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Do it: The new ideal newsroom
Published on 31/05/08
by Zac Echola
Part One: Streamlining the minutia of reporting
Will Sullivan’s recent post about getting more done with less reminded me about this post I’ve had sitting in my draft queue for too long.
This two-part series will cover tools to help make mobile, Web-first reporting and editing more efficient. I’m not going to cover gear in either post. What gear you use doesn’t matter. You only need two pieces of equipment to get started: A decent Web-enabled cell phone and a laptop.
In order to truly become a mobile newsroom, internal communication becomes much, much more important. The first post in this series deals with how to build an internal communication infrastructure. It will help reporters stay on top of their sources and help editors stay on top of what their reporters and other editors are working on. The second post will deal with how to radically transform your news gathering process, generate more traffic and discussion on your sites and build better, more relevant top-tier products.
I chose the following because many of these services have tight integration with each other and they’re either free or incredibly cheap, but feel free to mix and match to suit your needs. The point is simply to get out and report and get away from your desk to do it.
Some of these services will make your process more transparent. Some people won’t like that, but trust me for now when I say transparency is a good thing for business and reporting. I’ll offer some reasons why in my next post.
Firefox
This may seem obvious, but we often miss the painfully obvious. If you’re serious about mobile journalism, you need a browser that gives you plenty of flexibility. Internet Explorer doesn’t cut it. There are also many Firefox extensions for the services I’m going to talk about. Take advantage of them. Your browser is your new desk. Download Firefox now. Also check out the portable Firefox client which can run off a thumb drive or iPod.
ADrive
ADrive gives you 50 gigs of free online storage (Yes, 50 gigs). I wouldn’t count on ADrive lasting long, what with OmniDrive’s collapse. Keeping files in a central place where others can grab them speeds things up.
If you have your own server space with a common FTP log in, fine. Grab FileZilla (and the portable version) and go to town. That’s probably more secure than the Java application on the ADrive site. But, if you need cheap space (I’d use ADrive for getting raw audio and video to an editor back at the office), this solution will get you up and running TODAY.
del.icio.us
Del.icio.us, the social bookmarking site, keeps links out of email. I can’t stand those mass-emailed-hey-look-what-I-found links because email is for communicating work-related tasks that are too long, or less immediate than instant messenger. Nothing more.
Del.icio.us moves those links out of sight. While I think we should share information we find with each other (and it’s a culture we should encourage), we need to move it to the appropriate arena.
Del.icio.us has a couple FireFox plugins that speed up bookmarking items.
There are several ways to integrate your del.icio.us bookmarks into your site as well, to create a link blog of sorts.
Google Reader
Almost everything has RSS feeds these days. Keep up on your beat by following related blogs, or follow news releases (which are cropping up more and more often in RSS format) or hunt down the XML feeds that happen to be all over government Web sites (They may not be obvious, but they can be found anywhere).
Gmail
Sullivan covers this best in his post:
Corporate policies and IT concerns will never allow email on a third party system. Well, they can cram it with walnuts. The paper tiger of ’security’ is false, we’ve all heard people use that before when they just wanted to maintain unfettered, unquestioned control. Microsoft’s product vulerabilities are widely known and have been the target of hackers, spyware, malware and viruses since the dawn of the Internet. Beyond that, Outlook is purely a waste of money, including time (and therefore money) spent dealing with inept software. That time-as-money waste is almost as gross as the mountains of cash spent on the proprietary software that is causing this time suck. It’s a vicious circle.
Plus, if you’re lucky enough to have a Web-client version of outlook, you know how much it sucks.
Gmail’s filtering, offline access and built-in instant messaging keeps you organized, freeing you up to get work more work done.
There’s also an excellent mobile Web version if you’re away from a computer.
I also use Gmail as a personal database.
Gmail integrates tightly with Remember The Milk (which I’ll get to in a bit).
