Storify for reporting using social media

Dig for documents to give breaking news context

When you’re covering breaking news, do you use documents in your reporting? If not, maybe you should. Pulitzer Prize-winner Daniel Gilbert turned to documents when reporting the Gabrielle Giffords shooting story for The Wall Street Journal. It took persistence, but it paid off.

When Gilbert’s editor asked him how fast he could get on a plane to Arizona, he was right on it. In no time he was out of Houston and on the ground in Tucson, going after pieces for The Journal’s team coverage of the story. Early on, Gilbert said, he made a FOIA request for Pima Community College records on suspected shooter Jared Lee Loughner, who had attended the school. He said that when he asked for all communications and reports concerning Loughner and campus police, “They shot back with, ‘we can’t release that.'”

But he didn’t let up, and got the documents--which revealed that faculty and students feared for their safety when in class with Loughner. Gilbert said police stood guard outside a classroom because an instructor felt Loughner might become violent. WSJ.com embedded the records into the online story, a practice Gilbert finds enhances the reader’s experience.

Gilbert recommends developing a “document state of mind,” encouraging reporters to think about how records can corroborate or contradict what people say. “Numbers don’t have an agenda. Sometimes the people behind the numbers do,” he said.

Before joining The Journal, Gilbert reported for the Bristol Herald Courier in Virginia. He won the 2010 Pulitzer for public service for his series on conflicts over natural gas wealth in Southwest Virginia.

Gilbert spoke to my digital journalism students during his visit to Washington and Lee University earlier this week. Thanks to Toni Locy and the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation for bringing him to campus.

Technosociality and The Three Questions

Live Tweeting at the Online News Association Conference in late October brought to mind a story from a talk by Buddhist Monk Ajhan Brahm. He was retelling Tolstoy’s fable, The Three Questions, about a king seeking to avoid failure. The king consulted a wise hermit, searching for answers to questions about when, what, and who is important. After a long ordeal, he learned that the most important time is now, the most important task is to do good, and the most important person is “he with whom you are.”

But it just doesn’t seem that simple when it comes to conferences and live tweeting. Who and what gets your full attention when you’re in the Grand Ballroom with a panel presenter, audio-visual screen content, an audience, your Twitter feed, a new iPad, the conference hashtag, concurrent panel hashtags, WiFi going in and out, and more?

Listing the pros and cons of this experience might help.

Pros:

You might have a richer conference experience if you follow live tweets. The salient points that are tweeted might help you focus on what’s important.

Live tweeting gives you a record of points you tweeted—just like taking notes!

If panelists are following Twitter they might address audience tweets during the presentation.

If you recognize tweeps from regular Twitter chats (like #wjchat), you can later talk to them in person—maybe even have dinner together.

You can introduce yourself to people whose posts you recall seeing on the convention hash tag feeds when you see them in the elevator, or in the coffee line during breaks.

Find people to socialize with when they send out announcements about meetups.

You might decide to follow people based on their wise or funny tweets.

Learn who you might want to avoid based on their mean or snarky remarks.

Find out who’s tweeting from a bar during sessions (this can be good or bad, depending on your perspective).

Move to a more interesting session based on the tweets coming out of its hashtag. Cupcakes and beer with designers and coders, or Google maps? Again, your call.

Cons:

Heads are down, so it's not easy to make eye contact when you're pulling up a chair at a breakfast session table.

Speakers might give a less engaging talk without eye contact from the audience.

Can you really multitask as well as you think you can? What are you missing while you’re typing away? (I must admit I replayed a radio story about a week after I heard it in a session, and didn’t recall one of the sound bites from the first time around. And this was a story about a body farm!)

You might be too exhausted from reading Twitter all day to read a book before turning out the lights.

I invite you to add to the list. And, do you think the hermit would give the king the same advice in our age of Twitter?

Hostage-taking live on Twitter

Was this the Discovery building gunman? The Twitterverse, including some mainstream media, said it was, but...

Twitter is fast becoming the go-to venue for live breaking news. While that means great potential for journalists and the public, it also brings a new set of issues to be grappled with. This is unexplored territory for many legacy newspapers, and a fork in the road for broadcast media—despite their rich history covering events as they unfold. With Twitter, anyone can contribute to the information stream, either on location with a smartphone, or elsewhere, online. That can enhance reporting, but may also complicate it, as the Sept. 1 hostage-taking at the Discovery Communications building in Silver Spring, Maryland, illustrates.

