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