Technolo-J

Online Communities, Comments and Curmudgeons

Angela_Connor — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 19:18:00 GMT

A wicked combination I know, but before I tell you what each means to me individually, I will introduce myself. I'm Angela Connor.

I love what I do on many levels. Yes, there were times when I didn't necessarily love my job at several points in the past, but my love for journalism and the convergence of media has never waned. I received a Values Award in my previous position at a newspaper for "clearly communicating the growing need for multimedia content in today's fragmenting media marketplace." That's a direct quote.

The plaque is on my office wall here at WRAL.com in Raleigh, where I've been the Managing Editor for UGC since February, 2007. That's user-generated content for those of you who may have thought it was an acronym for ugly, gregarious curmudgeons. I wish I were the managing editor of them as well though, so I could put them all on a 30-day performance review.

This is my first blog here at Technolo-J, and if they'll allow me to stay, there will be many more to come.

Now, about online communities. I am an online community manager. I moved to Raleigh to manage and provide long-term vision and strategies for GOLO.com. We are in our second year and have more than 8,000 members. I communicate with those members often. I know a whole heck of a lot about the people in the community. One could even say I know too much. I planned a one-year birthday bash for the community a few weeks ago, held it at Starbucks and met people with names like Mohawkhb, Sue Donym, CottontownRambler, Cuzin Lukey and Tarheel Army Mom. I believe that local communities that are managed well and where the members are treated with respect can thrive and serve as an asset to traditional media organizations.

Let's move on to comments. I supervise a team of moderators. These moderators decide which comments will be allowed on WRAL.com news stories. It's a challenge, but we set standards and make our expectations known. Our goal is to create an environment for civil discourse where our visitors can engage, debate, and even fight, as long as it's civil. I have no tolerance for those who say newspapers should abandon comments. No they shouldn't. They should manage them.

That leads me to this: Curmudgeons. I have commented on a number of blog posts recently about this very topic. Simply put, they are everywhere. Some of them fall under the radar, happily grumbling at their cubicles or in the corner of the break room wearing a fixed scowl. Others are quite verbal. They refer to 35 year-olds as "kids." They hate the internet, and they may even still own a typewriter. They don't want their story scooped online, even if it's their own company's website and they think that bloggers are direct descendants of the Anti-Christ.

You know the type. If you know the type all too well and you see him or her in the mirror everyday, it's time to make a change. Resistance is futile. So, right here on the Technolo-J blog, I am opening up a new center called Curmudgeons Anonymous. The first step is admitting the problem.

You: Hi. My name is Curmudgeon, and I'm a curmudgeon.

Me: Hiiii Curmudgeon.

Welcome. You're in for the ride of your life.

Welcome a new author to Technolo-J

RonSylvester — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 08:41:00 GMT

Beginning this week, you'll see a new name posting here at Technolo-J.

Angela Connor is managing editor of user-generated content at WRAL.com in Raleigh, N.C., and also is editor of the online community GOLO -- "Go Local." Angela offers a unique perspective to this blog in building online communities and helping journalism transform into a two-way conversation with our audience. I'm excited to have her here.

Help me welcome her.

Selling out the news?

RonSylvester — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:13:00 GMT

Las Vegas TV station KWU apparently has decided to react to the drop in advertising dollars many news operations are experiencing by product placement on its newscasts. Anchors recently delivered the news with iced coffees from a popular fast-food franchise on their desks.

As Angela Grant points out on News Videographer:

“In my opinion, this conflicts with several points in SPJ’s Code of Ethics “Act Independently” section:

· Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.

· Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.

· Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.

Certainly pressures are building as news organizations adapt to the shift in the way our audiences want to receive the news. But this smacks of at least the appearance of advertisers influencing news content. This also points out why it’s so important for SPJ to continue to push ethics at this time of change. We need to maintain a watchdog approach and be vigilant to make sure the high standards we have set over the past century do not erode.

Super ideas to save election coverage

RonSylvester — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 02:25:00 GMT

Elections are coming up.

Before you snore through another meeting about elections, read what Jack Lail and Scott Karp wrote about link journalism in the Neiman Reports, now online.

Some newsrooms still are living in old school molds of having the “scoop” – real “His Girl Friday” stuff from the 1920s. But Lail and Karp make good arguments for why those notions can’t fly anymore. But by helping readers navigate through all the voices on the web, our tradition as a trusted source may well save us.

