Andrew Hart

@SeaTimesPhoto’s @ErikaJSchultz in NPPA Awards

Seattle Times staff reporter Erika Schultz has been recognized by the National Press Photographers Association for her extraordinary project covering coffee farmers in Costa Rica.

[NPPA]

The Winner of SPJ’s Weekly Quiz

Each week, the Society of Professional Journalists sends out a member email detailing upcoming events, industry news, and calls to action. It is one of the form email newsletters that I read to completion, because at the end of each one there is a question. Concerning some current issue in the field, recipients are asked to submit their answer to the SPJ’s communications coordinator Abby Henkel.

Screen capture of email newsletter header.

After weeks of failure, victory has come for Andrew Hart. I am the winner of the SPJ Weekly  Email Newsletter Quiz for 23 May 2012.

The question that I fielded was, “Who announced this week that he will step down as editor-in-chief of a national non-profit news outlet?”

My answer: Paul Steiger will step down as editor of ProPublica.

Quiz section of SPJ weekly newsletter

And the winner is… Andrew Hart, a post-grad member and recent graduate of the University of Washington. Congratulations, Andrew! The fabulous SPJ Leads Quiz Prize™ is finally yours! (Oh, and Andrew: Go Cougs!)

There I am, sitting pretty at the tail end of a email newsletter. On the up and up!

Surveying the Inquirers of the #WHChat

On Thursday, President Barack Obama hosted a discussion covering his “Congressional To-Do List” on Twitter, using the #WHchat hashtag.

Over 21 minutes, President Obama fielded questions covering energy policy to student loan rates. Ethan Klapper has full coverage of the event at the Huffington Post.

The response was large, but only seven questions were answered by President Obama.  Worth noting is that Thursday’s event was a much more open forum than the Twitter Town Hall Obama hosted last July. Selected questions were topical and appropriate. Further examination of the inquirers reveals them to have diverse persuasions not evident in their submitted question. Despite fears over the reinforcement of views and the “silo effect” that can occur through social media, President Obama and his digital team seem to have resisted the tendency by extending across the digital aisle.

Below are characterizations of several inquirers. 

Read More

Left, Right, & Center on Social Media

Facebook and social media was the topic of discussion on KCRW’s Left, Right and Center. Robert Scheer, a journalist with Truthdig, expressed concern over the rise of social media, asking “What happens to journalism?” Scheer suggested social media is barring advertising revenue from sustaining legacy media, threatening his livelihood and that of other journalists.

Let’s be clear, journalism is not a substitute for journalism. It is a tool for communication, thus an asset to journalism. I believe Scheer is vexed by a changing media market, not kids sharing his article over Faceplace or whatever.

Indeed, readers are getting journalism content through their social networks, which means that they do not have to buy a paper or view the banner ads on a news site. This creates a challenge, but one that journalists should be excited to take on: how to present critical news in a format that motivates further pursuit? Can’t journalists construct a lede that will draw readers deeper than their busy social feeds? Can’t journalists learn much of their audience through their social activity? Doesn’t the reciprocal relationship readers have with content and content creators inspire them to pursue and support journalism that matters?

As an aside, you can follow Scheer’s Truthdig on Twitter.

[UPDATED: 19:56 PST, 27 May 2012]

Collected Thoughts

Rather than hunt for free parking, I paid for an on-campus space, thus putting bounds on the time I spent at my alma mater. Wandering amongst classically-styled halls and weathered cherry trees doesn’t prompt a magical feeling of youth and excitement like I think it should. The courtyards contain regret, hallways misdirection, and classrooms hold impatience. This is not a salvo against higher ed, just my experience today, and most times I visit campus.

Exploring the new business school, I made small chat with some MBA students who were having a brunch social. I wanted a free coffee, but was also curious to see whether interaction would recall my time in college. Remarking on  the day’s big event, Facebook’s IPO, I had to assure myself that it had indeed happened earlier that morning. It had, and these students had no idea what I was talking about.

Of course, my sample size was just four MBA students. But I will add them to the growing sentiment that my generation, the Millennials, are strikingly blind to the world around them. I will not claim dispensation from this generalization, but I am certainly not thrilled about my membership.

What can be done? How can we encourage younger generations to be more aware of current affairs, the world around them and their fellow man? Give them newspapers? Pipe cable news into classrooms? Required curriculum? All have been attempted, and nothing sticks.

I am not sure that we can change the motivation or interests of a society. But as long as they care, there is potential for connection and for reaction.

What do people care about?

At I Want Media’s “Future of Media” forum, Greg Clayman—a forum panelist and publisher of The Daily—spoke on this subject. A selection from the article follows.

Clayman argued that important news wasn’t unshareable, just that the focus had to be tweaked. “You’re writing for an emotional response versus writing for a robot,” he said. Peretti offered one example: given two stories, identical in conceit, except that one is about the rising price of oil and other about the rising price of gas, the gas story will be stickier, because readers identify with it, he said.

[SOURCE: CJR]

@elanazak asks, “What’s your preferred way of interviewing, voice or email?”

LOLcats and Journalists

Ben Huh, the CEO of Cheezburger and meme maestro, spoke at the ROFL Conference on his experience and perspectives on internet culture. Speaking to Nieman Lab at the event, Huh expressed opinions on the state of journalism—in which he holds a degree—stating “This thing called objectivity is B.S.”

His comments were met with digital nods and arms thrown in the air. Below the jump, some thoughts from journalists that I respect curated with Storify.

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More on @BarackObama, #SSM, and Twitter @gov

Twitter’s political division, Twitter Government (@gov), has provided a graph illustrating the media hysteria that ensued after President Obama endorsed same-sex marriage on Wednesday, May 9th.

