Mark Potts, creator of Washingtonpost.com, showed us how journalism works without using the typical inverted pyramid, who/what/when/where/why style.
He showed us how good Wikipedia can be, despite its reputation.
He also showed us how Facebook was used as a storytelling device as well as Storify.
How to get the audience involved:
- Crowdsourcing (at both local and hyperlocal levels)
- Comments
When creating a blog, know what you do and do it best.
People who blog do it to be an authority in their community and to be respected for their passionate dedication rather than for money. These same people want their audience to become passionate and care.
The blogs tell people what is going on in that specific community that is not being covered by anyone else.
- Computational journalism: Using the computer to tell stories
- API: Giving people ability to create data tables
As a Twitter user, Potts surprisingly felt that it was not a useful tool except for publicity. When he posts a new blog on his site, he will post that URL on his Twitter and gets many hits from that.
The most important technological tool for journalists in the last five years?
The cell phone.
With social media, the super fast speed can be both an advantage and a disadvantage because some people are struggling to keep up with the need to publish as soon as possible and multiple times throughout the day instead of having one deadline.
It also exposes laziness because journalists may not have the pride in their work to get it right the firs time instead of doing it lazily and waiting for their editor to fix the mistakes.
Newspapers are struggling to realize that there are websites with better writing to give the same information that they give the day after.
Living in a “river of news,” it is important for each person to individually be able to filter their own news.