Karp:

“This is not just a responsibility, it's an opportunity, for when journalists select the best of the Web's political coverage, they are able to uphold their standards of verifying and validating information. When newsrooms distribute what they find on the Web, they can maintain their relevance as a destination for people interested in politics by becoming a gateway to the best of all political coverage, not just their own."

In Knoxville, Lail and his folks put it to the test with great success:

“The idea was elegantly simple: supplement presidential campaign coverage with links to other content. …

…Here's what it took to make this happen:

· Number of sit-down meetings: None.

· Number of conference calls: None.

· Number of contracts or releases: None.

· From concept to execution: A couple of days."

So skip that meeting all together.

Keep stories short and let the data shine

RonSylvester — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:50:00 GMT

I spent last week wading in data for our second biennial package "Judging the Judges."

It’s a survey I helped develop two years ago with our local bar association, getting lawyers to help evaluate judicial performance. We also elect state judges in Wichita but rules on judicial ethics prevent candidates from campaigning or really saying much. So we also evaluate the performance of attorneys who are running for office, and it’s become an important guide for voters.

We started this, in part because special interest groups were doing their own evaluations and endorsements, and we wanted to provide a more objective tool. No one knows judges better than the lawyers who face them.

I really works well on the web. From my spreadsheets, content producer Katie Lohrenz built an interactive feature allowing readers to compare scores between judges and candidates. You can see, we kept the copy short, because the real star is the data. We only had a week to prepare from the time we received the raw data until Sunday's publication.

It’s rated among our top web features so far, both Sunday and today.

A curmudgeon journalist gets inspired: a short subject

RonSylvester — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 05:28:00 GMT

FADE IN: (After a busy week wrestling with a data project, RON is catching up on his reading, scratching his head like a curmudgeon. We hear the narration of his inner voice, resembling Woody Allen):

MERANDA WATLING wrote a post on her blog which reminded me why the news business will survive.

She commented on comments to a post by JESSICA DASILVA, another young firebrand of new journalism Now, I will comment on that. (No, Meranda, you’re not the last blogger to write about it, I am.)

The passion both these young women show for journalism is exactly what has kept this curmudgeon going back to work for three-plus decades now.

RIPPLE FADE TO:

MERANDA:

“I am 22 and about as tech-savvy as an employer could possibly hope for their employee to be. And you know what? I LOVE my newspaper job. But I don’t love it because I am wedded to the idea of a printed product or because I long to wear fedoras or be Woodward and Bernstein or any of that. I don’t. I really really don’t. I rarely read the printed newspaper (my editor hates this), and I’d much rather be putting together an interactive graphic than sitting through a school board meeting.”

CUT TO

RON:

I did get into this business because of Woodward and Bernstein, and on occasion have donned a fedora (and look as dapper as Ryan Sholin). I also said this week in a news meeting

CUT TO Weekly staff meeting

RON (as reporters and editors nod off around the conference table): “We can’t cut staff and change the makeup in our newsrooms while continuing to cover the news the same way we have for the past 50 years. That includes writing about every school board meeting.”

FADE TO: Tampa Tribune newsroom, where JESSICA hears editor JANET COATS say that despite doom surrounding pending layoffs, journalism is “Is worth fighting for.”

JESSICA:

“Out of all her quoteable moments, those were the words that stuck with me. It was that powerful statement that conveyed the hope, faith and prayers of all journalists worldwide. That maybe this industry can’t be demolished because of its importance and that maybe our love and passion for it could be enough to keep it running.

"Well, it’s going to take more than love and passion. That love and passion must move us to find solutions to keep our industry, our jobs and our identities alive and well.”

RON (laughing while reading comments of Jessica’s critics, who keep mentioning declining circulation of the print product, as if it makes their points, rather than hers):

Can we agree that our audience is moving to the Web? (Speaking very slowly for those who still don’t get it) People are reading their news on their telephones -- as I do, as long as my old eyes will allow it. Meranda and Jessica get what many veterans don’t: the means of delivering the news is changing. The news isn’t. Reporting isn’t. The people who love news and reporting it aren’t. (He pauses, as he often does when writing, wondering if he’s making any sense to anyone but himself. Undaunted, he continues…).

