The Wire includes a linear timeline of local news that tracks breaking news in real time. The timeline drives traffic to wcco.com using posts from WCCO reporters and aggregates content from social networks. Users can sort the timeline by news, buzz (the “fun” stuff) and events. Most importantly, the application also aggregates the best local news coverage and allows users to submit their own content as well.

Here’s an introduction to the application by WCCO Web producer Karna Bergstrom:

Also, check out Jason DeRusha’s video on the site’s launch. Pretty funny stuff.

By developing the site, WCCO has created a local news network that provides fresh coverage throughout the day. The site uses existing WCCO content and aggregates feeds from other organizations, including MinnPost, Minnesota Public Radio, Kare 11, Fox 9, WCCO Radio and the Pioneer Press. The Star Tribune and KSTP didn’t make the cut because their feeds are run by robots.

The Wire includes some impressive multimedia integration. The video player is embedded within the individual posts and can pull feeds from YouTube or wcco.com (users still cannot share or embed the video). The multimedia content is connected to each post and does a nice job highlighting the station’s strong video content.

The linear timeline seems like a weird way to access local news. There’s a lot of information condensed into a small space and most developing stories require some previous understanding to make them work. This problem is not unique to The Wire and it will be interesting to see how this tool will be used in the future. It does include a search function to follow specific topics and that could be a great tool to follow stories over time. For example, a search of “health care” could help follow the health care debate, even though stories are currently limited to a three-day window.

The most promising part of the project comes from the “list view.” Does it look familiar? It’s pretty much a mini Twitter feed. By doing this, WCCO becomes a much more attractive source for local news because of its willingness filter local content and link to outside sources. In addition, the live feed allows users to access information in real time, but without the human filter of Bring Me The News to recommend related content or the strongest stories.

Please note: Any users who would like to view the Flash site on their iPad can contact Steve Jobs at sjobs@apple.com. And this is why he isn’t going to budge.

The Wire is not currently sending updates through Twitter or RSS. WCCO’s digital media director, John Daenzer, said those updates will be coming soon. In addition, WCCO also plans to roll out a mobile site (sometime next week) that will include a layout similar to the “list view.”

The most promising part of the application is its development of a local news network. WCCO is the first news organization to start aggregating coverage in real time and this could have some very interesting implications. Right now, the list view is pretty much a fire hose of local content. However, if The Wire could become a filter of local content and update users based on their individual interests, then I think it could become a very powerful tool. For example, I could use the application to request information about local politics, Gophers basketball and health care, and receive those updates through a Facebook application or RSS feed. In addition, I could use an advanced search to track a local story, such as R.T. Rybak’s run for governor, to provide context for an on-going event.

The first local news organization who can find a way to aggregate and filter local coverage based on user preferences is going to be very successful. After WCCO’s development of The Wire, it’s only a matter of time.

A couple weeks ago, David Brauer and Taylor Carik hosted the Other Future of News conference, a response to Minnesota Public Radio’s Future of News event in mid-November. The conference was divided into three sessions, including organizational change, tech tools and content. Here’s a couple brief highlights from the second and third sessions. Please note, I was only able to upload some of the presentations because of YouTube’s 10-minute limit and I didn’t make it for all of the presentations.

Programming for Robots

Julia Schrenkler (@juliaschrenkler), an interactive producer at American Public Media, emphasized the importance of data portability and searchability when uploading content on the Web.

“Everything you do has to be understood by robots… The search terms, the news robots, the robot editors, everything in the future is about the bots… Your data has to be able to speak to those bots.”
- Julia Schrenkler

Things to consider when uploading content to the web:

1) Communicating with robots
2) Easy migration to new tools
3) Stability of the code
4) Understanding the terms of service
5) Understanding user preferences
6) Fast and easy support
7) Adaptability to new technologies

Designing for readers

Matt Quintanilla (@blamedesign), a former print designer at the Star Tribune and current graphic designer at the Minnesota Science Museum, argued that the emphasis on design from printed newspapers has not translated to the Web because of technological limitations.

“When you’re talking about newspapers, magazines and really any news media, you really want to build for readers… The front page of the newspaper compared to the front page of the Web site of that newspaper is pretty much night and day.”

As part of his Paper News proposal for the 2010 Knight News Challenge, Quintanilla suggested a content and design framework that would allow news organizations to produce different layouts throughout the day. The proposal would be a Web-based framework, independent from each site’s content management system, that would allow news organization’s to easily re-design their homepage. In addition, it would allow for greater advertising potentially because commercial content could be placed where it’s most effective.

