JournalisTECH

Digital SLR geeks, and audio junkies have been waiting all summer for the Zoom H1 audio recorder ($99 street price). This diminutive but high quality field recorder is perfect for DSLR shooters unhappy with ALC, on-camera pinhole mics. For reporters, it’s an easy to use, one-button recorder that runs on one AA battery.

Originally slated to arrive in July, it’s supposed to start shipping today (August 20, 2010).

Not yet. But it will be, and soon. Let’s call it a multimedia journalism tool in beta.

As it stands there are not enough apps required to report, edit and file video and audio stories in the field. And the apps that do exist to aid in those ventures are still too buggy to rely on under pressure and deadline.

However, some of the existing applications we might take advantage of as journalists in the field are highly sophisticated, powerful, fast, and damn fun to use.

Photogs, Rejoice

Without a doubt, photojournalists are the ones most poised to use the iPad as a journalism tool. Excusing the elephant in the room, no built in camera (likely to be fixed in future generations), the iPad has more than a few applications that allow photogs to do fairly high caliber photo editing. What’s more, editing photos with my fingers gives me the pleasant, if temporary, delusion that I’m more brain surgeon, less journalist.

The most any of these photo editing apps will run you right now is about six bucks. Downside? iPad does not have a USB input, which means to get photos off of your camera, you need to drop $30 to get apple’s photo kit. And if you were thinking you already had one lying around from your old days storing photos on your iPod, check the image to the right, and think again.

But here is a nice list of five of the best photo editing apps around after month one.

I played with Filterstorm, one that’s not on the above list, but a really solid photo editor for the iPad. And free. The only major shortcoming I’ve found is the lack of a substantial zoom function. A versatile paintbrush tool allows you to selectively edit parts of the photo, but without the ability to zoom in far imprecision becomes a nagging problem. Here’s a tour:

A/V Club, Sulk

While the iPad performs pretty well for pretty cheap for photojournalists, it remains fairly useless to radio and video reporters and producers. And once you get a taste of manipulating photos with your hands, the vision of editing audio and video on the iPad – both of which seem like perfectly natural next steps for developers – becomes like a producer’s Xanadu.

A developer called Nexvio did develop what looks like a fairly advanced video editor for the iPhone (see below). And I would love to report here that they’re tantalizing us with news that they’re working on an update for the iPad, but there’s nothing on Nexvio’s website and the company’s last Facebook update is from November of last year.

And while the iPad might seem a natural tool for editing audio and video, a blogger at Synaptic Light raises the important question: Can the hardware do it? Apple describes the iPad’s processor this way:

1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip.

Alas, the math doesn’t add up for the iPad to be able to run a program like Apple’s own Final Cut Express, which requires:

A Mac computer with a 1.25GHz or faster PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5, Intel Core Duo, Intel Core 2 Duo, or Intel Xeon processor. 1GB of RAM or more.

Assuming developers could build a stripped down, more efficient, non-linear, non-destructive video editor that could run on the iPad’s processor, the other big question is where would we store all the files. Right now, the max drive capacity on the iPad is 64 GB, not enough.

For the reporter of the audio persuasion, there’s nothing out there yet that can get the job done. For now, forget about importing and editing your recorded audio on the iPad. There is not yet an app devoted to multi-track editing. A program called Caster ($4.99) is moving in the right direction. It has multi-track editing, but its main mission is creating podcasts. It seems to be able to do that very well, but the interface and work flow makes Caster a cumbersome means to producing an audio story.

To it’s credit the iPad, like the iPhone, has a fairly strong internal microphone that records clean audio in a quiet place. The iTalk recorder (free for a stripped down version or $1.99 for premium) is a very simple recorder that allows you to record interviews or tracking for a story in a pinch. But you’re still left without a program to edit and mix.

What about the wordsmith?

It’s not news that typing on the iPad itself is a bit difficult. I clocked in at a measly 45 words per minute. It does seem to get easier, but probably not easy enough to take notes on. And if you’re trying to send your editor a story on a tight deadline, you’re likely to churn out some pretty sloppy copy.

Wordpress does have an app. So does Blogger. But they’re way stripped down, and I am surprised to find that the size of the iPad screen does feel large enough to work in the actual Safari browser.