Of course, we have to do our jobs differently than we have. But all we’re doing is what wire service reporters have done since the 19^th Century: looking for faster ways to get the news out. (Curmudgeonly allusion ahead) Our goal is no different than Edward G. Robinson in "Dispatch from Reuters" (1940).

That’s doesn’t mean our newsrooms will always be producing newspapers. And there will always be a need for news.

CUT TO

MERANDA:

“But they will need accurate, reliable news sources. And the skills I am learning working as a beat reporter are preparing me to be that source. It’s not perfect, for sure. Newspapers won’t ever regain their dominance. But I hate to see the best of the best being shooed away and told working for a newspaper is a death sentence. Trust me, journalism — democracy — needs those people not to flee too far from good old-fashioned community journalism and not to give up.”

(Background music swells with Gloria Gaynor's 1970s-era curmudgeon standard “I Will Survive” as we) FADE OUT

Good tips to read, remember and share with everyone in your newsroom

RonSylvester — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:58:00 GMT

Good tips are worth remembering and repeating.

Here are some from Bill Dunphy of Web U (via Mindy McAdams)

Are there original documents you can link to?
Are there any photographs (related videos, sound files, slideshows)?
Can you map it?
Can you gather past stories together and link to them?
Can you post the audio or video of an interview or a performance or a meeting?
Can you direct readers to an authoritative (external) site for more info?
Can you invite comment or start a conversation?

Dunphy has good descriptions and explanations to go with each, like finding photos:

"You don't have to own a file to share it with your audience. Need a photo of a coffee-addicted dog for a story on off-leash dog parks? Go to Flickr's creative commons site and search for what you need."

Easy and entertaining.

A murder caught on video, reported in multimedia

RonSylvester — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:27:00 GMT

I picked this up and realized I hadn’t blogged in almost a month. Part of it is the intense energy I bring to work every day. I’m sapped by the end of the day, running my the work blog on courts, trying to complete the enterprise projects and keep up with multimedia, which in recent weeks has meant looking at death.

I see death regularly. I cover murder trials. But rarely do I get to see it. Until last week.

Often, I’ve heard prosecutors explain to jurors about circumstantial evidence. “I don’t have a video of the crime,” they will say, “but you can still look at the evidence and tell what happened can’t you?”

In the trial of Cherish McCullough the jury, and I, saw a killing. And in the era of multimedia, we could share it online.

McCullough was 19 years old when charged with killing a 27-year-old woman in a Wichita convenience store. The store had 15 security cameras, which caught the crime from every angle. I plugged my small Canon into the video pool, and we recorded what the jury saw. Then we posted it online. Well, parts of it. You might want to read until the end before you decide to click on the links below.

First, there was the fistfight between the women. That was played on the first day of the trial. After the fight, McCullough left the store. Everyone thought the fight was over, until she returned and stabbed LaShonda Callaway.

Not too long ago, only television news would have been able to replay it. Across our city, editorial discussions were going on in newsrooms. What do we show, just because we can? We didn’t show the stabbing. There was another view that caught it on camera. It was quick. Callaway seemed to be unaware she was stabbed, until she collapsed. What our audience saw only hinted at what happened.

I tell myself, we showed what we did, because it showed the overwhelming evidence against McCullough, and why the jury eventually took only an hour to convict her. And not just because we can. I hope we did the right thing.

The video we didn’t show was brutal. I’m still having nightmares about it.

Listen and learn: lessons on blogging, Twitter and covering the news live

RonSylvester — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:40:00 GMT

I listened to the podcast the Guardian posted the other day on The Future of Journalism: Blogging, Twittering and Live Video.

Fascinating and thought-provoking, it's 87 minutes long, so download it to your IPod and take it with you to the gym/ Or just make time to listen. I'm going to count it as the training hours for this year.

A few highlights:

Dave Hill, writer for the Guardian, said there was "sort of mischief element" as he covered a mayoral race on Twitter. People get to see the news-making and reporting process in its rawest form.” Part of the fun of it for me is the demystification of serious journalism, if you like," he said.
Anna Pickard said when she began live blogging television shows such as "Big Brother" and "The Apprentice" people began sitting in front of their TV's with their laptops, responding to her posts. “Conversation is the best thing about the Internet, I think," she said. “...It’s introducing this idea of simultaneous multimedia. Everyone is taking everything in and splurging at the same time.”
Andy Carvin of NPR called Twitter: “a conversation you keep in your pocket” and "the quintessential American diner."