Paper News is an interesting approach to the future of news design and it could co-exist with “the robots” because it’s separate from the CMS. My primary concern with the proposal would be the additional emphasis placed on maintaining a “destination site.” Design is clearly important, but I’d like to see less focus placed on the homepage and more emphasis placed on individual stories that might serve as an access point to the site. For example, an excellent breaking news story could bring more people to the site if it were designed effectively. In addition, projects like the Star Tribune’s Liberia project and WCCO’s Bridge Retrospective could do the same if there was a framework able to produce similar stories more efficiently.

Albert Sun (@albertsun), co-founder of CoPress, suggested creating a set of open source Flash templates for his Knight News Challenge proposal (#KNC10) to allow more news organizations to produce extensive interactive graphics. Using a similar concept, there’s definitely potential for a universal framework to make interactivity more easy to implement with current content management systems and help improve the user experience.

Developing new audiences

Julia Nekessa Opoti (@Nekessa), freelance writer and publisher at Kenya Imagine, referenced a study by University of Minnesota professor Katherine Fennelly that said immigrants, specifically Latinos, Africans and Asians, will re-shape the state of Minnesota in the next 10 to 20 years. As a result, news organizations must appeal to these changing audience if they want to increase readers to keep the general population informed.

There’s an increasing digital divide, especially when it comes to information. We’re going to cut out a lot of people if we concentrate [too] heavily on the Internet and if we forget about the other small mediums.

This is an interesting approach to the future of news and something to consider. The type of coverage related to violence and crime in minority communities will need to change. There appears to be three approaches to the future of news that could resolve this problem:

1) More niche publications, such as small newspapers and magazines, could appeal to these growing audiences and cover issues important to these communities.

2) Traditional news organizations could alter their coverage to appeal to new audiences. Although this seems rather obvious, it would be somewhat problematic and difficult to implement. One of the current problems with mainstream news organizations is that they’re too broad and cannot capture a narrow advertising base. This would significantly expand the audience, specifically with a print publication, and make it more difficult to identify readers.

3) This appears to be a central argument for reducing the digital divide. News organization, foundations and/or corporations could help provide broadband to minority communities and develop new audiences with advertising potential. Any organization that decided to do this, such as Yahoo! or Google, would play a very powerful role in the future of news.

Curating niche content

Paul Schmelzer (@iteeth), editor of the Minnesota Independent, started a blog almost seven years ago called Eyeteeth: A journal of incisive ideas. The blog, one of roughly 30 independent art blogs, started broadly and developed a very niche focus. The site is most commonly known for its “Bits” segment that aggregates interesting links to relevant works of art.

Other #OFON presentations on technology tools included:
1) “Automating access to public data” – Steve Clift, E-Democracy
2) “Using Twitter” – Tom Scheck (@tomscheck), Minnesota Public Radio
3) “Mturk and Dapplr for reporters” – Ed Kohler (@EdKohler), The Deets
4) “Why your site design sucks” – Justin Heideman (@justinph), Walker Art Center

Other #OFON presentations on content included:
1) “Journalism cooperatives” – Jon Collins, Watch Cat
2) “Making the most of online video” – McKenna Ewen (@mckennaewen), Ewen Media
3) “Fitting in to a media diet” – Bennett Gordon (@BennetG), Utne Reader
4) “Entertainment and the news” – Jeff Horwitz, Minnesota Public Radio
5) “Immigrants and the changing media audience” – Julia Nekessa Opoti (@Nekessa), Freelance Writer

A couple weeks ago, David Brauer (@dbrauer) and Taylor Carik (@_taylor_) hosted the Other Future of News conference, a response to Minnesota Public Radio’s Future of News event in mid-November. The conference was divided into three sessions, including organizational change, tech tools and content. I’ve included a couple highlights from the first session and will upload more videos later this week.

New brands for old organizations

Star Tribune reporter Michael Rand (@RandBall) discussed the organization’s decision to create Game Face MN, a niche site for prep sports coverage. The site currently has user-generated content, social media components and assorted multimedia content. The idea behind the site, according to Rand, was to create a separate online community that would be appealing to advertisers. The site utilizes social networks through Facebook connect and Twitter integration, and allows more users to interact with the content because it’s a smaller community than StarTribune.com.

This concept seems like a promising approach to future coverage and has significantly more advertising potential. It would be interesting to evaluate the strength of the Game Face brand, in comparison to the Star Tribune’s, and monitor the site’s effectiveness in engaging new users. In addition, the next logical step would appear to be full Facebook integration to appeal to younger audiences, such as Facebook applications or Facebook Connect. The University of Minnesota’s Christine Greenhow considered this option in more detail in the next presentation.

Integrating news with social networks:

University of Minnesota researcher Dr. Christine Greenhow (@chrisgreenhow) suggested the use of Facebook applications as a new way for news organizations to connect with younger consumers. The University of Minnesota’s site, Hot Dish, was built entirely within Facebook and included information on environmental science. The site included incentives for engagement and interactivity through the use of an “action team.” Users were encouraged to comment and receive challenge points for redeemable prizes. Most importantly, the study said the application allowed them to interact because they were already used to sharing and commenting in the Facebook environment.

