60 sites in 60 minutes: stampeding the SPJ Convention

Jeff Cutler and I were overwhelmed by the response to our session Saturday at the SPJ National Convention.

"Site Stampede: 60 web sites in 60 minutes" drew a large, lively crowd anxious to learn what we'd linked to around the web.

You can download a copy of the links (.doc) and Mitch Davis posted a series of videos, for those who couldn't attend.

We're hoping to do it again next year in Vegas. And if you come across any sites we missed or want to explore more, let us know.

And now I return to where I started as a multimedia reporter

I come back to this blog, and really I realize I never should have left. This is where I started my journey into a new era of journalism that many my age found frightening.

I feel like I've come a long way in the past two years. I made many new friends.  I discovered Twitter, which brought me to a new level of reporting and may have saved my career.

I've talked to journalists around the country about how I use multimedia and social media to do my job.  I've sought out others and tried to learn from the best.

My experiment with SPJ that moved me to leave this space was so successful the organization made that blog their own for a new committee on digital news that I was proud to help initiate. It's great when something that started to just chronicle my learning has such value for others. It was sad to leave that blog, but that didn't mean leaving blogging.

So I return here, where I started.

May others find this and jump in, because one part of this new era of journalism I've really learned to enjoy is not writing for an audience, but having a conversation with friends.

Pushing Twitter trial coverage a step forward: federal court

In less than a year, covering trials via Twitter has gone from an experiment to one of my regular reporting tools. With each new trial, I've gained about 100 followers - both locally and even from other countries - and that doesn't count the people who watch it from our news web site or on my work blog.

The reaction has been stunning at times.  Other news sites, notably the Orange County Register, has also picked up on this kind of coverage for the courts.

But this week brought a giant step forward when a federal judge in Wichita gave the go-aheadfor me to use Twitter there.  I don't know if it's a first, as some of the legal bloggers think, but it is a big step in expanding live coverage of the courts.

See, federal courts don't allow cameras or video or audio recorders.  The federal courthouse in Wichita doesn't allow cell phones, so I had to get the judge's permission to bring my smartphone and Bluetooth keyboard into the courtroom.

The trial, which begins testimony Monday, surrounds federal charges of racketeering aimed at accused members of the Crips street gang.  Federal prosecutors around the country have used racketeering laws for years to try and curb the problem of street gangs.

But to see these trials, you had to go to the courthouse. Twitter will allow people to follow the trial in real time and learn more about federal courts and how they work.

Follow the trial next week. After it's over, I'll report back with an update on what I learned in this new venue.

To be a journalist: to publish, to benefit a community

Used to be, we needed people who owned big printing presses or big towers in order to be journalists.  But today, when most people are getting their information online, anyone can publish content.

The business of big media is watching their stocks fall, while watching the rise of citizen journalists.  But what is a citizen journalist, and what makes them different from professional journalists.  Even SPJ, the largest organization of professional journalists, struggles for that definition.

Serena Carpenter gives the best one I've seen: 

“An individual who intends to publish information meant to benefit a community.”

Serena even explains her definition, by reaching into decades-old First Amendment law, then concludes:

"This means citizen journalists and traditional journalists fall under the definition of a journalist," Carpenter says. "Not every person is a journalist, but any citizen can become one."

Seeing the future of journalism, and trying to save it, in Denver

The Denver Press Club recently invited me to participate in a weekend workshop looking at the future, and the precarious present, of journalism.

Denver Channel 8 taped my presentation and put it online.  My wife found it stunning that, 1) anyone would invite me to visit their city to talk about Twitter and 2) broadcast it on TV.

I also got a chance to talk to newsrooms of both the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News.  I made some great friends. So it especially pained me after I returned home to Kansas and learned this week that the Rocky Mountain News was up for sale.  And people these days are hard pressed to buy newspapers.

But the folks at the news have decided to use the new media to help save the old, and some jobs in the process.  Check out what they're doing at IWantMyRocky.com.

We ought to stop thinking of these as newspapers and see them as valuable news organizations: top content providers for Google and Yahoo! that are worth saving, no matter what their platform.

That's part of the message of the documentary "Stop the Presses," made by former Dallas reporter Manny Medoza and filmmaker Mark Birnbaum, which I saw for the first time at the Starz Denver Film Festival.  The documentary not only skillfully looks at the demise of the American Newspaper but also probes its future and why it's worth saving.

As one viewer noted:  the film interviewed executives of some of the most respected newsrooms in the country and the best business observations in the film come from Dave Barry.

Dave, take the lead. We're ready to follow.

Jon Stewart asks his "depressing riddle" about newspapers

"What's black and white and completely over?" Jon Stewart asked last night on the "Daily Show." 

We knew the answer before he said it.

Here's the video.

It smarts.  But good satire is that way.

That's why we're learning these skills for online.  But still, it smarts.

The rise of social media and the demise of newspapers

I remember a kind of panic going through the newspaper industry -- around 1989.

Young people weren't reading newspapers, and there was a great amount of money being spent trying to figure out how to change that.

"How are we going to get the next generation to read the newspaper?" publishers asked.  They spent a lot of money making youth-oriented sections for newspapers that went unread.

Now we know the answer to that question: We're not.  But we were asking the wrong question.  The question should have been: How are we going to get information to the next generation?  If we'd asked that in 1989, someone in the news industry might have developed Facebook, MySpace or Twitter.  Instead, journalists are left to catch up with social networking -- the tool that's being used to pass information.

To succeed in that arena we have to be social.  Patrick Thornton guides us with on Beatblogging.org dealing with how have have to stop hiding behind bylines and put ourselves out there.

“I don’t think social media will really work for journalists, unless we are willing to share a little bit about ourselves and our personalities,” Thornton quotes journalism professor Carrie Brown from a video.

Meanwhile, newspapers may be disappearing faster than we can Twitter about it.  Editor & Publisher blogger Mark Fitzgerald says we could begin seeing the first cities beginning to lose their newspapers next year, according to the Fitch Ratings service.

"Fitch believes more newspapers and newspaper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010," the credit ratings firm said in a report on the outlook for U.S. media and entertainment.