Kathryn Jones Malone is co-director of the Texas Center for Community Journalism. She began her career as a staff writer at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, then worked as a staff writer for the Dallas Times Herald and The Dallas Morning News; as a contract writer for The New York Times; as a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly magazine; as editor of the Glen Rose Reporter; and as a freelance writer for numerous state, regional and national magazines. She teaches journalism at Tarleton State University.
May could be a bad weather month in Texas, and if so you’ll need the resources of the Weather Channel in your reporting. The Weather Channel has all types of information that will give you perspective on local weather emergencies — including this interactive map that will allow you to monitor weather radar for your city and county. SPJ’s Journalist’s Toolbox also has good weather reporting sources.
Mel Taylor shares a smart strategy Google is now using, one that could easily be adapted by Texas community newspaper. Instead of cold-calling, Google offering local business a chance to schedule free photo shoot.
Google sends a professional photographer to take shots of business, then uploads them into Google Places and Google Maps. Mel notes: “GREAT way to start relationship with small business operator (then upsell them later).” Sounds like a good way to start a relationship with businesses that haven’t advertised before.
Mark Engebretson, editor of the Lake Country Sun, was in Fort Worth last weekend at a meeting of the North and East Texas Press Association. While he was there, he started getting calls about the fire that was now threatening Palo Pinto County and his Possum Kingdom Lake community.
Engebretson’s paper is published on Friday, but he didn’t wait for publication day to get ahead of the story. His Facebook page has been one of the go-new news sources for the Possum Kingdom area.
When Engebretson left for Fort Worth and NETPA, his Lake Country Sun’s Facebook page had 1,161 fans. At this writing five days later, he has 5,400 – and growing daily.
“The Web allows a weekly to become a daily,” Mark said. “Facebook takes you beyond a daily. It’s instantaneous communication.”
“This makes all the long hours worth it,” he said. “People tell me that they are really relying on us for up-to-the-minute news on the fire.”
The Sun is literally a one-man operation these days. The roads into Possum Kingdom are closed and Mark’s other staff just happened to be gone when the fire encircled the area. Now, he is doing it all himself – news, photography, advertising, design … everything.
The Sun’s offices seem relatively safe for the time-being, but Mark said that at one point the fire was across the street from him – “right up to the asphalt.”
And to make matters worse, the fire knocked out a wireless tower and the Sun’s office doesn’t have Internet service. Luckily, though, he can still make it back to his house, where he has a DSL line.
The West Texas fires are a great example of what social media can mean to community newspapers. People are not going to wait until “the paper comes out” to get their news, and the source that many are turning to now is Facebook. That medium is interactive, which means that readers can share information, ask questions, post pictures and video, check out rumors and talk back and forth in real time about their concerns.
“I have a whole new understanding and appreciation of Facebook,” Mark said. “Our readers have flat taken over our fan page.”
And that’s a good thing. PK readers see the Sun as the place to go for the latest news, a place to ask their questions and share their concerns. That respect for the newspaper as more than ink on paper but also as the community’s news source should pay off as those readers and advertisers look to the printed product for the expanded information and detail they can’t get on Facebook.
You think high gas prices are hurting your bottom line? What if you had to fill up a school bus? And what if that school bus made pick-ups in rural areas and drove many miles every day? Here’s a math problem for your fifth grader: Suppose a school bus gets 8 miles per gallon and drives 50 miles a day. The gas tank holds around 60 gallons and gas costs $3.81. How much more will the district spend on that bus per week than it did when gas cost $2.50 a gallon? It’s a great word problem for a fifth grader and a great story idea for any community newspaper in a rural area where school buses drive long distances. The link shows you what a Michigan TV station did with this idea.
Aren’t you tired of webspeak? Can you remember the days when we talked about readers, not uniques or pageviews? The Washington Post has decided to try a new language in its reports to the staff on readership of the washingtonpost.com: English. Pageviews have become “pages read”; unique visitors have become (drumroll here….) “readers.” As Ken Doctor, the newsonomics guru, notes in this post: “The idea: demystify foreign terms and turn them into what they are — stats any self-respecting journalist has to care about.” And results of these analytics are that the Post knows more about its readers – for instance, that 10 percent of its audience accounts for more than a third of its traffic, and that Facebook referrals are up 238 percent. If you want to read more about measuring traffic to your site, read this blog from Associate Director Andrew Chavez.
Tell your reporters to put down their cell phones and check their e-mail – there could be a message there from your correspondent in Calcutta. And other than the obvious fantasy of having a correspondent in Calcutta, there are three errors in the first sentence, according to the latest style changes from AP. Last week, the sentence would have been OK. This week, AP joined the rest of the 21st century in changing e-mail to email and cell phone to cellphone (same with smartphones). And under the theory that we should go along with the spelling favored by more than one billion Indians, Calcutta has become Kolkata (how long will it take you to remember that one?). Last year, AP changed web site to the more popular website. But we’re sure you’ll find a use for those extra hyphens somewhere . . .
At the Center, we get questions about pretty much everything that goes on in local journalism, from how to get the school superintendent to stop flagrant violations of FOI laws to how to how fight Craigslist to whether or not you can pull a picture off Facebook and use it. But the issue generating the most queries, to paraphrase Hamlet, is this: to paywall or not to paywall; that is the question. And thus we probably have more Around the Web postings about paywalls than anything else. We try to pass along the commentary on this issue that’ll be the best use of your time, which is why we’re recommending Alan Mutter’s latest blogpost, ” NYT.com latest pay scheme can succeed, but…” Mutter addresses the experiment that has a lot of community journalism’s interest right now — the new paywall at The New York Times. Basically, it’s paywall lite, and it goes into effect March 28. The new plan will allow readers to see 20 articles a month for free. If you want more, you pay. Theoretically, the plan will allow the paper to generate pageviews with the free content while still generating revenue from those who want more Wlll it work? Might this be viable option for community newspapers in the future? Check out Mutter’s discussion of the Times’ version of a paywall — it’s a good overview of the whole issue, plus an interesting take on whether metering might be the next big thing for newspapers.
This playlist includes all of the presentations from the Center's branding workshop held March 9-11, 2011 on the TCU campus.
If the player below doesn't load, you can view the slideshows on Slideshare here.
The taxman cometh, and here’s some help to figure out the types of questions we journalists have at tax-time: freelance income, home offices, travel and entertainment, royalties and other issues employees at community newspapers have. And if you’re struggling with your taxes, remember Jay Leno’s sage advice: “Worried about an IRS audit? Avoid what’s called a red flag. That’s something the IRS always looks for. For example, say you have some money left in your bank account after paying taxes. That’s a red flag.” Luckily, most of us in community journalism don’t have to worry about having money left over.
Click the link below and click on No. 36.
Consumers like coupons, but they’re not clipping them like they used to. Instead, they are downloading them. A new report just issued says that digital couponing increased by 41 percent in 2010. Digital coupons outpaced the growth of newspaper coupons by 6 to 1. There are more than 49 million Americans who use digital coupons, and of those, almost one-third have not read or looked into the Sunday newspaper for coupons in the past six months.