Finally, I think it deserves mention that the read-write web does not feel any more out of reach to me than it does on a smart-phone. That is to say, I don’t think the places, spaces and times I find myself using the iPad turn out to be any less read-write web experiences than my former iphone-laptop lifestyle allowed for. If anything, I’m more inclined to write, comment or network for the simple fact that I take in a lot more than I did when I was turning to my iphone at moments on the go.

Your Fbook status updates and profile pics just look too beautiful on the iPad not to respond.

By now we know that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are not just the places to find random updates of what our friends ate for lunch. They’re not even just the places to find out Ashton Kutcher’s opinion about the health care bill. In the wake of incidents such as the protests in Iran and the earthquake in Haiti, social media sites have become important portals for breaking news, allowing witnesses and journalists to report about what is going on as it is happening. They are also powerful research tools journalists can use to track down sources and look for leads. While there are dangers lurking in using social media, journalists should not hesitate to take advantage of the many opportunities they offer, and news organizations should encourage their employees to use them as well.

Almost every major–and non-major–news organization has at least one Twitter account and a Facebook page. Now social media generates an estimated 50 percent of news site traffic, founder and head of Google News Krishna Bharat told Business World. With the new Facebook Connect features, news organizations are getting more and more invested in the role of social media in connecting with their audience.

With most news organization embracing social media sites as tools, where does this leave the reporters who have been on Facebook for years or who have been Tweeting their favorite recipes and forwarding articles they like, regardless of how it paints them personally? Many journalists use Facebook and Twitter in a personal context, even if they also use them as part of their jobs. This can lead to many situations where personal and professional lives overlap, with varying consequences. David Carr of the New York Times described this very phenomenon back in July of 2008 when he described his feelings about Facebook this way:

“I neither want to be strategic in my postings nor selective in my friending, but I should probably be doing one or the other.”

For instance, some New York Times employees got into trouble when they posted updates from an internal company meeting (here’s an article from Gawker about it). An AP reporter’s remarks about another newspaper publisher on his Facebook page got him an official reprimand.

In response, many news organizations have published or are drafting new ethics guidelines for social media. You can see some of them online, such as the ones from the AP, Reuters, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. They range from common sense to overly broad and restrictive, and there has been a lot of backlash over them. While it is good that policies are being hashed out, news organizations need to be cautious about the chilling effect their rules could have on reporters. Otherwise, they could miss out being a part of important observations and discussions that are generated on these sites. News organizations need to protect themselves and their employees, but not at the cost of a robust and thriving online dialogue.

Most of the guidelines contain a version of the following:

• Check out sources and information gleaned from social media sites as you would in any other story
• If you “friend” a person or group from one side of an issue, “friend” a member or group from the other side of that issue
• Identify yourself as a journalist from your news organization whenever you are using social media in a professional capacity
• The wall between the personal and professional has broken down online, so never assume that what you put up online won’t be seen by others, even if you set up privacy settings

All of these guidelines are logical and journalists should have no problem following them by using common sense. Some of the other guidelines, however, are overly broad and seem to undermine the ability of social media to forge a deeper connection between the media and its audience.

These days, transparency in the news making process is extremely important. The New York Times has embraced this philosophy by not only integrating Twitter into its newsroom, allowing reporters to interact with their followers, but also even inviting the public into its morning meetings with TimesCast. While this experiment has yielded mixed results–like when executive editor Bill Keller made factual errors during a meeting–it shows the paper’s willingness to explore new ways of getting its audience involved in how stories are created.

On the contrary, some social media guidelines might lead to a chilling effect in how journalists utilize social media. The Washington Post’s guidelines say its journalists:

“Must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything–including photographs or videos–that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious, or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility.”

Ombudsman Andrew Alexander wrote on his Post blog that the guidelines were put in place to avoid tweets such as those an editor had written that could have been interpreted as biased. The guidelines also say that Post journalists should not use their personal pages to discuss internal dealings at the paper or to criticize other news organizations.

These rules are far too restrictive and go against the tide of today’s news gatherers. People online want to know more about their journalists, not less. They appreciate being able to get information about what a reporter likes and doesn’t like, who they are friends with, what kind of stories they read, so that they can be more prepared to form their own opinion about whether or not their reporting is biased. It is true that the appearance of political bias is an issue that many news organizations struggle to overcome, but this policy goes far beyond just telling reporters to stay away from politics. It says not to post anything that could be perceived as showing any bias. That is going too far.