[SOURCE: @gov]

Close up of the graph. Note @ProducerMatthew’s position on the timeline just before the surge in conversation.

Obama and #SSM, @ProducerMatthew scoops, and Twitter goes nuts

What a day. I heard about ABC’s exclusive interview with President Obama through Twitter mid-morning (PST).

Predictions bounced from mediaite to mediaite, most suspecting the POTUS to discuss same-sex marriage. In a moving interview, President Obama expressed his support for same-sex marriages. This move, while divisive, is seen as a gesture for the issue to be handed back to the states.

Unfortunately, the ABC clips were to go live at 3 p.m. EST, during which I had a lunch engagement. I am ashamed of checking my phone incessantly during the meal, but I feel fortunate to have witnessed such a historic event.

From ABC’s Rick Klein:

President Obama today announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, reversing his longstanding opposition amid growing pressure from the Democratic base and even his own vice president.

In an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts, the president described his thought process as an “evolution” that led him to this decision, based on conversations with his staff members, openly gay and lesbian service members, and his wife and daughters.

Around the momentous interview, there were some exciting corollaries. ABC’s monopoly on the event—a rare opportunity for a network in such a frantic media ecosystem—was scooped by Matthew Keys (@ProducerMatthew), Reuters Deputy Social Media Editor.

AdWeek reports:

Keys noticed a At 2:50 p.m. EST, roughly eight minutes before ABC was to break into daytime programming with a special report, Reuters deputy social media editor Matthew Keys noticed and tweeted a URL slug essentially leaking the Obama announcement.

Minutes later, at 2:55 p.m. EST Keys tweeted a screengrab of the ABC News video, to prove the legitimacy.

So how does one catch this kind of thing? Keys responded to Adweek just after he broke the news via direct message on Twitter: “I was filtering Google results by date for site “abcnews.go.com,” came across that, noticed the URL structure was the same to what we used at KGO, which is an ABC owned-and-operated station [in San Francisco]. I put two and two together.”

This is why this guy is my hero. He puts two and two together, very well.

Also worth noting is the ensuing Twitter noise from the event. The following graph shows mentions of “Obama” on May 9, 2012.

[SOURCE: Topsy]

@TPM axes anonymity. Discuss.

At 4:22 p.m. EST, Talking Points Memo announced that they will begin using Facebook as their core commenting system. TPM’s presents two reasons behind the switch: First, it is easier to have Facebook manage the commenting system than build and maintain one in house; second, eliminating anonymity will hopefully encourage accountability from their community.

Response was immediate and fervent, as indicated by Jared Keller, Mathew Ingram, and Matthew Keys.

@mathewi: Faustian bargain — MT @cschweitz: @TPM is moving entirely to Facebook comments. @joshtpm’s explanation here: http://bit.ly/Kv9sRg

@jaredbkeller: @mathewi @joshtpm its not about anonymity, its about real world consequences. People beat each other up in bars, too lazy to stalk offline.

@jaredbkeller: Repeat after me: real-name commenting does not a good comments section make. Actual consequences do.

@ProducerMatthew: RT @jaredbkeller: Repeat after me: real-name commenting does not a good comments section make. Actual consequences do.

@jaredbkeller: @ProducerMatthew I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s a good start, but not a silver bullet.

@mathewi:@jaredbkeller @joshtpm: agreed — it isn’t about which system you use, it’s about how much time you take to moderate.

@jaredbkeller: @mathewi @joshtpm incentives help, but why use carrots when you’ve got a banhammer?

@ProducerMatthew: @jaredbkeller @mathewi @joshtpm Essentially, what’s being said here is “Comments are not worth taking the time to focus on.”

@jaredbkeller: @ProducerMatthew @mathewi @joshtpm more like “technology can fix what is inherently a people problem. “

@mathewi: @jaredbkeller @ProducerMatthew: I think it says both — the sad reality is that algorithms and real names can’t fix human behavior

@ProducerMatthew: @jaredbkeller @mathewi @joshtpm We’re really dissecting something that hasn’t happened yet. Will be interesting to see what happens.

@jaredbkeller: @mathewi @ProducerMatthew Nailed it. Giving people an incentive to change their behavior can help, but not if that incentive is, er, dumb.

@ProducerMatthew: @jaredbkeller @mathewi Thinking Reddit as an example?

@jaredbkeller: @ProducerMatthew @mathewi Don’t tell me what I can’t do! Didn’t you hear? Social media can predict the future!

@jaredbkeller: @ProducerMatthew @mathewi Reddit works because people care about the community and the reddiquette that comes with it.

Many solid points: tangible consequences for dishonoring community expectations, community management being about people not algorithms, and the time and effort it takes to cultivate a rich and responsible community.

Is excluding anonymous rogues the solution to a healthy community? Can you bar these antagonists without killing the community? I am not so sure.

As was said by @mathewi, community management takes time. Not just in wielding the “banhammer,” but in creating excellent content. Let’s look at some examples around the web. As @jaredbkeller stated, the Reddit community cares about the content and network that Reddit provides. You practically have to audition and continually offer supreme stuff to make it in MetaFilter. If you are posting junk on Facebook or Twitter, I won’t even take the time to ask you to clean it up; I will simply turn you off. Create content that people care deeply about, and the community will fight for the sanctity of the conversation around it.

Our country, if you read the Federalist Papers, is about disagreement. It’s about pitting faction against faction, divided government, checks and balances. The hero in the American political tradition is the man who stands up to the mob — not the mob itself.” [SOURCE: Jonah Goldberg on NPR]