The news broke on Twitter at about 1 p.m., with early tweets from the public referencing cops, guns, and a shootout/hostage situation. Soon a photo appeared on yfrog, a Twitter photo service. It showed someone in a courtyard who appeared to be carrying a rifle, and the caption identified that person as the gunman.

The picture spread quickly, and at least one D.C. news organization retweeted it unconfirmed. MSNBC sought confirmation for the image using social media, and posted it on its photo blog with the headline, Is this a picture of the Discovery gunman today? We don't know.

The blog Gawker also had its doubts: “This supposed photo of ‘the gunman’ is making the rounds, but it's most likely a law enforcement official.” As it turned out, Montgomery County police later confirmed the person in the photo was one of their tactical officers, not the hostage-taker.

While social media messages can benefit us by conveying instant awareness and updates of events, they can also create legal and ethical conundrums in real time. Issues concerning accuracy, privacy, safety, bias, and fairness loom large in the social media sphere.

Digital journalists can confront these issues by taking the time to review their own state laws governing recording and use of audio, video, and still images, and to contemplate ethical guidelines for using social media and reporting live. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press offers resources to help with legal aspects of reporting. The Radio Television Digital News Association provides ethical guidelines for social media along with scenarios for discussion in the newsroom. And the SPJ Code of Ethics gives guidance for journalists in all media. Taking time to address these issues now can enhance responsible journalism in today’s digital media environment.

Ads come to Twitter: Promoted Tweets - Will anyone notice? Will anyone care?

Search for “coffee” on Twitter and the first tweet you see may be this “Promoted Tweet” from Starbucks. It’s a paid ad that pretty much looks like a regular tweet. But, you’ll see two major differences.

First, it appears at the top of only some searches (My “coffee” search produced the Starbucks ad the first time, but I haven’t been able to replicate it after more than ten tries). Second, on the bottom left corner, it says “Promoted by Starbucks Coffee.” And, according to Twitter’s blog, the Promoted Tweet must elicit interaction—or it will go away:

“Promoted Tweets must meet a higher bar—they must resonate with users. That means if users don't interact with a Promoted Tweet to allow us to know that the Promoted Tweet is resonating with them, such as replying to it, favoriting it, or Retweeting it, the Promoted Tweet will disappear.”

Twitter announced its new ad program Tuesday. Starbucks is one of several early adopters of this platform. Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, and Virgin America are other Twitter advertising “partners” (note the language—not called clients).

Pulitzer Prize winner Garcia shares top strategies for investigative reporting

Long-time investigative journalist Manny Garcia says journalism students are getting into the business at the right time, and need to be prepared for the "baseball bat they're inheriting." His ten tips offer guidance to students and a refresher for seasoned journalists.

1. "Operate honestly, transparently, and with integrity.
2. If you’re denied access to information, get it in writing. Ask for the statute that denies access.
3. Understand the laws in the state you work in.
4. Knowledge is power—The more you know, the harder it is for someone to spin you or give you a line of crap.
5. We need to impeach dishonesty.
6. Find the protagonist who’s going to carry your story.
7. If you feel uncomfortable in a situation, let your editor know. Bring someone with you.
8. Make sure your source sees your note pad and understands you’re doing a story, so there are no misgivings.
9. Look for animosities in relationships.
10. If you’re writing a tough story about someone, let them know early."

Garcia, who is now Executive Editor/Director of el Nuevo Herald, spoke to students at Washington and Lee University March 18, 2010. His visit was sponsored by the Donald W. Reynolds foundation.

CNN’s fear of social media harbinger of shift in agenda-setting power of the press?

A top CNN executive told Businessweek Wednesday that he fears competition from social networking sites. The story quotes the cable network’s U.S. president, Jonathan Klein, as saying he views social media as a threat that can pull people away from CNN: “The people you’re friends with on Facebook or the people you follow on Twitter are trusted sources of information. Well, we want to be the most trusted name in news.”

When a major news organization's leader calls attention to competition coming from social networks, it highlights their growing importance and power in the flow of news and information. Today, people around the world send 50 million tweets per day, and more than 400 million people are active Facebook users. These sites have assisted in recent earthquake aid and rescue efforts, helped elect a president, and facilitate discussions on key issues daily.

The power of traditional news media to set the agenda for the public may be shifting in light of this social media environment. By integrating with and contributing to social media, mainstream news will play a critical role in reshaping the next phase of mediated communication.