Although traditional ethics guides sought to limit the public activities of journalists in ways that would keep them away from conflicts of interests, they also did not prohibit them from expressing their opinions, as these new social media guidelines do. Opinions written on Twitter may not be as transitory as those said in a bar, but they are still personal opinions, and journalists are allowed to have them. While some of the new ethics guidelines recognize the need to let journalists have personal space, such as the Reuters handbook, which recommends that journalists who use social media for personal and professional reasons should have separate accounts, others say that anything posted on any social media site should be up to the company’s standards.

The AP’s rules say, “It’s a good idea to monitor your profile page to make sure material posted by others doesn’t violate AP standards; any such material should be deleted.” Not only do AP employees need to watch what they post to make sure it doesn’t violate any rules, they need to watch what their friends and colleagues say. Anyone with a Facebook account knows that keeping their wall posts only to material that fits AP rules would be a never-ending task. Also, that level of scrutiny makes it hard for journalists to fully utilize social media, because if any of the people they “friend” are sources who post biased information, they will have to censor it, even if it could lead to a good story.

Journalists do need to be aware that information posted online could be used against them or their company. They should be smart about what their Facebook profiles say, and try not to embarrass their employer. Still, they have the right to have personal opinions and to express those opinions. Many times, provocative posts on Twitter and Facebook lead to valuable discussions about the news industry itself that would be prohibited by some of the new guidelines. An entertaining exchange between business bloggers was dissected by the Atlantic Wire website. Interestingly, one of the bloggers in the exchange works for Reuters. One must wonder how the Twitter battle fits under their guidelines, which state: “Resist the temptation to respond in anger to those you regard as mistaken or ill-tempered.”

Below is a timeline that looks at the history of the intersections between social media and journalism.Social Media and Journalism

Podcasting is a simple way to diversify your  Web site, but isn’t always utilized to its fullest, especially in the news world.

The term podcast is a combination of “ipod” and “broadcast,” however it has nothing to do with the ipod, except that it is a mode of listening to podcasts. Volomedia, a advertiser and reporter of portable media, was awarded a patent on podcasting in July 2009, or more specifically a patent on the method for providing episodic media–although there is controversy about how deserving Volomedia is of the patent.

The important part of what separates a podcast from a simple audio file on the web is that a podcast is an episodic form of audio publishing–i.e. not just a one time audio clip slapped onto a print story.

Whether it is on a daily, weekly or monthly basis podcasts allow listeners to know when and what to expect from the audio cast. These can be daily casts about sports or a five minute weekly update from a resident business reporter. Generally these podcasts are consumed by listeners who subscribe to an rss feed so they are updated whenever a new podcast is posted.

How to Podcast

So you want to add a podcast to you Web site to liven up you endless string of boring blog posts, but you aren’t sure how to do it.

Podcasting is a very easy process. All it takes is a device that records audio, audio editing software (optional), and knowing how to set up an rss feed.

Recording

Recording audio can be done in several ways. The highest quality would come in a radio booth that has a mixing board. Unfortunately unless you work at a radio or news station with a booth you probably won’t have access. The good thing is that using a booth is far from necessary to record a great podcast. You can purchase recording equipment and a simple mixer for about as low as $45.00 to as much as several hundred dollars depending on the quality you want.

You could also use a portable PMD recorder that many radio reporters take out into the field. These are a little more expensive, but would allow you to use it in all your field reporting, and conduct your podcast from where ever you happen to be.

You can also simply buy a microphone an hook it up to your computer and record with audio software (which we will cover in a moment). Or using computer programs such as skype is a good option if you frequently have guests from out of town on your podcasts. Or if you are out of cash as simple audio recorder will suffice as long as you can upload it to your computer and pull off the mp3. The only thing aside from these devices you need is a quiet room with as little echo as possible.

Audio Editing

There are several free audio editing programs that you can use to edit your mp3 once you have created the file. For Mac users Garage Band comes standard and is a simple way to edit your podcast in case of mistakes or to add in interviews you may have conducted prior to the podcast.

Another free program for both Mac and PCs that works very well is Audacity. Audacity is fairly simple to use and there are several online tutorials in using it that can help someone who hasn’t attempted audio editing before. Audacity can also be used to record your podcast using an external microphone or your computers microphone.

There is also Adobe Audition, which is Adobe’s souped-up version Audacity. While Audition can do much more in terms of mixing than Audacity it is not free, and for a simple podcast it is probably not worth the money (even if this journalist thinks it is 10 times better than Audacity).

