Building a digital audience for news

In today’s world of journalism, going digital is the new thing. If you aren’t reporting in newspapers or television, than you are doing it online. In Briggs’ Chapter 11 of journalism NEXT, being a journalist of today means you need to build a digital audience for news. One way to do this is to create a spread sheet. Now I know personally that spread sheets can be quiet difficult. However, you need them to track  things such as how many videos are posted each day, the top stories of the day, and user generated content.

Why is all of this so important? Well besides it being a personal advantage it can help grow and track your audience. Being a journalist, you already know who your audience is after you have written a few stories. Now you need to figure out how to grow your audience. This way you can look at what type of ways I can branch off and gather new members of your audience. Check out more ways to build your audience digitally http://tinyurl.com/p7khkaj  and how to get your hands on Briggs’ book. http://tinyurl.com/qbmlt54

Managing News as a Conversation

Have you ever read an online news article that includes giving

viewers the chance to comment on that article? Have you ever engaged in conversation in the comments section? Well if so, you are engaging in news as conversation. In Briggs’ Chapter 10 of journalism NEXT, http://tinyurl.com/qbmlt54 managing news as a conversation is discussed. In today’s times, many news outlets have panels to talk about news stories. Rather than giving actual facts, many opinions are given. If you want to be a journalist of today, you need to learn how to engage in a collaborate audience.

One popular way to engage in a collaborate audience is to converse with viewers on social media. For example, many new outlets allow viewers to share photos as well as make comments on their stories. Some of the comments shared are negative, but viewers want to be able to share their whether good or bad. Managing news as a conversation is important to journalists of today because the changes of technologies change your audience. http://tinyurl.com/ntn7lkr Therefore your audience will want different ways to have their news delivered to them. Such ways including being able to voice their opinion on Facebook or Twitter.

Check out more ways to manage news as a conversation and to purchase Briggs’ book.

Data-Driven Journalism and Digitizing Your Life

In Briggs’ Chapter 9 of journalism NEXT http://tinyurl.com/pnpfakw, data-driven journalism is discussed. Being a journalist means that you need to be organized. If you aren’t organized, the chances are is that you will not have a good amount of substance in your work. To be organized, you can simply use data in the digital world. For example, most people use emails, to-do lists, notes, spreadsheets, databases, and word processing online to stay organized. If you want to organize your contacts whether personal or business, you can use Google Docs to do so. If you want to organize your work then you can use a project management program called Basecamp.

Why is data-driven journalism so important? datadrivenjournalism.net Well for one you can view databases from new sites. These sites can include public employee salaries or even something simple as summer camp for kids. Next you can tell stories using data. For example, when an important story breaks out people want to know who, what, when and where. Without that data, it would be impossible for people to get that important information. So in conclusion, you will need data-driven journalism to be a journalist of today. Be sure purchase Briggs’ book as well look at more information of data-driven journalism.

 

Going Mobile

In Chapter 5 of Mark Briggs’ “journalism NEXT” book, http://tinyurl.com/qzxyjh5 the use of mobile technology in today’s world of journalism is discussed. Ever wanted to become a reporter but can’t afford an expensive camera? Well how about you use the camera on your cell phone! Gone are the days of people rushing to buy expensive camera only to place those images in newspapers. A large number of journalists just use their latest iPhone of Samsung Galaxy to shoot whatever videos that they need for their stories. Technology has really changed and advanced overt the past 20 years and if you want to be a journalist of today, you must keep up with the latest technology.