Google Docs
Sullivan also covers Docs in his post, but I’d like to add that Docs means not buying expensive front-end systems, as well.
Docs isn’t just a writing tool. You can publish directly to your blog from the software or let your Web developers take the data for fun mashups using Google’s APIs (like this crime map I made a while back).
Google Calendar
Manage multiple calendars (events, deadlines, personal meetings, schedules) from one space. Share and collaborate. Text and email alert reminders. Access it online with your full browser, or use their handy mobile Web interface. It also integrates with Remember The Milk.
Again, email should be used for relaying complex tasks, not for figuring out when everyone is available for a meeting. At a quick glance with Gcal, you can see who is available when and set up a meeting invitation right from the software.
Sold yet?
Grand Central
If you’re going to be truly mobile, people need to get a hold of you. Grand Central is another Google product, so there’s great integration with other Google applications.
Here’s what it is: One phone number that rings all of your phones. Access any voice mail from any phone. Record calls and download them for posting to the Web later (no annoying gear required!).
Grand Central basically turns telephones into Gmail. There are more than enough features to make it worth a look. Personally, I like the call filtering the best. Incoming calls from certain people ring different phones.
Flickr
All photographers should be using a pro flickr account. Period.
Why spend thousands on front-end photo systems when for less than a few hundred bucks a year you can give every person in your newsroom who even touches a camera a full account? Through tagging and RSS, you can create dynamic workflows between photographers and photo editors. Using flickr’s tools and their API, your developers can immediately post images to your sites with almost zero lag time. You also tap flickr’s massive audience.
Lastly: You can control your copyright how you see fit.
Professional social networking. Many professionals already have an account, but if you don’t, get a free account. The mobile interface is handy for looking up contacts that may not be in your Grand Central list.
Jott
With only a voice call, post to your blog or twitter, set Google calendar events, create tasks in Remember the Milk. Jott is great for posting quick bits right from your phone when you don’t have a good Internet connection.
Remember the Milk
Lists. That’s all this service does. Sounds silly, but the collaboration tools take the lists to another level. Editors can see what you’re working on, while assigning quick tasks and deadlines. And that information can be fed back to a boatload of services (the twitter/jott integration being the most useful to me, personally). With so many features you can easily defeat the object of having prioritization lists, but with some discipline and solid work flow, it becomes an invaluable tool for setting reminders and prioritizing the minutia of newsroom life.
Twitter/BrightKite
Twitter is a microblogging tool. BrightKite is a location tool that integrates with twitter.
Twitter and BrightKite have been covered pretty extensively by media bloggers, so I’m not going to bore you with more. Just know that these tools will let your editors (and readers) know what you are working on and where you are in the field.
(I have some invites to BrightKite, which is in beta, if you’d like to see it. Leave a comment if you want one.)
Ning
Every reporter and editor should have a Ning network. They should build an online relationship with their sources, their readers and their editors. Beatblogging.org covers this extensively and it’s a principle I firmly stand behind.
Also consider creating a closed network for your newsroom. Consider it a free intranet/social network that can be accessed anywhere and can become a central hub of information flowing into the news desk.
Any good blogging platform
WordPress and tumblr are my favorite flavors, but if you can find a robust blogging platform that works with Google Docs, Jott and others listed above–and they work for your newsroom–go for it. At the very least, every reporter and editor should have a blog covering their beat(s). I’ll get into this more in my next post, but the flow of information should move from source to blog to aggregation sites (like a targeted niche sites or general news sites).
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Any other suggestions are certainly welcome in the comments!
The second part of this series will specifically address editorial workflows. Once you have reporters out in the field, producing their own beat blogs, then what do you do? I’ll bring up some ideas I’ve been running through my head for a while.
The end. Or is it?
Please leave a comment so I know what you think about this post. After that, check out It's randomonium! Or, if you're so inclined, take a gander at what I'm reading and my del.icio.us links.
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Tags: ideal newsroom, mobile reporting