Online Journalism

New Media, New Rules?

Navigating NPR’s Multimedia Future

BREAKLIGHTS MEAN listeners!

Challange…. a lot of people when they get to work, they dont check out the website.

Its hard enough to write a story for tomorrow news paper… its even harder to write that same story AND write something that is happening tomorrow.

Twitter is a much faster medium to get information.

Their Tiny Desk Concerts are awesome btw.

COVER THE BREAKING NEWS AND BREAK IT IN WHATEVER PLATFORM

Mark Stencel is the managing editor for digital news at NPR. He worked at the Washington Post for 12 years.

NPR is a public broadcast outlet. It’s a non-profit. Non-profit is more as a tax status, the most money they make come from donations that local stations make. NPR keeps those organizations up-to-date.

NPR loves traffic! People trapped on their cars with nothing to do. Their market has grown, when other news organization are struggling.

http://activerain.com/blogsview/1371303/what-is-the-traffic-like-in-washington-dc-

Their problem? NPR is not as big online. People don’t go to npr.org after a long day of work. And they also don’t listen to radio at work.

The solution? Build a web presence. Created a ‘news organization’ for the website, and hired people like Stencel, with a print/newspaper background. Going mobile is also another way to expand.

Photos for a radio station? Radio is used to paint the picture. With online resources, you can see pictures. Should they publish those pictures even if they are too intense? They have just started making those editorial decisions.

They have to selectively choose if they will translate the story into video, written, or radio. They do music stories, and have experienced with animation.

“Don’t cover events, cover the implications.” Matt Thompson, Stencel’s colleague.

Interactivity is key. The radio always had a conversational tone. But how do you translate that quality to text? Interaction these days has changed. Social media changed everything. The update their facebook page carefully, and it’s a completely different audience.

For Twitter, Andy Carvin plays the host. He does live tweeting, and is one of the main people doing it. NPR has some guidelines for his reporter/hosts tweeting.

News happen quickly and our job is to report quickly.

Mark Stencel, Managing Editor for Digital News at National Public Radio, spoke to our class today about the challenges radio faces in the media today. Stencel first started working in online journalism back in 1991, when it was called “new media.”

Check out his personal Twitter and his NPR bio.

Stencel says that NPR has done very well in the past few years because of all of the road traffic in the Washington metropolitan area. More people are able to listen to the radio in their cars while they NPR’s audience has grown tremendously, becoming one of the largest consumed news  organizations in North America. However, even though they have a huge national audience on the radio, they do not have the same audience online. Because they are mainly a radio outlet, they face competition from many other online news sources.

To set themselves apart from the rest, NPR has engaged in:

• experimenting telling stories with animation
• creating a “print journalism” platform and a layout for their online webpage
• beginning to employ NPR staff photographers and videographers
• involving their audience on the NPR Facebook page, which has over 1.5 million fans!
• learning how to convey stories in different ways, and determining how their stories can be more compelling than their competitors

An example of NPR angling their stories in different ways would be their coverage of the Royal Wedding. Most media outlets are focuesd on the entertainment aspect of the wedding, however NPR will differentiate itself by providing more contextual and historical information for the story while still making it relevant. To do this, NPR is including  an interactive royal family tree, questions about royal scandals, a royal/political analysis, and a more of a focus on the “how” and the “why” of the story.

Regarding smart phones, Stencel says, “They are basically Tivo for radio.” They provide a way to do audio journalism for the web that works for an online audience.

Stencel says one of the best pieces of journalistic advice came from his co-worker, Matt Thompson — “Don’t cover events, cover the implications.”

Mark Stencel visted our class on April 12 2011. A highly credential individual Professor Klein tells us he’s a pioneer in news reporting. Stencel is a digital editor for NPR.

The managing editor for digital news for National Public Radio, Mark Stencel, was with us in class today.

“It’s kind of hard to say anything you’ve been doing for 16 years ‘new,’” Mark began.

According to Mark, NPR only works nowadays because people are stuck in traffic for hours, especially in the District. People can’t do anything while stuck in traffic, so their only choice, if they’re not listening to music off of a CD or an mp3 player, is the radio.

When deciding which stories to cover, Mark states that the challenge of figuring out which stories to tell and which stories not to is the biggest challenge of all. He wonders about which part of the story the readers want to hear about most and exposes it prominently.

Students said they listen to NPR instead of their favorite other station to seek a “more professional” atmosphere.

“Cover the implications, not the events.”

Works with NPR: National Public Radio.

Their audience has grown because more and more people are driving and getting caught in traffic. With nothing to do in the car, they tune into NPR.

Use images in radio journalism by painting it in your head. Online, we need pictures that speak for themselves.

Arts, entertainment, and feature stories use video the most. News stories have  a way of going on then off the news grid. Arts, entertainment, music stories tend to stick around and receive clicks/hits even weeks after.

“You wanna be good at everything. You wanna cover the story so that everyone comes to you. So the big questions is, what part of the story is our audience coming to view and what parts have they seen from other sources?”

Don’t cover the events, just the implications. – Matt Thompson, NPR

As I mentioned in a previous post, “Survivor” host Jeff Probst recently began to tweet along with the show. As a hardcore fan, I appreciate the gesture but remain unsatisfied with the lack of real details Probst provides. However, that didn’t stop CBS from declaring last week “Tweet Week” and enlisting more of its stars to take to the social networking site.

Jeff Probst, © CBS

The stunt is obviously designed to get viewers to tune in during the live broadcast (i.e. when the commercials air) rather than just DVRing their favorite shows. The ratings don’t indicate that it accomplished that goal, but CBS should still be commended for utilizing new technology to its advantage. (Besides, “Amazing Race” host Phil Keoghan’s tweets were much more informative than Probst’s.)

The real question though is how networks can utilize other social media tools to engage fans. Twitter is neat, but let’s face it–most of these celebrities were already tweeting; they just didn’t happen to be doing so during the half-hour or hour time slot alloted to their show (and even that might not be the case for everyone). The major network websites are a mixed bag of Flash monstrosities and meager message boards. While the descent may not be as rapid, TV, like newspapers, is competing for an audience against many other forms of news and entertainment. Television websites need to follow newspaper sites’ leads by incorporating more social media.

What does a mobile journalist need?

I’ve compiled 4 lists of things I think a mobile journalist needs: hardware, software, systems, and mindset. I’d welcome anything you can add to this.

Using the information I have learned from class I will also add to this list.

Mobile journalism – hardware

• Smartphone with camera, video, audio, unlimited data plan
• Digital camcorder, iFlip, video recording device