The "legendary Jack Nicholson" took his dark shades off and now has his light shades on. #aa08 #
- @annier have you been? I wanted to go last time I was in LA, but didn’t get a chance. #
- Alright, Renee is just plain cute no matter when/where #aa08 #
- @annier interesting, it does appear to be beautiful #
- #aa08 The Bourne Ultimatum is a total hit tonight, quite surprising. #
- I didn’t think Kidman was there tonight, they had a static picture of her in the ‘baby’ #aa08 #
- Now that is a heck of a necklace, ha! holy cow that thing is out of control. #aa08 #
- @annier never had the pleasure of Nutella in my kitchen, can’t quite bring myself to it. #
- The Birds, now that’s a good movie #aa08 #
- geez, haven’t half of the winners already tonight been foreign films? It sure feels like it #aa08 #
- Disney absolutely OWNS the Academy Awards #aa08 #
- @vergil66 I used Blockbuster online for a while, b/c of the in-store tradeins, but really just like Netflix better overall. #
- @annier only because it’s harder to get access around here to those films #
- Once won! It is such a good song, I’m going to have to see the film. #
- @chrisbrogan you didn’t even need TV tonight, just follow or track #aa08, over 600 tweets by my count so far. #
- @chrisbrogan At least as far as the OSCARS are concerned… #
- @vergil66 yeah, it was fine for a while, but Netflix is just too hard to beat, and BB cracks down on the limits, etc unfortunately. #
- I had kinda forgotten about the Kite Runner #aa08 #
- Go US Troops, glad you’re a part of the OSCARS tonight #aa08 #
- I’m kinda glad Sicko didn’t win, I just don’t like Michael Moore. #aa08 #
- @annier what are your picks for True/False this weekend? #
- @tweet140 just started harassing my DM box with such things as my average-77 is too low to be considered for a Twoosh award. I’ll show them! #
- @geoffliving ha! I just Followed @tweet140 this afternoon, not all that impressed other than the API work. #
- why the Flinstones dress? #aa08 #
- I’ve gotten over 800 txt messages tonight by Tracking #aa08 and "Academy Awards" … amazing the participation going on this evening! #
- I’d like to thank Twitter for handling the heavy load, and not crashing once, we may have hit a milestone today. #aa08 I applaud you. #
- It’s over, have a good evening everyone, and thanks for taking me past the 2,900 Tweet mark this evening. You’ve been great! #aa08 #
- @mufan96 you’ll love how easy to use it is. #
- Dang, a street 3 blocks away from me had over 60 police calls in the last year… mostly drug related crimes. I had no idea! #
- Goodnight Twitterville #
- Checking out Las Vegas hotels, any suggestions? I’ll be there for NAB in April and booking now. #
- @acafourek thanks, I’ll take a look those. #
- ha! how back woods am I, I just spray painted my mailbox black and the flag Red, the paint had been peeling and whatnot for a couple years. #
- @acomputerpro congrats on the save! #
- @rodrigoMX lets hope that’s where it stays #
- @acomputerpro as long as you youtube your recitals, we’ll be happy #
- Working on my article that’s going to be posted to Adobe.com re: my AIR experiences. #
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.
Jonathan’s Twitter Updates for 2007-11-09
November 9, 2007 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
- Going to sleep for a while, working overnight tonight #
- It’s just one thing after another today, and Thursday’s never end as it is #
- I wish my weekend wasn’t looking so busy, I’d love to bottle some of my brews #
- I totally A-ced Bloomberg’s financial journalist training quiz today! whoop!! #
- Picking some shirts up from the cleaners. #
- @deanpence update is only on the web right now. Not iTunes yet. #
- At the gym, signing off while i work out. Tweet ya later! #
- Back home eating lunch, then I’ve got some writing to do #
- @newmediajim I wish more people realized the power of conversation and participation AS marketing #
- Alright, no more messing around, shower then work #
- Reading this new Twitter guide, it’s pretty accurate, check it out! http://tinyurl.com/2xhhpc #
- Filling out some FOIA requests, but I’m not sure who the custodian of records I should send them to are… hmm… #
- http://missourisenate.blogspot.com/ this is FUNNY, the Senate distributes press releases and public info via Blogspot #
- @mdowney where are you headed? #
- Cooking pinto bean soup, no recipe, just winging it, this’ll be interesting! #
- @ijustine, is @ijustinesiphone feeling any better, she sounded like she might be coming down with something earlier #
-
OtherProfiles