Posting

Once you have recorded and edited your podcast you will need to upload it to your Web site using your file transfer protocol (FTP) client. You can use several FTP clients–Fetch is popular for Mac users and FileZilla for PC users is generally the most used and can be downloaded for free. Once you have created your podcast folder and uploaded the audio you will want to create an rss feed. There are some simple programs to help you set up feeds. Google’s Feedburner is one way to simply add in your podcast’s URL and create an rss feed for it.

While anyone will be able to subscribe to your rss feed from your Web site, you have to be proactive. Adding your podcast to iTunes is one way to attract listeners that might have never heard of your site before. iTunes gives you step by step instructions for adding your podcast to its large list once you have created your rss feed.

Why Podcast

The importance of podcasting is to add diversity to your  Web site without much difficulty. It also helps diversify your mode of story telling. Some stories are just better told over audio and it will give you freedom to give a bigger personality to your stories. Podcasting also allows you to highlight some stories over other.

There is always the argument that it is quicker to read than to listen to a podcast. While this is true and a podcast shouldn’t be generally used to retell stories you’ve already written it can allow you to connect to consumers who might not be able to read your stories. No, I’m not talking about blind people. I’m talking about people who have to drive an hour to work every day and might be able to play listen to your podcast via their mobile phone on their way. Also another audience is the bored desk workers who can’t read your sight for fear their  boss might see them procrastinating, however he/she could pop on your cast, throw in some headphones and pretend to work on that spread sheet while listening to your podcast.

The proliferation of mobile devices might provide a new market for podcasters as they are able to reach consumers no matter what they are doing, especially when they aren’t able to read–i.e. driving, or running.

Podcasting is not a new idea, but it will add some interesting elements to any journalist who wants to add life and personality to their Web site.

Last month, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released its latest survey detailing how the public views Pope Benedict’s handling of the sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. Results: not so good.

According to the survey, the number of people who believe the Pope has done a poor job of handling the scandal has increased dramatically in almost every category in the past two years.

A New York Times/CBS poll published May 4 shows that the vast majority of American Catholics believe the Church covered up the sex scandal in the past but is now looking for ways to prevent further sexual abuse of children by priests. Interestingly, those surveyed also believe that the news media have been harder on the Catholic Church than they would have been if the controversy had embroiled another religious organization.

Peggy Noonan, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, titled her angle on the situation “The Catholic Church’s Catastrophe,” and although she gave the Pope and the press credit for confronting the scandal, her final analysis was nothing short of pending doom.

“It is damage that will last at least a generation. It is an actual catastrophe, a rolling catastrophe that became public first in the United States, now in Europe. It has lowered the standing, reputation and authority of the church. This will have implications down the road.”

****** WAIT, WAIT, WAIT ****** Why are we talking about “religion reporters” when the only religious story in recent history is the Catholic sex scandal?

A disclaimer to this post: one question that I have struggled with in the past is this – what exactly constitutes journalism?  In my mind, journalism is the news, and what might be news to me wouldn’t necessarily be news to someone else.  So regardless of who writes, prints, reports or publishes, as long as new information is being given to the public, it’s journalism.

Now, I make the argument that a band’s website is journalism, based on my above definition.  Though much of the information on a band’s website might come of as a bit pr-ish (God forbid!), it still is new information given to the public.  In my mind, a band’s website is the ultimate “niche” or “hyperlocal” journalism.  The only people who would obviously care about the news on a band’s websites are that band’s fans and music journalists, just like the only people who would care about what is going on in Cheviot Hills are those who live in that neighborhood.

All band sites will have the requisite information – news, tour info, forums, shop, etc.  If a venue is changed, when tickets go on sale, when an album is released, or even if the band is taking a break, a band site is the first place to go to find this stuff out.  But some bands are now taking to social media to get the message out in some new and unconventional ways.

So let’s check out some websites to see exactly what some of today’s bands are doing.

First, we’ll take a look at the mighty U2’s website as they are arguably the oldest band that is still relevant and tremendously popular today – they’ve been doing it for the longest.  The first thing I noticed is that the homepage is kind of generic, meaning that the site is not designed to, say, the band’s latest album.  There is also a lot going on all of pages, but the “Tours” one especially.  Apparently the band wants to produce a video re-cap of all it’s shows from it’s latest tour.  Take a look at all of the text your eyes have to sift through to make sense of it, though. That is a lot to have to look at to strain the eye.  One nice thing that the site does is offer a music player (playing the band’s hits, of course) that must be turned on in order to play.  It won’t play as soon as the page loads, which is something I always find to be annoying.  All of U2’s video content is produced by the band and its people – none of it comes from YouTube, which is interesting.  But a very cool thing that the band does is have a comment roll from its fans located in the center of the main page right next to the News roll.

