click to visit my PRX page and hear my first piece
It finally happened: I uploaded a piece of audio to my PRX account. It’s the first of many I hope to do about the occupy movement happening locally. I’m working on several short profiles at the moment, so check back! And I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that Corrie’s interview has been purchased and aired in Wisconsin and across the Northeast, thanks to WRST and WAMC. Woot!
Of course, being a noob at audio tracking, I welcome your feedback. Please add a comment below. I will dutifully take notes!
Hundreds attend a town hall meeting focused on a new report from the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, the NAACP Boston and the Trotter Institute at U-Mass Boston.
As a precursor to this week’s 2011 National Urban League conference, many gathered a day early for a town hall meeting prompted by a new report, The State of Black Boston.
During breakout sessions devoted to sections of the report, panelists drilled down on topics such as the currently bleak outlook for Boston’s Black press, housing and economic development and civic disenfranchisement among the city’s minority majority. One panel was devoted to the exploration of Boston’s modern cultural scene, “since Boston is evolving demographically, and leaving behind, however slowly, the perception that it is a white-bread place wary of outsiders.”
Dr. James Jennings, Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy & Planning at Tufts University, authored the report. It is based upon census and business data used to create a demographic profile of a city.The Urban League describes it as “ .. a tool to assess, measure, and understand the nature of racial inequality among Bostonians.”
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“@titojackson: At the Hynes convention ctr with @MassGovernor and over 1000 others for the State of Black Boston. #mapoli #bospoli”
Investigative reporter Soledad O’Brien gave the keynote luncheon address. O’Brien is known for hosting CNN’s In America series and is an acclaimed writer, covering topics from gay couples adopting children to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
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@soledad_obrien is speaking about her “In America” series. “My goal is to move the needle in discussing diversity” #2011sobb #nul11 #fb
Inspired by the words and life of Soledad O’Brien at the State of Black Boston at Hynes Convention Center. Her focus was on solving social issues in our community by economic empowerment and justice.
Amy Sample Ward, Membership Director of NTen and a co-author of Social by Social, kicked off a 4-part discussion of social media practice at this year’s Public Media Development and Marketing Conference (PMDMC), with some advice for goal setting.
Identify the groups within your demographic, she said, and then ask “What do they want?” and “What do YOU want?”
Seems simple enough, but it does involve discovering where in the net universe your groups are hanging out. Add to that the burden of learning how to drive new online tools and figuring out useful analytics. Who has the time?
Amy claims you CAN carve 30 minutes out of a busy workday to engage with others. She says social media tools are just that–tools. They should exist along side other forms of communication you’ve become familiar with, like your email. Her recipe for doing social media daily without scrapping your to-do list: listen first, then engage.
Information overload is a fact of life today, and the tools we use to manage the flow are numerous. You’ll have to experiment to find what works for you, but here’s a short list of listening tools to get started. Most webpages have an RSS feed, and blogging sites are searchable. Set up alerts and readers to collect relevant data with services like Netvibes, People Browsr, Nutshell Mail, Radian6, Ice Rocket, Sysomos or Lithium. You can take a look at Amy’s RSS reader on her blog, to get a sense of how it works.
Some other great advice for making social media work for you: pay close attention to analytics you track to see when to change strategy, and be sure to include trends and insights you notice in your internal reports. Add external reporting to your to-do list as well. The people you engage with can also be encouraged by what’s working for you and learn from what isn’t. Once you start interacting with your real audience with the right tools, and at this level, you’ll find that they are as invested in your success as you are.
One last piece of advice: take it easy on the ROI worry. Providing good context for trends in your regular reports will help ease your anxiety and remind your superiors of what they are really investing in. Share the qualitative side of the numbers by adding anecdotes and identifying your social media influencers, highlighting the ways they share news about you. Remember your people, program and mission and take the time to cultivate real social media relationships, even if only on your lunchbreak!
More resources and references to useful net tools are on Amy’s blog, AmySampleWard.org.
The realization of why I think community news is important struck me full force as I watched a Youtube video on the 30th anniversary of the first HIV case in the US. I wiped tears from my eyes as the speaker ended his private session in the HIV Story Project booth, gazed at the camera and said, “Thank you for the opportunity to share this.” What occurred to me is obvious–that what matters in local news coverage isn’t the presence of billions of little news sites running school board minutes and local jeweler ads. Community news needs to build community and put to work the growing number of online / social media tools out there to to help people tell each other stories that challenge our assumptions, call each other to action or inform our understanding of how other people live.
In the introduction of Rosensteil & Kovach’s Elements of Journalism, I was surprised to learn that the pre-curser to newspapers was a news ledger, placed at the end of the bar in a public house. Travelers would take the time to add an entry and read what others had posted. Ingenious. That’s technology at work: it’s understood, utilized, accessible and durable. Those books became the journal of record for a community. There were implied guidelines too, such as context and limited space. I’ve never seen one, but I can imagine there were probably hacks or vandals who added noise to the journal, but the technology still proved to be useful. What the video booth and the ledgers have in common is that they are simply the vehicle for one person to get a story to another.
Perhaps as we rethink news models, the focus shouldn’t be so much on geographical, but on creating the kinds of community spaces that will bring people of similar interests together and draw out meaningful stories or inspire meaningful action.
Other news organizations have launched and abandoned hyperlocal efforts over the years, some big like the Washington Post, others small and unknown. The managers of these projects tend to leave a common admonition to those who would follow: Hyperlocal is difficult, expensive and not for the faint of heart.
According to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, only 20 percent of American adults reported using digital tools to communicate with their neighbors or stay informed about community issues at least once in the past year. Only one in 10 reported reading a community blog at least once in the past year.
Maybe there’s a larger appetite for neighborhood news than the data suggest. But for people who are accustomed to centering their social interactions and news consumption on their personal interests, the write-ups of town council meetings, local theater events and public works projects typically found on a hyperlocal site might not seem any more relevant than the offerings of a traditional news site.
Yet people are sharing news articles with each other on Twitter and Facebook. They are developing online communication skills, finding communities that appeal to them and exchanging information. News organizations must figure out how to be flexible and foster these new ecosystems while exerting journalistic values on the contributions made by members who claim a stake in the community spaces we create.