So report on the go! Many of the things you need to do so you probably already have. A laptop computer, a camera, headphones, a cell phone, a microphone, a tripod, and most importantly, the internet. These are the major things needed to report on the go. Personally, it seems more easy and convenient do report on the go. For those who want to be freelance journalists, this is the perfect way to do so.Here is more info on being a freelance journalist. http://tinyurl.com/2rmfzv

Microblogging and Social Media: Publish, Distribute and Connect

Have you ever posted a tweet on twitter? Well the chances are is that you are micro blogging. According to Chapter 4 of Briggs’ journalism NEXT book http://tinyurl.com/pactr4b “Micro blogging is an instant messaging journal”. So when you post tweets on twitter you are using,” a micro blogging service which allows users to publish brief text messages, no more than 140 characters, with other links to websites, photos or videos”. One main reason of why micro blogging is so popular, is that fact that nearly anyone can do it. When it comes to journalism now a days, your main audience is on social media. And anyone who is on social media seeks to information that is updated daily. Majority of Americans love to write things good or bad on social media, so they want news very quick and fast just as the Internet has become very quick and fast. So that is why micro blogging has become so popular.

Why is micro blogging so important? Well that seems like an easy question to answer. For one, nearly everyone around you is on social media these days whether it be Facebook, Twitter https://twitter.com/ or Instagram. We are currently living in a world where it counts to be socially connect to others. It is an easy way to capture you audience. I mean even peoples’ grandparents have caught up to the world of social media. If you want to be a journalist, it is imperative that you have some type of social media account. Thanks for reading!

Crowd-Powered Collaboration

In Chapter 3 of Briggs’ book  http://ow.ly/Iw09m, he discusses crowd sourcing. In crowd-sourcing, “The Internet allows enthusiastic communities to come together and provide the value for a given Web site”. Now why exactly is crowd sourcing important? Well as far as journalism goes, it is considered “distributed reporting”. The text also states that “news organizations have used crowd sourcing to find instances of voting problems”. In other words, if you plan on being a journalist then you often will use crowd sourcing on many experiments.

Later in the text, Briggs brings up open-source reporting. “The concept of open-source or distributed reporting is a form of transparency”. Comparing this to crowd-sourcing, open-source reporting is more open to the public. In other words, we want the audience to give their feedback on select issues. If you plan on being a journalist you must also be open to using open-source reporting. Here’s is some more information on crowd-sourcing.http://ow.ly/Iw0sw

Telling Stories With Video

Chapter 8 of Briggs’ “journalism NEXT”http://tinyurl.com/qbmlt54, talks about making your own stories by video. If you plan on making your own video the first thing you start with is an idea of what you want to shoot. So you have this idea in your head and you need to start figuring out ways to shoot this grand idea. Find the camera that works for you and then you can now start shooting your video. Once you have all the footage that you think you need then you can start uploading the material to your computer or any similar device.

Now that you have your footage, I’m hoping that you have started editing that material. You can use such software to zoom in, zoom out shots, fix the lighting, adjust the audio, and well as taking out unwanted footage. Once your done, find the right platform and upload your video to that platform. An example is Youtube or Vimeo. You are now done with your video and I am sure you have told a fantastic story to your selected audience! Here’ more info on creating your own video http://tinyurl.com/kepx3vh .

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Here is the 5 shot sequence 

1. Close up on the hands

2. Close up on the face

3. Wide Shot 

4. Over the shoulder 

5. Creative shot

We are all journalists of the digital world!

Here is an intro of Mark Briggs’ book “journalism Next” http://tinyurl.com/n562uby

 Chapter 1 gave a basic intro to digital information starting with things such as how the Internet works. Through the World Wide Web, you should be able to access information through a network using HTTP. This is interesting because a lot of people tend to think the Internet and the WWW is that exact same thing. Moving on in the chapter, you see things such as feeds and how to subscribe to them. This is something that we all od everyday on sites such as Twitter or Facebook when we want to see new stories or events that interest us, personally. Lastly I ran across designing your own web page. I thought this was interesting because in this class I must design to personal blogs so information seemed useful.

             

Chapter 2 is all about blogs. The chapter starts off talking about what a blog is and how is it useful. Later on in the chapter, I ran across ways to set up my own blog. I also found out how to create my own audience by simply posting things that interest me. There is also ways on how to make me blog different from anyone else by simply putting specific text or language that draws people’s attention. I believe this chapter was useful and for anyone who hasn’t created a blog, should read this chapter before doing so. I have already created my own personal blog but with this information I am able to add more to it.Check out how to create your own blog! http://tinyurl.com/oor2eh2