Next, let’s look at the website belonging to the Queens of the Stone Age.  First off, wow!  There is a lot of movement and a lot of color all over this website that makes it kind of hard to navigate, in my opinion (try clicking on “Fans” or “Digital Booklet” when Bulby comes out of his door).  The reason for this that QOTSA’s website is designed around it’s latest album, a very 60’s inspired public-service-announcement, vinyl-looking album called “Era Vulgaris.”  QOTSA also has had many band members who have been a part of many other projects in its lineup over the years, which is why there are links on the website to the other bands and projects (check out Eagles of Death Metal and Sweethead).  Interaction with the fan is again important – there’s a section on the main page that shows photos of new members to the site.  It’s also clear that QOTSA is more in tune with the public, as videos on its site come from YouTube and there are links at the bottom of the page to follow the band elsewhere (MySpace is the only one of note, however).  Music player (must be turned on) and videos are present.

(Check this out, by the way.  It was on QOTSA’s page before the latest redesign.  It is a very clever way to use an early version of Flash to display a lot of complicated info.)

Them Crooked Vultures is the “newest” band of the three and most avant garde when it comes to social media and how it interacts with it’s fans.  For starters, the design of its site is the most accommodating to navigation and pleasing to a fan’s eye (gotta love the red, black and white).  But it is the only one of the three bands to have “official” Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and YouTube pages/channels.  Though all of the social media pages might be updated with the same information, the band is still giving its fans every opportunity to get the latest information straight from the horse’s mouth.  It has also used social media to make some interesting business decisions as well, like leaking it’s entire album before its release date on YouTube.

But Them Crooked Vultures’ openness on YouTube can be seen as a good example of how a band’s website can be a good music journalist’s tool.  The band recently posted a video that documents its drummer’s near chemical dependence on coffee.  At the end of the video, there is text that says that Grohl actually had to go to the hospital because of complications from his caffeine addiction.  Though the truth of this is questionable (everyone remembers the “Paul is dead” hoax the Beatles tried to pull), some video bloggers have actually used this story in their work.

So don’t dismiss a band’s website as nothing but a public relations tool, you music journalists.  They should be your first stop for information, in fact, as a band will publish what is going on in its world far before any other publication would.

The state-controlled system in place to prevent the People’s Republic of China’s 384 million Internet users from accessing banned content is called “The Great Firewall of China,” or “Iron Curtain 2.0.”

While the Chinese Communist Party has evolved over the decades from a highly ideological, control-freak of an organization into a more conventional authoritarian ruling party, it still does what it can to curtail dissent. Overt public displays of discontent aren’t tolerated, which especially includes media content. However, since the Internet’s emergence as proverbial new kid of media platforms, the Chinese government’s tight squeeze on free speech hasn’t been enough to prevent several controversial opinions from slipping though. The Web’s volatile nature, all a combination of the rate at which information is published, shared and removed, the high volume of users and the content they generate, and the constant evolution brought on by new technological developments makes it quite evident that a government censorship system may be no match at all for the tech world’s ultimate fighting champion. Seriously, it’s like trying to win a slap fight by playing a game of “patty-cake.”

Of China’s 384 million Internet users, 30,000 are Internet cops hired to troll through the nonstop barrage of content published online and report any controversial, sensitive or illegal material to the authorities. These guys seriously have their work cut out for them. For one thing, there are around 1.75 million registered Internet sites in China. Eighty percent of these registered sites have bulletin board systems (BBS), or messaging forums with which users communicate with one another. That alone, is a whole lot of information to search through. Needless to say, there’s technically an extent to which an Internet user in China could get away with saying, so long as they’re not overtly criticizing the government, organizing a demonstration against the government, forming a new political party or talking smack about public officials. However, there are also some very particular topics that the Chinese Communist Party has certainly got its online ears pricked for. Such topics include Tibet, Tiananmen Square, well… it’s just about anything that puts the government in a bad light. And for as long as saving face will be at the top of the Chinese government’s list of priorities, there will be a system in place to regulate the sort of information that the press can disseminate to the public. Does this mean that journalists covering China can’t publish what they want without bumping up against the Great Firewall of China? Not really.

