I SPOKE at the latest Digital Editors' Network which met in Preston yesterday and gave people an opportunity to share ideas on a variety of subjects concerning online publishing.
There was a very useful presentation by Andy Dickinson on the use of video in newspapers, offering advice on the best pieces of kit to use but also ways to draw audio and photographs together, as well as potential revenue streams such as featuring local businesses in video advertisements.
Rounding off the afternoon was the network's main organiser Nick Turner, head of digital content for CN Group, who highlighted what had appealed to readers on his own sites.
Popping up in between was my own talk about how the internet tools that already exist can be used to spread a newspaper's content beyond their own website to go where their readers are, and in particular how to connect with bloggers.
Change is occurring in the way people are both reading and discovering news, or following subjects in which they are interested, and it is important to realise what is happening.
Fewer people are saying "I wonder what the Local Gazette has to say?" instead they are wondering what search engines, and that is predominately Google, are pointing to, as you may well have noticed that news stories are being featured on regular search pages nowadays, but also results from blogs are bubbling up onto the first page.
One of the ways to ensure this occurs for your website is to make it easy to link to your site, and just as importantly making sure you link out to others and break out of the "silo mentality" that some newspapers seem to still think is the way forward.
I prepared a del.icio.us page highlighting some real examples and left a couple of observations on each one so that people can explore and see things at their leisure.
But here are some of the ideas I offered up to the newspaper website editors in attendance:
- Make it easy to link to you
Unfortunately even today I still cross sites, often spin-off niche sites which would most probably hook into an audience elsewhere, that use frames so that I can't just go to my address bar and copy and paste a link to an individual story to either feature it on my own site or send to a friend in an email.
- Let your video spread
This one is particularly important considering the amount of time and effort being put into video and the growing success of it on other websites outside of newspapers who are using video to promote their content and brand.
One of the simplest methods is to set up a YouTube account and post both video to your own site and to your account, but making sure there are links between the two - especially if you don't want to run YouTube videos on your newspaper website.
Many sites gather together their video into a distinct section, but if you are struggling to attract readers no one is going to see them, so take the chance on YouTube to feature a live link at the start of your descriptive text which sits to the right of videos in the same way the BBC does here.
What you will begin to see is more people featuring your YouTube clips on their own sites, and with the featured link in place, with one click on the video they are on YouTube and just to the side is a link back to your site.
One thing I didn't mention yesterday was the fact that you can turn off the related videos that feature on embedded players from YouTube, could be useful when placing clips on your own site.
But where you have your own video on your site, make sure people know they can take a version of it to place on their own blog, MySpace page or in front of their friends on Facebook - a simple link to your YouTube account page will work quite easily.
- Using Flickr when covering local events
We've all seen newspapers asking readers to send their pics in from events and shows via mobile phone, often though you face two problems.
The first is that you receive no pics, the second is that you receive 500 don't have the staff to handle them and if you use one pic in the paper you are basically telling the other 499 that their photo was rubbish.
I'll come back to this, but when resources both financial and time are tight, why try to reinvent the wheel?
More people know how to send photos to Flickr via mobile phone than know the newspaper's telephone number you want them sending pics to.
So if there is an event coming up, say a summer music festival, again set up an account on Flickr and then a pool that people can submit pics to or use keywords to tag pics and so gather around this phrase.
You can start the ball rolling by featuring pics from last year's event for example, mention the Flickr group on your site and in paper and because you can embed photographs from Flickr on another site, music fans could start placing one or two of your pics as thumbnails on their own blogs or MySpace pages when they write about how they are looking forward to going to the event.
Then with one click their readers are pushed through to Flickr to see a larger sized image, it doesn't need to be of print quality, and within the descriptive text you can add to every pic is a link back to your main site or spin-off section about the event and how to add pics to the Flickr group.
Maybe you are beginning to see a connection here and it is the power of the link.
- Link to others and they will link back
Many newspaper groups are keen to return to the parish pump style of journalism, which is great to see, but at the same time are looking to bring the internet into the equation.
Much has been written about community blogs on newspaper websites which have been created for selected groups and organisations to write to, and whose content is both relevant to local readers and can eventually be reverse published into the newspaper.
For many newspaper groups this is too costly a venture both in terms of technical knowledge, but also in staff time and the potential legal implications should something be published that is libellous or similar.
But again returning to my theme of using what's already out there, surely the success of blogging tools such as Wordpress, Blogger and TypePad has been because they work, so help to create your network of parish pump correspondents with these tools instead.
Don't rewrite blogging software, do what you are good at which is offering writing tips, advice on how to take good photographs, pointers to what is newsworthy and ultimately bringing an audience to the blogs that already exist and those you support in setting up.
As you help local groups and organisations set up blog style sites you can feature them on the newspaper website, maybe via a directory but definitely by writing about them throughout the week, as well as highlight interesting articles and photos in paper.
However, the real bonus of this is that you have local correspondents publishing to sites that aren't a drain on your resources, but which also provide an RSS feed for your beat journalists or specialists to follow and so stay in touch with what is happening.
There is much talk about going local, but enabling this "localness" to take place using websites and tools that already exist not only saves you time and money, it lets newspaper content break out of the silo it's currently suffocating in to go and flourish where new and existing readers are.
(In the early evening a discussion was organised by Preston UCLan Journalism Leaders Forum which featured a number of people, including Jay Rosen of Press Think, someone I've been reading for quite some time. An excellent write up of the session has been posted by Andy Dickinson, and Oliver Luft of Journalism.co.uk covered the newsy element of the talk, a crowd sourcing project from Trinity Mirror.)
Craig
A couple of audio snippets from Jay Rosen at the event:
On his next Assignment project:
http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/2007/10/17/jay-rosen-journalism-leaders-forum-newassignmentnet-next-project-%e2%80%93-beat-reporting-with-a-social-network/
And talking about why UK papers are two years behind the US:
http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/2007/10/17/jay-rosen-journalism-leaders-forum-uk-newspapers-two-years-behind-the-us-equivalents-in-audience-interaction/
Posted by: Oliver Luft | October 19, 2007 at 11:28
Hi Oliver, many thanks for the links they make interesting listening/reading.
All the best, Craig
Posted by: Craig McGinty | October 22, 2007 at 12:22