Engaging Readers, We

Media, Social Media

University of North Texas

Department of Journalism
Online Journalism 3340
March 5, 2009
Today’s Lineup
 Website of the Day
 Tool of the day
 Wikis Wrap Up
 Peter Shankman & The Future of News and the
Web
 In class exercise
 H/W due next Tuesday:
 Digital Storytelling Cookbook: READ Chapter on “
Seven Elements”
 Go to http://mediastorm.org, http://nppa.org or local
newspaper website, find a multimedia story and
define the seven elements of the story.
Wikis
 “Wiki” is Hawaiian word for “quick”, e.g.
WikiWiki
 “Social software”: facilitating communication
and collaboration with other users
 A Web-based application that allows people to
add, remove, edit and change content through
a browser.
 The ease of interaction makes wikis an
effective tool for collaboration. Wikis can be
considered a content management system.
 http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/videos/overview/overview.j
Why Wikis?
 Andrew Lih, director of technology
at the Journalism and Media
Studies Centre at the University of
Hong Kong:
 Participatory Journalism:
 Engages the news audience to
participate in the process of
rationalizing web content
 Crafting the news

Wikipedia.org
 Started by Jimmy Wales, who create
Bomis.com a Ph.D-edited free
encyclopedia
 The Goal:
 Allow visitors to create an encyclopedia
easily shared, updated and never outdated
 The Power of UGC: User Generated
Content:
 Year One: more than 20,000 articles, a
dozen language translations
 Year Two: 100,000 articles, 50 languages
From Wikis to Social Media
 Peter Shankman (
http://shankman.com)
 Former AOL exec/entrepreneur
 Passing out resumes in Times Square
 Anti-Titanic campaign
 WhereInTheHellIsMatt.com
Shankman’s Predictions
 Predictions
1) Press releases as we know it will be dead in 36
months.
 Putting it on the wire is not going to work. 
 Search Engine Optimization – It’s all about the ‘tagging”
-- You have to write better than ever!
 2) Privacy is gone! You can curl up and do nothing or
get out there and
get your info out there first.
 3) Newspapers are not freaking dead. They are
condensing; they are
emerging and they are getting smarter.  Those that are
disappearing don't need to be here. They're not
smarter.
Shankman’s Four
Principles
1) Transparency:
* Here's what we do. How we do it.
* If you write a blog, tell people that's what you're doing. You
have to be honest!
• People don't trust anybody any more.
2) Relevance
There's fragmentation. People get their news in multiple formats.  You
have to know how to get to your audience. You have to get it to them
the way they want to get information.
3) Brevity:
* The MTV generation got people used to 3 minute videos
* The “Twitter” Generation has got us down to 140 characters
* Be quick: Get your message across
4) Top of mind presence: People/Readers/Viewers need to have a
relationship with you
Media Executives
 Why social media matters?
 Have to go where the readers are
 Have to convince readers we are there for
them
 Tell stories in multiple ways, multiple
formats in multiple venues
 News websites have to be a ‘utility’
 Make the content informative
 Make it accessible
 Create a call to action
In class assignment
 Post on blog
 Headline
 150 word summary
 Integrate Swivel graphic