Thursday, February 26, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
How to use Twitter as a journalist
Technology is constantly evolving. Web sites pop up and disappear everyday. Occasionally, I'll go over Web sites that you may already know about, but aren't sure what they do or how journalists are using them.
Twitter:
I'm sure you have all heard about Twitter, but journalists are using it in many different ways. Here are three ways to use Twitter.
How it is being used:
A) Some papers just dump their RSS feed (learn about RSS feeds) directly to Twitter. This is the wrong approach. When a media outlet sends their rss feeds to Twitter it overwhelms users with messages. Many followers will get annoyed with the sheer number of messages posted and will likely quit following the feed. Additionally, if they are interested in your RSS feeds, they have probably already subscribed to them. The Twitter feed needs to be unique.
The New York Times and Arizona Daily Star both use the RSS method. The Star feeds in their breaking news RSS feed.(Click on the links to see their Twitter feeds)
A better method for News outlets to utilize Twitter is to allow a few people in the newsroom to have access to the account. They should tweet with an actual voice rather that just posting headlines and links to the story.
As an example, when the Arizona Daily Star got word that porn had been shown on some cable viewers TVs, they posted these tweets. (First tweet appears at the bottom):
What they should have done was tweet with a personal voice and say something like: "We are receiving calls about porn being shown during the Super Bowl. Then attach a link to the story.
This does two things. Because it is clear that it is a real person tweeting it encourages the followers to interact rather than passively follow the Twitter feed. If interaction is encouraged you might get a follower to tell you a detail that you missed and add it to the story. Additionally this method prevents you from over tweeting.
A great example of using developing a Twitter voice is the Phoenix Mars Lander. They tweet as if it were the lander doing the tweeting. It encourages questions from the followers and became one of the best Twitter feeds for 2008. When the lander began to shut down Twitter followers were emotionally upset. (Interesting read about the feed and the person responsible for it)
B) Using Twitter to find sources
Our very own Nate Olivarez-Giles used Twitter to find sources for his story about the plane that landed in the river:
Looks like the Twitter post worked for Nate.
You can also use Web sites like tweetscan.com to search for keywords. When the Super Bowl porn escapade happened, I hopped on tweetscan and searched "porn" and "super bowl." As the night progressed more and more people started talking about it and it was really interesting to see what people were saying on Comcast's Twitter feed and what Comcast was tweeting back.
C) Using Twitter to network and learn
Journalists are following other journalists to discuss new techniques and ideas. An example is Mindy McAdams. People ask her questions about multimedia and equipment. She also poses her own questions to those that follow her.
Those seem to be the main ways in which journalists are using Twitter. Is there something that I missed? Leave a comment.
Twitter:
I'm sure you have all heard about Twitter, but journalists are using it in many different ways. Here are three ways to use Twitter.
How it is being used:
A) Some papers just dump their RSS feed (learn about RSS feeds) directly to Twitter. This is the wrong approach. When a media outlet sends their rss feeds to Twitter it overwhelms users with messages. Many followers will get annoyed with the sheer number of messages posted and will likely quit following the feed. Additionally, if they are interested in your RSS feeds, they have probably already subscribed to them. The Twitter feed needs to be unique.
The New York Times and Arizona Daily Star both use the RSS method. The Star feeds in their breaking news RSS feed.(Click on the links to see their Twitter feeds)
A better method for News outlets to utilize Twitter is to allow a few people in the newsroom to have access to the account. They should tweet with an actual voice rather that just posting headlines and links to the story.
As an example, when the Arizona Daily Star got word that porn had been shown on some cable viewers TVs, they posted these tweets. (First tweet appears at the bottom):
What they should have done was tweet with a personal voice and say something like: "We are receiving calls about porn being shown during the Super Bowl. Then attach a link to the story.
This does two things. Because it is clear that it is a real person tweeting it encourages the followers to interact rather than passively follow the Twitter feed. If interaction is encouraged you might get a follower to tell you a detail that you missed and add it to the story. Additionally this method prevents you from over tweeting.
A great example of using developing a Twitter voice is the Phoenix Mars Lander. They tweet as if it were the lander doing the tweeting. It encourages questions from the followers and became one of the best Twitter feeds for 2008. When the lander began to shut down Twitter followers were emotionally upset. (Interesting read about the feed and the person responsible for it)
B) Using Twitter to find sources
Our very own Nate Olivarez-Giles used Twitter to find sources for his story about the plane that landed in the river:
Looks like the Twitter post worked for Nate.
You can also use Web sites like tweetscan.com to search for keywords. When the Super Bowl porn escapade happened, I hopped on tweetscan and searched "porn" and "super bowl." As the night progressed more and more people started talking about it and it was really interesting to see what people were saying on Comcast's Twitter feed and what Comcast was tweeting back.
C) Using Twitter to network and learn
Journalists are following other journalists to discuss new techniques and ideas. An example is Mindy McAdams. People ask her questions about multimedia and equipment. She also poses her own questions to those that follow her.
Those seem to be the main ways in which journalists are using Twitter. Is there something that I missed? Leave a comment.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Wordle
The Image to the left was created using wordle.net.