There is a lot of technology in place that Internet users in China can use to access content on blocked websites and publish content about banned topics. While around only 18% of Chinese netizens are familiar with this technology, the numbers are sure to rise with as the number of Internet users continues to skyrocket. For more information of the technology used to bypass the Iron Curtain 2.0, check out the video below.

This technology in place has come in handy particularly in the past year, during which particular events that occurred reversed the aftermath of the 2008 Beijing Olympics (which opened up China to the foreign press). For links to news articles about five major events in China in 2009 that pushed the government to crack down on online content, check out this site.

The five major events include the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the one-year anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Chengdu that killed thousands (many were school children), the riots in Xinjiang caused by tension between the province’s Uighur and Han Chinese populations (around 197 died during these riots), U.S. president Barack Obama’s five-day visit to China and the sentencing of prominent literary critic Liu Xiaobo, one of around 300 Chinese citizens who signed Charter 08, a document that harshly criticized the government and called for democracy in the People’s Republic.

The abovementioned events led the Communist Party to block Chinese Internet service providers from accessing several popular international websites. These sites included news and information sites, social networks, photo, video and file sharing sites and  link shortening websites (previously used to share links to banned websites and bypass the Great Firewall).

For links to more articles about why specific websites have been blocked in China, check out this infographic.

Despite the Chinese government’s persistence at censoring and filtering controversial online content from reaching China’s Internet users, it is clearly still quite possible for reporters and other content creators to bypass the Great Firewall. The technology is evolving much faster than the system can keep up with. While an awareness of what sort of online content could get one into trouble with the Communist Party is helpful for those who aim to stay out of trouble, having the proper technological tools and savvy to fly under the radar (or Iron Curtain 2.0) is much more beneficial to those dedicated to reporting on crucial issues in China.

Have you seen the Motorola Backflip commercials? If you haven’t, a news anchor sits behind a desk and spews out headlines based on tweets and Facebook status updates. Apparently, that is the only news a lot of people care about.

It is difficult to imagine a world without social media now. Facebook and Twitter have become regular virtual destinations for many Americans and others around the world. Twitter has gone from 5,000 users in 2007 to more than 50 million users as of January 2010. That boils down to about 600 tweets per second.

While Facebook may still be the social media giant in the United States (88 percent of Americans are aware of what Facebook is),  87 percent of Americans are also aware of Twitter. That awareness has skyrocketed partially because of celebrity and high-profile tweeters, but only 7 percent of Americans actually use the social media site.

While I myself don’t use Twitter all that much, I still think of the happenings in my life as constant status updates. I’m ready to update my status at any moment. This exhibitionist tendency is rampant among social media users.

Facebook and Twitter are the new agora. And there’s a wealth of knowledge there ready to be excavated by journalists. Naturally, if that is where the people are, it’ is also where the stories will be. But is it ethical to pursue quotes in that manner?

The Twitter stream is a fresh place to get story ideas and direct quotes straight from the horse’s mouth. It generates entertainment and sports stories daily. It works to reporters’ advantage especially in the case of subjects who were once thought to be lofty. Reporters had to get through so much PR red tape to get a quote but now celebrities and athletes use Twitter to promote themselves, trash talk, and announce their engagements, no presser necessary.

Here’s why it works:

• Twitter is in real time
• 140 characters, based on previous SMS model that was limited to 140 characters per message, make for good sound bites
• Efficient for crowdsourcing
• It’s self-correcting: the excess noise in the twittersphere is drowned out by a continual flow of correct information
• It creates an accessible network for journalists, celebrities, athletes

Though Twitter isn’t always the most reliable source, in some cases it can still be considered a source in the same manner blogs are. Twitter is simply a micro-blog that isn’t weighed down with extra features like Facebook.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch said the same argument that was once used against blogs as a news sources is now being applied to Twitter.

“You can jump up and down and shout all you want that Twitter isn’t a real news source,” he writes. “But all you are doing is viewing the world through a reality lens that’s way outdated. People want information fast and raw from people who are on the scene. What matters isn’t any individual Twitter message and whether it’s right or wrong. It’s the organism as a whole, the aggregate, that lets people stream what they’re witnessing in real time to the world. That aggregate stream gives us more information, faster, than anything before. It’s news, and it’s incredibly valuable.”

