Life According to Krista

Mar 01

NPR Class

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Joel Sucherman, program director of Argo Network, and Mark Stencel, Managing Editor of Digital News of NPR, came to talk to our Communication 361 class on March 1 about the radio industry and new innovations for media outlets.
  • With iPhones and other music devices coming out, the radio is becoming less and less popular.
  • The audience for digital media is at its peak during work hours.
  • You can listen to the radio online, on your phone and through many other media outlets. People can listen to what they want, when they want it, and do not have to wait and listen to so many commercials. Listening to the radio has become more convenient.
  • Each successful company has different things that make them unique and stand out from their competitors.
  • The iPad is the one place for news media where weekend traffic is higher than weekday traffic and night traffic is higher than morning traffic. This is because the iPad is made for leisure and people generally use it for entertainment.
  • Now that National Public Radio is online, they have to take photos to supplement their content. They also now do videos and animation for their website.
  • Immediacy is an important aspect of the radio and other media.
  • Admit your mistake if you make one in social media.
  • Social media is a very personal medium. Connecting with the audience is a very important thing and this is a great tool to help facilitate that.
  • Media companies make mistakes every day because they are run by people and people are not perfect. Some mistakes can be a violation of trust from their audiences, however, so companies have to be careful to be correct as much as possible. Make sure you know your sources to ensure accuracy.

Joel talked about blogging and other forms of news. Some of his tips and ideas presented include:

  • The web rewards niche. Make your blog about something in specific, rather than generalizing.
  • If people search for specific things, they may come across your website and use it regularly for news.
  • The Argo Mission was intended to strengthen local journalism, build an online audience, develop common technology platform, find models for repeatability and sustainability, and broaden digital skills and interest in multi-platform reporting.
  • Smart aggregation is to follow a certain group of people on Twitter and find your audience.
  • Community is very important in blogging. People can give you their opinions as well as share valuable information to you and your other readers. They can also converse with one another and the curator of the blog, which makes it a more personal experience.

 

Mar 01

Skillset Picture Slideshow

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bColyCYh1XY&feature=youtu.be

This is a slideshow of the Blake Shelton concert that was at the Patriot Center on Saturday.

Feb 28

Workshop 1: Search Engine Optimization

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Aram Zucker-Schraff from the Office of Student Media talked about search engine optimization.

This is the act of getting your articles to the top of Google and other search engines.

Title, description, and keywords are all the most important things for search engine optimization.

The description tag is a summary of what your site/article is about. On WordPress you would use the excerpt box. Make sure you put keywords that people will search in this box. The keywords tab also helps people view your site when searching for specific phrases. Talk about events, locations, products, people, companies, and yourself in these keywords.

Pick niche keywords to get more web traffic. Be specific in your selection of keywords.

Link to and from your website. This helps . Link events to homepages, locations, about, and more. Link related content. This can help increase your web traffic because people who look at the blogs you site may end up looking at your site as well.

If you’re talking about a person, link to their Twitter, Linked-In, or other sites about them. If you are talking about a company link to their product page.

Link with transparency and common sense. Make sure everything you link is related to your blog somehow and use the correct words to link the sites.

PageRank is used by Google to determine relevance of your site to certain terms. The more people that look at your site or link to your site, the higher your page is rated.

“.edu” sites get a higher rank from PageRank.

If someone links to your site, you will get a higher ranking on PageRank. The higher the page rank of the site that links to yours, the higher up you will be on the search engine.

Ask friends to link to specific articles on your site. You can also use Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. to link to your articles and boost your ranking. Do not use sites that say they will help your ranking. List your sites on Googleplus to significantly raise your site search-ability. Google will penalize you for trying to cheat the system.

Google Webmaster tools, Google AdWords, Google Analytics, Website Grader are all important sites to see what search engines think about your website.

Be consistent in tagging your posts.

Feb 28

Mark Briggs to Teach Journalists how to be Successful

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Mark Briggs gives tips to aspiring journalists such as how to make money in the business and how to make yourself known.

His main points focus on making money in the industry. He emphasizes the importance of building readership so advertisers will be more likely to approach you and the viewers will be more likely to go to the ads that are on your site.

One good way to make money through advertisements is by using Google AdSense.

Feb 28

My Visit to the Newseum

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While at the Newseum there were many things that reminded me of our Online Journalism class.

There were six floors, all filled with information from news of all types and times.

I started off on the first floor, where there was a giant piece of the Berlin Wall. It was fascinating to see the west side of the wall versus the east.

 

 

The east wall was extremely clean and unmarked, while the west wall had graffiti on it and was full of  hate towards the government.

After seeing the wall, I went into a screening room that played different clips from the news with a great voiceover that talked about the history of news and reporting. There were many quotes that I found very inspirational in this including:

  • “There is a terrific disadvantage not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily, to an administration, even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn’t write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn’t any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press” -John F. Kennedy
  • “The cost of liberty is less than the price of oppression” -W.E.B. DuBois
  • “Journalism is the first rough draft of history” -Phil Graham

 

I took the elevator up to the sixth floor to see the observation deck.

There were also front pages from many different country’s newspapers and each of the state’s prominent papers. It was really interesting to see the differences between all the papers. I personally liked the 6 column Washington Post format, as I felt it looked clean and easy to navigate through.