It is super easy to use. You can either copy and paste text into the text block or enter a Web site address that has RSS feeds.
I entered the URL for TheEpitaph.com. The words that appear most often are displayed in a larger size.
Clearly this is mostly eye candy for your site, but it does help visualize what words are most popular within the text. Here is an example of how word clouds can be used.
The site allows you to change the colors, fonts, and layouts.
Here is another wordle creation. This time the source was copy and pasted from the the curriculum page on journalism.arizona.edu
Wordle provides the html to put a small image on your site, but you can also take a screen capture if you want a bigger version. To take a screen shot on a Mac, hit: "apple" "shift" and "4" all at the same time. Then drag the cross around the word cloud. It will save the image to your desktop.
If you are running Windows, hit the "print screen," open an image editing application and select "edit" > "paste."
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
MapMaker
*Click a balloon for more information.
Last week I tried out Dipity, a timeline service I hadn't used before. This week I want to show you MapMaker, an awesome mapping application on the web. I have used this service many times and love it. It also happens to be free.
To get started, you need to register for a free account. This will allow you to save your map and add or subtract points later.
MapMaker has a helpful guide to get your started.
Here is how I created my map:
1) Login
2) Move the map and zoom in on Tucson
3) Single click on the area in the map that I want to be a point on the map
4) Name the point
5) Add html to style the information I want to appear (find more info about the html I used and html in general below)
6)Save marker
7) Repeat steps 3-6
Here is the html I used for the balloon that is "Photo 1" Look at the balloon and then compare to the code.
Let me explain what each piece of html does here:
In the above piece of code "50-mile ride" is between bold html tags. You can see the first tag which starts the bold and then the tag with the "/" ends the bold. That is why when you look at the "Photo 1" balloon, only "50-mile ride" is bold. The last html tag you see is a break tag or br tag, which essentially acts has a hard return. It forces the what ever comes next onto a new line.
In this piece of code, we are including the image. In this case it is a photo of me that I uploaded to Flickr. All you would do with this code is copy your image url and paste it in place of my photo. You also need to change the width and height numbers to represent your image. Flickr is great for this because they automatically have image sizing options. You want your images to be no bigger than 250 pixels in either direction and remember to keep it proportional.
The last piece of code is a little blurb about the photo with a link to more information about the Santa Cruz bike path. The a href part is the html tag. You can essentially copy my coding and insert your own URL. The "target ="new"" part of the code tells the browser to open the link in a new window. The words between the ">" and the "" will become the words that are the hyperlink.
To add the map to your Web site, you want to click the button that says "iframe" in MapMaker and copy and paste that html into your page. Here is what the map I created looked like
If you want to learn a little more about basic html and check out a cheat sheet, I recommend W3schools.
I used MapMaker in BorderBeat to highlight the restaurants we wrote about. It is just a little different way to present the data. Check it out here.
Last week I tried out Dipity, a timeline service I hadn't used before. This week I want to show you MapMaker, an awesome mapping application on the web. I have used this service many times and love it. It also happens to be free.
To get started, you need to register for a free account. This will allow you to save your map and add or subtract points later.
MapMaker has a helpful guide to get your started.
Here is how I created my map:
1) Login
2) Move the map and zoom in on Tucson
3) Single click on the area in the map that I want to be a point on the map
4) Name the point
5) Add html to style the information I want to appear (find more info about the html I used and html in general below)
6)Save marker
7) Repeat steps 3-6
Here is the html I used for the balloon that is "Photo 1" Look at the balloon and then compare to the code.
Let me explain what each piece of html does here:
In the above piece of code "50-mile ride" is between bold html tags. You can see the first tag which starts the bold and then the tag with the "/" ends the bold. That is why when you look at the "Photo 1" balloon, only "50-mile ride" is bold. The last html tag you see is a break tag or br tag, which essentially acts has a hard return. It forces the what ever comes next onto a new line.
In this piece of code, we are including the image. In this case it is a photo of me that I uploaded to Flickr. All you would do with this code is copy your image url and paste it in place of my photo. You also need to change the width and height numbers to represent your image. Flickr is great for this because they automatically have image sizing options. You want your images to be no bigger than 250 pixels in either direction and remember to keep it proportional.
The last piece of code is a little blurb about the photo with a link to more information about the Santa Cruz bike path. The a href part is the html tag. You can essentially copy my coding and insert your own URL. The "target ="new"" part of the code tells the browser to open the link in a new window. The words between the ">" and the "" will become the words that are the hyperlink.
To add the map to your Web site, you want to click the button that says "iframe" in MapMaker and copy and paste that html into your page. Here is what the map I created looked like
If you want to learn a little more about basic html and check out a cheat sheet, I recommend W3schools.
I used MapMaker in BorderBeat to highlight the restaurants we wrote about. It is just a little different way to present the data. Check it out here.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Trying out Dipity timeline
Just a quick example of a dipity.com timeline. You can click the images and get more information about the event. You can also change the view as well. It is nice because if you decide to add an event after you posted the timeline to a Web site, it will automatically update it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
