Star Tribune

The Other Future of News (1 of 2)

Please note: This is part one of a two-part post.

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

Learning online video from the "White Castle lady"

Here’s a link to my Other Future of News (#ofon) presentation on “making the most of online video.” Please take a look and let me know what you think!

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.

Vikings-Packers: Beyond the victory

A photo recap of Monday night’s game. The Vikings won 30-23 and Brett Favre became the first player to defeat all 32 NFL teams.

Originally produced for the Star Tribune.
Photography by Carlos Gonzalez, Jerry Holt, Brian Peterson, Jeff Wheeler and McKenna Ewen.

Winning the (video) story

As of late, I’ve been thinking a lot about the best way for newspapers to compete with TV stations to win the big video stories of the day. When I started working with newspaper video, my goal was always to be first. Since the web offered an opportunity to upload a video at any time, I thought I could beat TV stations before their 5:00 and 6:00 deadlines. With the exception of breaking news stories, I soon learned that there’s not much of an appetite for the first story of the day compared to the best story of the day.

I don’t think newspapers can compete with the well-oiled TV machines at their own game. Instead, they can win the stories of the day by using their additional resources and context. The Knight Foundation’s Matt Thompson recently wrote five concrete steps toward improving the news. In the post, item number one said: “Don’t ‘win the morning.’ Win the story.” I think that mentality is the future of online video.

On Saturday, I covered the University of Minnesota’s first game in their new football stadium. The home opener took place around 6:00 PM with roughly six TV stations (including the Big Ten network), a couple online outlets and myself covering the video elements of the story. Each TV station had at least two videographers and one reporter covering the game and it finished around 9:00. During the post-game interviews, the TV crews stayed for the head coach’s press conference and then slowly started leaving to make deadline. The number of cameras in the room dropped from seven cameras to two (the guy live steaming and me).

The next day, I visited each station’s Web site to watch their coverage of the event. Here’s the best TV story that I could find online:

Did you notice how all the footage was shot before the game ever started? All of the TV stations had access to the field and could record the game, but they only had time to use a few of the big plays later in sports. So, what happened to all of that great footage that wasn’t ready for deadline? It sits on a shelf as part of history that most people will never see. To win this story, online news organizations need to consistently beat this style of story.

WCCO-TV did a nice job pulling together this nat sound story with game footage later in the broadcast. Also, here’s the story that StarTribune.com ran the next day:

Instead of running stories when they are suppose to run – newspapers can run stories when they’re ready. It becomes a whole new story when you hear from coaches and players at the 10:00 press conference, and see how the team actually did in their home opener. This online video environment provides an excellent opportunity to engage users in high-quality storytelling if organizations are willing to invest in the resources to make these stories possible.

UPDATE: Kare11 recently aired this story as part of their Extra segment a couple days after the stadium launch. Awesome to see a local TV station following up with a big story.