They also talk about workflow and problems they experienced. These all illustrate my experiences when I was covering the murder trial on Twitter, only they explain it much more eloquently.

Now I'm blogging as part of the my job

RonSylvester — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 16:43:00 GMT

My beat is in a courthouse, a building where human drama plays out in some form every day. In eight years of covering courts, I'd often hear of interesting stories that wouldn't fit into what I was working on that day, or just didn't have a place for one reason or the other in the paper.

But I've found a home for those stories in the new courts blog the Eagle launched this week. We call it "What the Judge Ate for Breakfast," after a well-known courthouse saying. It actually as an interesting origin, which we explained in the "about" section. Actually, one of the most difficult parts was researching the origin, which took the help of the University of Kansas Law School Library, to find the exact quote.

Now, I blog as a part of my job. We also put my Twitter feed in the navigation, so I can continue to file microblogs from the courthouse. Some of the posts publish to the blog first, and then developed into full stories for the newspaper. Others update stories that we didn't run in the print edition. It's a combination of original reporting from our courthouse and links to legal and crime trend stories from elsewhere.

So far, I've gotten good feedback from judges and lawyers. We'll see if we can get the crime and courts news junkies from the public interested.

What I learned about crime reporting via Twitter

RonSylvester — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 07:52:00 GMT

The Twitter trial was exhausting.

But the response was worth it. That’s what I’ve found is usually true in this business. The most difficult reporting brings the best rewards.

I had to take a week’s vacation after the capital murder trial of Ted Burnett just to rest up and refuel. After weeks of microblogging details of the brutal death of a 14-year-old girl, I didn’t have much left to even keep this blog up. But thanks to all those who followed my coverage on Twitter and those who may patiently return to this blog to learn what happened, from a journalist’s standpoint. You all keep me going.

Here’s some of the feedback I received from readers:

“I’m addicted …”
“I found myself checking in a couple of times per day just to read your postings. Due to my schedule, I do not always get to spend time each morning reading the paper and rely on online news during the day.”
“This was yet another great use for 2.0 tools!”
“I very much wanted to follow the trial and when I came across your Twitter page I was delighted. I thought at first it might be annoying to have to continually refresh the page to get updates, but found I could easily get work done and come back every 10 minutes or so and read through your updates.”
“I loved being able to press the refresh button on my browser every minute for new ‘tweets.’ While I am emotionally involved in this case, I was not able to take a week off work and join my family friends in the courtroom. With twitter I am able to virtually be in the court room and know all of the little details that I had not previously known about.”

I had started using Twitter during jury selection, as a solution to some problems we’d had with trying to file live updates during the trial. We wanted immediacy, and we got it.

One day, I cut and pasted all my “tweet” updates into a traditional story file. It measured 80 inches. Now, I don’t think anyone would have read an 80-inch story from the newspaper on this trial, as compelling as it was. My editors certainly wouldn’t have run a story that long. But what I found is that people will read an 80-inch story, given to them a paragraph at a time, 140 characters long.

In addition to Twitter, I also produced multimedia: audio slide show such as this one of a co-conspirator explaining the killing of Chelsea Brooks.

Between the text descriptions from the courtroom over Twitter, and the multimedia, we were able to give people a feeling of being there that I had never before been able to do in my career. This trial had a “press room” in the law library of an adjoining courtroom.

I kept a Macbook Pro in there with Soundslides and Audacity, so I could edit audio files and organize photos on breaks. I had the photographer on duty download photos to a memory stick I wore around my neck. That saved time. Most days I was able to complete everything - including writing a story for the morning newspaper - at a decent hour. The tweets during the day were really my notes that I used to fashion the newspaper story.

It wasn’t perfect. I had my share of typos, filing live with no copy desk backup. But no one complained about the occasional misspellings.

Twitter had outages, sometimes during the most dramatic parts the trial.