One thing I noticed while looking through the papers was that many countries, though English was not their official language, printed their papers in English. For example, the Chinese newspaper writes everything in English.

I went downstairs to see more newspaper clippings and information about the evolution of the press. It was fascinating to see how so many countries do not offer the same freedoms that the United States does for journalists. There was even a giant wall dedicated to the “fallen” journalists who had died because of their jobs.

The September 11 exhibit was one that really stood out to me.

I’m not usually one to cry during movies or TV, however once I watched a compilation video of newscasts on September 11 I was grateful for the tissue box outside the screening room.

It was so emotional and moving seeing each of the journalists’ personal accounts for being on the scene that day.

The Newseum is my new favorite museum in D.C. and I cannot wait for my next trip there.

 

Feb 28

Briggs Journalism Next: Chapter 3

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I already did a post on Mark Briggs’ chapter three of Journalism Next, but I am going to do a quick list of things that are important in this chapter.

In a blog, it is so important to:

  • Gain viewers and a large audience.
  • Keep your blog organized and easy to use so people can navigate throughout with no problems.
  • Be credible. Make sure to establish credibility and keep it. A journalist is only as good as his sources; don’t jeopardize your credibility by using anonymous sources or ones you can’t trust.
  • Establish your blog with a “beat” or certain subject you focus on.
  • Use links to cite sources.

By doing these simple things, you are already working towards being a better journalist.

Feb 23

Briggs Journalism Next: Chapter 6

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Mark Briggs emphasizes the importance of visual aid in blogging in chapter 6 of his Journalism Next book.

Pictures and videos keep the audience captive and interested in the subject matter and can sometimes even help explain what the writer is talking about.

Whether you are using your own photos or copyrighted photos, make sure to site the images and give the photographer proper credit.

Briggs goes on to talk about taking your own shots at events and how to properly use a camera. Look at page 148 for tips on how to make your photos the best they can possibly be. He also gives photo editing tips so you can be creative with your pictures and make them stand out.

He ends by saying,

“Taking good photographs is a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Often, reporters find themselves in the middle of something newsworthy or interesting, so basic photography skills are critical for anyone who considers himself or herself a journalist”

 

Feb 21

Mark Potts’ Visit to Class

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Here are some of the most important tips Mark Potts gave us when visiting our Communication 361 class:

  • In the last year or two, more people have begun to get their news from online instead of from a newspaper.
  • Only unique news products can be successful. You must find a way to separate yourself from the competition.
  • Declining reader interest/irrelevancy. People don’t read the newspaper like they used to, which means declining circulation and ad revenue.
  • Craigslist decimated classified section. Now people aren’t paying newspapers for ads (which was about 50% of their incoming revenue).
  • The bottom line: “the news business as we know it is screwed”
  • The argument that people will miss newspapers is not valid because people are not necessarily still interested in reading a paper; they can find news on their computers at home.
  • “Crappy newspaper executives are a bigger threat to journalism’s future than any changes wrought by the Internet” -John Paton
  • Google, Yahoo and Facebook are muscling out traditional media.
  • Print is still a $25 billion business, however it is continuing to decrease.
  • The future is now. We need to focus on online journalism and what is popular now, so that we can keep up with the competition.
  • Some papers are transitioning to online news by only printing papers certain days of the week or by having an entirely online news site and not printing papers at all anymore.
  • Clay Shirky wrote an interesting article called “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable” about what is happening in the journalism field.
  • There will be more destruction of traditional media in the future. Big print newspapers have about 5 years left.
  • There are a lot of new voices in todays media such as blogs, startups, hyperlocal sites, and niches.
  • One of the main goals for journalism is to have a large audience. It’s easy to gain a wide range of viewers through the internet and reach people from all over the world.
  • There are always new technologies and websites that are coming out. Things will continue to change and grow.
  • News with friends: the merging of personal and public news. This is becoming more prevalent with sites like Facebook and Twitter.
  • Mobile news is becoming popular. Phones, tablets–the world. Your world in your hand.
  • TV/mobile convergence: keep an eye on the Second Screen. People are using their laptops and televisions simultaneously in order to interact with other audience members.
  • New forms of advertising, such as Groupon, are coming out.
  • We’re in a golden age of journalism. There is more journalism, being committed in more ways, by more people, than ever before.
  • Be a disrupter! Create something new and different that will attract people and revolutionize what is out there.
  • Learn how the news business works.
  • Build what you like and that reflects what you do. Turn your passion into a new innovation.
  • Final thought: go out and invent the future.

 

These were a few of the main tips Potts gave our class for breaking into the news business. He was a very knowledgable and motivating speaker and I hope this blogpost helps share some of his good advice.

Lastly, at the end of class Professor Steve Klein said something that stood out. Create your own job because many of the jobs that are out there right now will probably not be there in the next few years.

 

Feb 21

“Things 90s Kids Recognize”

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I was born in 1990, so I find this article on the 90s very humorous.

Feb 21

Briggs Journalism: Chapter 5

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In chapter five of Mark Briggs’ Journalism Next book, he talks about how cell phones and mobile devices can play a large role in journalism.

Not only can they capture pictures and videos, but mobile devices are able to quickly post the information to different social media outlets and make news.

Journalists can now use different apps from the iPhone, Droid, or other cell phones to post things to different media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and many more.

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