Former consumers are now producers, said Clay Shirky at a TED talk about social media giving people in repressed parts of the world a voice. Case in point: the Iran elections. He talks about global tech transfer and explains how “social capital” is more important than “technological capital.” At about 3:10-6:53 he also explains the media revolution and how social media fits into that framework. “Media is social, global, ubiquitous and cheap” and that’s why Twitter has been so successful. Here’s the video of his talk:

Twitter can keep journalists on top of breaking news, especially when governments are collapsing and we can’t be there to report on them. Twitter was the premier source during in the Mumbai attacks, the Haiti and Chile earthquakes, and the Iran elections and other catastrophic incidences that were otherwise inaccessible.
Media, especially news outlets, are no longer one-way communicators. They allow for interactivity and open forums and though a person can go directly to Twitter for information, news outlets should use Twitter for additional perspectives.

But it can also lead to lazy reporting. Anyone else working on the story will have the same tweets.

Mashable’s Leah Betancourt said journalists should use Twitter for

• Tracking tweets
• Sourcing, networking
• Roll breaking news tweets via email
• Find and follow with directories

She recommends that journalists start off as a “listener.” Follow people and just treat Twitter as something like the AP Wires.

BeatBlogging.org editor Patrick Thornton talks about how he uses Twitter as a reporting tool here.

Twitter and the Celebrity Realm

Twitter stories are making headlines, especially if the there’s a feud between athletes or celebrities. Entertainment news outlets thrive on celebrity TMI. Sports outlets are guilty too.

Celebrifi made a story of celebrities tweeting their reactions to Corey Haim’s death. Celebrities also tweeted reactions to the outcome of the British elections. Miley Cyrus closing her Twitter account kept the gossip publications abuzz. And recently, John Mayer said he thinks about closing his account every night generating a lot of stories about the tweet-happy celeb.

Other celebrities, especially ones who aren’t constantly in the spotlight like like MC Hammer actually interact with users, retweet and comment back. But some, like Britney Spears, have “their people” tweet for them.

One GeekSugar blogger said she has a “handful of friends that like it when celebrities overshare on Twitter — it makes them feel like they have an insider’s view into a celeb’s life. There are many celebs, like Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, who have even admitted that part of the reason they share so much on Twitter is to upstage the tabloids by sharing with their fans directly.” And People.com maintains a “Tweet Ticker” on ever page, including its homepage, which loops celebrity tweets 24/7.

CNN anchor Rick Sanchez was no. 4 on the Time of London’s 50 Celebrities to Follow on Twitter with 48,825 as of Feb. 2, 2009 (he has 129, 827 today). He tweets:

“i twitter because i need as a journalist to get what viewers think and say. w/out them i’m just another talking head.they complete me, lol!”

Okay. We get it.  Newspapers are folding and local news coverage is getting hit the hardest. But are hyperlocal, aggregator-friendly sites like EveryBlock, Outside.In and Topix the online pioneers of local news?

These sites all roughly do the same thing: they gather information from several data sources and organize them via personalized neighborhood or zip code.  Whether it be through government sources like police reports and public records or more user-generated websites like local blogs or review sites like Yelp, information is gathered and then distributed through the location you inquire about. Just type in your city, zipcode, or exact address and see the aggregated, neighborhood-centric information filter in.

But though these sites act in similar ways — getting information to you based on where you are — it doesn’t mean that they’re all equivalent in content and success.

EveryBlock: The New Kid is the Best Kid

EveryBlock is the newest to launch but it’s the best as far as content goes. Founded in 2007, the site is still one of the least visited among hyperlocal news sites on the Web, with about 150,000 visitors per month. But we’ll just peg that on not enough advertising.

Laid out like an RSS news feed, the website, which covers 16 major U.S. cities, delivers on what it intends to: hyperlocal, neighborhood news as it filters in. Laden with restaurant reviews of nearby eateries, crime reports within the area and public records posted by proximity, EveryBlock acts as a sort of content management system for your neighborhood.  The only thing connecting the content together is that it’s all happening near you.

The information is varied and comes from a long list of sources, including user-generated sites like Yelp, Flickr and Craigslist along with more professional agencies like government websites and public record databases.

And for the visual visitor, the site also includes an interactive map that’s individualized to the address you type in. So if sifting through a vertical news feed isn’t your thing, there’s always a click-to-view map option.

But regardless of the formatting, it’s all stuff you want to know about. Local restaurant updates, store specials, nearby crime — these are all things that hyperlocals care about because it affects them. And this is the stuff that EveryBlock hones in on.