Here are some lessons I learned that may help other reporters wanting to “tweet” live events:

Keep a “cheat sheet” handy of key dates, addresses and names of those involved. It will save time to keep looking them up in your notes.
Don’t assume anything. If you’re not sure you totally understand what you’re hearing, save that information until you can ask for further explanations.
Remember, it’s easier for people to follow narrative stories. Try to establish what the story is and filter information so that it fits within the storyline. This was easy in a trial, because certain witnesses were there to tell what happened. Other parts weren’t as easy, such as forensic evidence. With that, I had to work harder to maintain a story that wouldn’t lose people.
When the event takes a break, tell people. I always added a tweet that said “court is in recess for 15 minutes,” so readers wouldn’t keep refreshing the page, hoping to find information.
Pay attention to the environment around you. Don’t just report what people say. Look for reactions and moods.

You will catch mistakes, most of which you’ll notice right as you hit “send.” File corrections immediately and mark them as such. It will keep your readers’ trust.

Make time to rest, especially if it’s going to be an event such as a trial that lasts for days, even weeks. You will be exhausted.

You may even find Twitter improves your writing. When you have to stay within 140 characters, you're forced to write tight.

Update: We got a big morale boost during the trial from the American Bar Association, which contacted us for this article in ABA On-Line Journal. The article gave us immediate credability with judges and lawyers around the courthouse, which will probably help us continue using this tool.

Making responsible journalists out of citizens

RonSylvester — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:46:00 GMT

SPJ often gets mistakenly tagged as old school, a bunch of old print guys reminiscing over the days of manual typewriters. The reality is, SPJ is embracing the future.

The newest example is our Citizen Journalism Academy. The first drew about small crowd of 25 in Chicago last weekend. The crowd was small, but SPJ executive director Terry Harper those who attended gave the programming high marks. Here’s how the Chicago Tribune reported it.

The point is to train the growing numbers of folks contributing to online projects about ethical and responsible journalism.

The next CJA is in June 7 in Greenboro, N.C.

If you know any budding citizen journalists, bloggers or others, tell them to check it out. Maybe try to bring it to your town on the next go-around.

Get more information here.

Tweeting in courtroom provides a new way to cover a murder trial

RonSylvester — Sat, 10 May 2008 08:47:00 GMT

The Twitter trial seems to be working. So far.

It's a modification of what we began last fall: live updates of a capital murder trial in the killing of a small-town Kansas sheriff. It was a way of live blogging from the courtroom. I would email updates from my smartphone and Bluetooth keyboard and send them back to the online team at the newsroom. They would post them with time stamps.

Readers enjoyed it, but the workflow lagged at times. The copy desk during the day is sparse, usually one person posting all the updates throughout the day. Metro editors were in meetings all day. I was filing faster than the posts were appearing. That was a snag we were going to have to work out.

This spring, as another big trial loomed, the copy desk said they couldn’t handle another round of live blogging. People are going on vacation. We're short-staffed. There was no time to sort through my updates each hour.

The trial: Ted Burnett is accused of killing Chelsea Brooks, a 14-year-old girl who was nine months pregnant, in June 2006, during a murder-for-hire.

When jury selection began this week, I decided to start posting updates on Twitter.

Jury selection is usually the most boring part of any trial.

“This is the part they don’t show on TV, it’s so exciting,” prosecutor Kevin O’Connor tells jurors.

Most times, we don’t even cover it. But capital murder trials are different. The juries not only decide whether a defendant is guilty. If they return a conviction on capital murder, the jury also decides whether or not the defendant will receive the death penalty. With life and death at stake, I like to know who is sitting on the jury.

But jury selection also seemed to be ideal to conduct experiments. Who would notice? So I began tweeting portions of the part of the trial no one seems to care about. Most were tidbits that probably wouldn’t make it in any stories I wrote for the print edition.

Some of the Twitter highlights:

Prosecutor told the judge one prospective juror "appears to be stoned."

"I don't know if this is a legal reason," O'Connor said, "but the state's position is he should be dismissed because he's a punk."
Prosecutor: "Do you have any concerns about the criminal justice system?" Juror: "Some people in the system are criminals themselves."
Lawyer: "Do you understand some of the things you've heard about the case may not be accurate?" Juror: "Sure, especially from the media."

You get the idea.

I didn't expect the reaction..

I received an email from a Wichita police officer following the trial on Twitter, saying "Keep it up."