“Building a niche application around an issue, like politics, environmental science, entertainment or health, could be a real opportunity, perhaps, for the future of news media.”  – Christine Greenhow

According to the study, the creation of the action team was extremely effective in creating a highly engaged segment of active participants. Most interesting, many of these challenges continued offline, such as signing a petition, contacting a congressman or visiting a specific location, that could not be completed online. The application showed the potential to connect with a highly engaged segment of the population through a reward-based system. In addition, incorporating news content onto a Facebook page appeared to be a way to “fish where the fish are” rather than waiting for them to swim to you.

Interesting findings:

60 percent of the articles were read
Two-thirds of the site’s content was user generated
Only 10 percent of referred friends signed up

Here’s a link to Greenhow’s full presentation from the Other Future of News conference:

Although Greenhow did not specifically mention the MN Daily application during the presentation, the University of Minnesota’s school newspaper also partnered with News Cloud and launched a similar application. Those findings, also prepared by Greenhow, re-affirmed that users felt more comfortable expressing their opinions within the Facebook application compared to a mainstream news site. Therefore, increasing interactivity may be significantly more effective within the Facebook framework or through the implementation of Facebook connect. The study also suggested that student interest in the University of Minnesota community also increased through the use of the application, primarily related to information on local issues and education.

New roles for journalists

Tom Elko (@tomelko), news director at Bring Me The News, discussed three emerging roles for journalists at the Other Future of News.

1) Journalists reporting for corporations
2) Journalists working as programmers
3) Journalists serving as news curators

First, he suggested the potential evolution of reporting positions to fill gaps within large corporations. For example, this could include large corporations, such as 3M, wanting journalists to report directly to investors on events in China or other corporations hiring reporters to uncover new trends and competition. Second, Elko suggested the emerging role of journalists as programmers. Journalists could use their storytelling backgrounds to program new technologies and help bring those technologies to the news room. Lastly, he stressed the importance of future journalists serving as news curators to gather information, which Elko does at Bring Me The News.

Other #OFON presentations on organizational change included:
1) “Changing the AP” – Dave Pyle, Associated Press
2) “Social media in big organizations” – Amy Nelson (@AmyPioneerPress), Pioneer Press
3) “Who cares about Google? / Why sideways traffic is problematic” – Jim Bernard (@bernardjim), Marketwatch
4) “Changing a non-metro paper” – Jim Santori (@JPSantori), Mankato Free Press
5) “Going rogue after radio!” – T.D. Mischke, City Pages

The Other Future of News conference took place on December 12, 2009, and was a response to MPR’s Future of News event that took place earlier this year. Other videos from the event are available here.

Learning online video from the “White Castle lady”

This summer, on the first day of my third internship at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, I was assigned to produce a video on White Castle customer Ariel Wade. Wade was upset because she tried to drive her motorized scooter through the White Castle drive-thru after the dining room had closed and the employees refused to serve her. She contacted the Star Tribune’s Whistleblower team and argued that White Castle had discriminated against her because of her disability (degenerative arthritis). The story ran here with a short video.

Ariel Wade showed me the power of online video after the story ran. First, Huffington Post linked to the video, which is essentially every intern’s dream, and Wade quickly became a viral celebrity. Dlisted, a raunchy celebrity site, embedded the video and it took off. Other similar blogs picked it up and Wade became an “American Hero” who was “fighting the fight.” However, because the Star Tribune’s video player did not allow any sharing or embedding options, a user ripped the video from the Star Tribune’s site and uploaded it to YouTube.

To me, this story demonstrated the powerful potential of local news video to reach new viewers when the content can be emailed, embedded and shared with others. In this case, the primary audience for a White Castle drive-thru story might be on Dlisted rather than unique visits to the Star Tribune. The easy embeddability of the YouTube player allowed new viewers to see the story without any additional cost to the news organization. It also significantly expanded the potential viewing audience by targeting a new set of news consumers.

Shortly after the initial launch, the Star Tribune added the video to its YouTube channel and brought in an additional 25,000 video views, plus 20,000 video views from the previous user (who was asked to remove the video). From the YouTube channel, the video was embedded on nine different channels and even inspired a spin-off video.

In this case, YouTube appeared to be an effective way of distributing video content. However, if the Star Tribune’s video player allowed for sharing and embedding, the 45,000 views would have been added to site’s video traffic and helped maximize pre-roll advertising from the content. While loyal visitors might be easier to monetize, this example showed that this video’s value, along with many others, were not limited to a particular news site.