The site’s intuitive layout is also a plus.  With an easy-to-comprehend, news-feed structure, the hyperlocal site passes on usability testing and experience. The information is organized in the order it comes in so visitors are always guaranteed a balanced mix of news at the ready instead of having to search by category.  And for those who prefer the subject-first searching method, they can click through categorized databases to get such results. So both bases are covered.

Overall, EveryBlock is packed with useful, location-centric information without all the fuss and intimidation that too much information provides. As far as content and layout, this site takes the cake.

Outside.In: Blog-Centric

Sure, it’s got ten times the viewership of EveryBlock (seriously – the site gets 1.5 million visitors per month) but should Outside.In be considered a hyperlocal news site? My vote says no.

Don’t get me wrong – the site is good at what it does: aggregating blog posts and picking up appropriate geotags for the stories. But it’s not exactly what comes to mind when you think “hyperlocal.” Rather than getting a variety of neighborhood news aggregated from different types of information platforms, the website just sticks to one type of source.  That’s not neighborhood news, that’s blog news…in your neighborhood.

Essentially, all the website does is pick up tags like “near downtown Los Angeles” or “by Dodger Stadium” from blog posts and plop them on their site. So, when searching for hyperlocal content in downtown Los Angeles, what the viewer actually receives is an aggregated selection of blog posts about the area. For this reason, the site is text-heavy and overwhelmingly blog-oriented.

The website’s layout is also uninspired, as it looks like the results page of any old search engine, with links to blog posts at the center and ad space to the left.  In fact, it’s easy to overlook the “Search your neighborhood” bar amid the clutter of advertisements.  The search bar allows you to look for neighborhood news by category so a “crime” inquiry in “downtown L.A.” would boast a more filtered version of the existing results.  Of course, those results would still come from the same blogs; it would just give you less stuff to sift through.

Maybe we can blame this lack of creativity in formatting and type of content on the fact that the website has a lot of ground to cover.  Unlike Everyblock, which covers 16 American cities, Outside.In covers about 57,000 neighborhoods. And though I’m unaware of what the city-neighborhood ratio is, something tells me Outside.In has a lot more content to aggregate than EveryBlock.

Topix: Hyperlocal, with a Little Bit of Hate

Though Topix has been around since 2002, the site acquired its own domain name (topix.com) and revamped its functions in 2007.  And with the reinvented website comes both positive and negative features.

The good news is that there’s lots of content – with aggregated stories from all types of news organizations coming into the feed on a minute-to-minute basis. The bad news is there’s lots of bad content as well.

The problem lies in the way the site decided to “revamp” itself. To promote user activity, Topix invites users to interact directly with the content through discussion boards and forums. So, in addition to reading about local news via the news section, users can also post content of their own through the forums. But when anyone can comment and the content becomes too much to moderate, what soon follows is a free-flow of hate mail for everyone to see.

While looking for hyperlocal content in Glendale, CA, forums such as “Armenians, Get Out of the U.S.!” and “Are Armenians More Likely to Commit Fraud?” come up alongside the local news from traditional publications.

These types of slanderous comments in the Topix forums are apparently endemic to the website, as many publications have noted the harassment. According to the State Journal in Kentucky, discussion topics on the website’s Frankfort forum include “tramps in thongs” and “who’s the cheating men in Frankfort.” Other forum topics are more dangerous in nature, as KFVS12 News in Missouri reported that a mother and son’s lives had been threatened on the website last year. According to the news source, one post offered “$5,000 to any person who permanently gets rid of Veronica Yount by 5p.m. Monday.”

Two attorney generals have even started to complain about the harassment. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blume said in February that the website contains “false and defamatory information about children, as well as adults” and that the site’s forums “appear to operate without moderations and contain obscene, vulgar and abusive posts, often concerning minors.”

The negative media attention Topix has received for the publishing of these comments has certainly affected the reputation of the company. It just goes to show that though forums may be a good way for viewers to feel more “in tune” with their hyperlocal environment, they also can be a quick way of turning a well-respected local news aggregator into something equivalent to a MySpace account.

CONCLUSION: The need for hyperlocal news may be up-and-coming but some websites undoubtedly do it better than others. When curating the hyperlocal, sites must always keep their audience in mind. For each unique viewer, a hyperlocal experience is key.

They should focus on the specific neighborhoods and what’s going on within them instead of generating links to somewhat-related blogs or becoming an Internet breeding ground for hateful forums.