A woman tweeted her friends, “Court TV is gone but Twitter has @rsylvester.”

(Actually, it’s now “In Session” on TruTV and I do some work for them, too).

But this is important to me, becaise they are local people, looking for local news. They’re not readers or viewers or audience anymore – in this world of social networking, they’re my friends. I like that.

I keep getting notices that more people are following me each day.

Jill, my editor, is encouraging me .

Katie, our online content developer, is working on a widget to put my tweets on Kansas.com, when the trial really gets going.

Here’s what I’m learning:

Keep it professional. Remain a reporter. Resist the urge to comment or editorialize. Just tell what’s going on and give context.
Pick the most engaging parts to report. Remember, I have to take notes and try not to miss anything important. I try to Twitter the parts that catch my attention and which I think are important from my experience on the beat. Even in capital murder trials, there are lighter moments. But also select the parts that will increase awareness and knowledge of the event.
Keep it clean. I mean copy. You have to proof read yourself. Remember, there’s no copy desk between you and publishing. And if I remember correctly, they don’t have time for this, anyway.
Check to see if anyone is replying. It’s tough to do on a mobile site that isn’t fully functional, as it is on a desktop. I post with text messages but occasionally check through the Web to see if there are any responses. One of my new friends had to contact me on Facebook to point out I was missing her replies. I also try to go back at the end of the day and see who I missed. I don’t know if it’s bad form to reply something like 10 hours later, but I want folks to know I’m paying attention.

Yes, it’s the same as Intro to Journalism. Know your audience; get it right. But in this delivery system it’s live, and it’s fast. I keep reminding myself, I can’t cut corners. Good journalism should shoot for high standars, even in bits of 140 characters at a time.

And at a limit of 140-character, Twitter forces you to write tight.

It’s hard work. I leave court feeling exhausted

And it’s only the first week. The intense and exciting part – the real evidence of the trial - is yet to begin.

What, you want me to teach reporters multimedia?

RonSylvester — Thu, 08 May 2008 07:11:00 GMT

Culture can change as quickly in the newsroom as an editor can slap a new lead on a story.

Just a few weeks ago, I wondered if anyone outside our online team – which I had been banished from sometime last summer – got or cared about Web-first publishing or multimedia journalism or Web 2.0.

Then through a series of b-and-moaning (me) and firings (someone else, thankfully), I was assigned to Jill, full-time metro editor, part-time blogger and sometimes Tweeter.

In addition to keeping up with my little experiments, such as my live blogging jury selection of a capital murder trial on Twitter, Jill wrote me into our team goals as a “multimedia trainer.” Evidently, Jill figured my last year of learning how to use a video camera, editing software and hooking up microphones to audio records should be passed onto the rest of our staff.

Beginning this month, I’m supposed to begin showing the three other reporters in our corner of the newsroom the basics. It’s the beginning of a newsroom DIY-training.

It seemed only weeks ago people with the title “editor” were asking me to cut it out with the electronic toys, as they had told me in earlier years to stop developing narratives and stick to the inverted pyramid.

Culture can change quickly in newsrooms. So if you sometimes feel like one of the only ones trying to do something new, don’t get frustrated. Just keep plugging away.

It’s kind of like that project I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, and now – because of a murder trial – has to be once again put on hold. But news of the moment takes priority. And there’s always news of the moment. Eventually, there will be time for enterprise.

Eventually, someone will grasp what you’re trying to do.

Meanwhile, follow my experiments on Twitter. You'll hear about stoned "punk" jurors and what men facing a death penalty trial say about newspaper subscriptions. Really.

TwitterLocal tells what everyone is talking about

RonSylvester — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 05:49:00 GMT

For the past week, I’ve been watching the TwitterLocal Feed, recommended by Mark Hamilton. You subscribe to all the local tweets in your feed reader.

Back in the old days of some 15 years ago, I had a great editor who would make an effort to scour the town and find out what people were talking about in coffee shops and bars, around water coolers and parks. He would constantly ask reporters, “What are people talking about. That’s what where we ought to look for stories.”

With TwitterLocal, I can find out what people are talking about on my phone. Every once in a while, they’re even talking about what we’re reporting.

We spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to use the new technology to serve our own purposes of disseminating information. But I’m reminded we need to also take time to use it to learn more about the people we are hoping to reach.