Soon, you’ll be slinging information like this guy

Brian Murley at Innovation in College Media is trying to put together an informal list of online journalism ideas that could help improve a college paper’s website (or any news site, really).  They’re arranged in descending order of difficulty.

He hasn’t added resources for implementation yet, so I’m electing myself for crowdsourcing and doing it myself. Here are some tools to pull off each of Murley’s ideas (except for Second Life, because whoa). Some of the links here are shamelessly cribbed from Tools for News, and I combined “video” and “video story” since my links overlapped. I don’t have experience with all of these, so please leave your suggestions and experiences with them.

Hyperlinks

• This doesn’t require any special technology, since many content management systems have a button for creating links. If yours doesn’t, just use the HTML tag <a href=”url”>Link text</a>, where “url” is the web address and ‘link text’ is the text you want in the hyperlink.
• But how should a news organization use links? Liberally. Read Jeff Jarvis’s on the power of linking. It’s not about losing readers–it’s about giving them the news they want, whether you produced it or not, and doing what you’re best at.
• ICM’s Lauren Rabaino had a crafty idea for integrating links into articles–having reporters save all the links they use while researching a story, then sending that list to the people who put stories online.

Comments

• Many CMS’s like Wordpress come equipped with comments. If yours doesn’t, get them immediately with something like Disqus.
• Whatever you’re using, moderate your comments as lightly as possible. Sites that reject critical comments quickly lose the trust of their most active readers (the ones who probably had their comments deleted). Also make sure you respond to all comments–there’s nothing sadder than a comment thread ignored by the original poster.
  

Facebook Page

• A Facebook page is an easy way to get your paper some cheap buzz on Facebook newsfeeds or let loyal fans show their affiliation, but I haven’t found another compelling use for a Facebook page. Know one? Comments!
• Still, there’s no reason not to have one. Go to Facebook, click on applications, then Page Manager. From there you can create your page. Make sure to promote it on your site and your print edition, if you have one.
• It’s important to not just make a regular Facebook account for your site. That’ll keep it locked inside a network when you want everyone to be able to see it.

Twitter

• Twitter is the hottest thing in journalism right now, and it’s hard to understand why if you haven’t tried it (and maybe even after that). Essentially, Twitter allows you to get and receive 140 character messages from people on your computer or on your phone.

• But the service really comes into its own when you get off the site and start using a client that connects to Twitter, like Twirhl. Then you can go about your business while Twitter updates stream in, and respond to them without having to return to the Twitter site. Using a desktop client like Twirhl or Twitterific lets you use Twitter much more naturally, in the same way that you would IM or email, liberating you from site refreshing.
• Twitter can also be monitored for breaking news. For example, Benazir Bhutto’s assassination was discussed on Twitter, as are local traffic conditions.
• If you use Twitter, please don’t just use a plug-in to feed posts from your site into your Twitter feed. That’s what RSS is for. Twitter interesting articles from your publication, to be sure, but people come to Twitter for the human touch.
• More advice from journalists for journalists on how to use Twitter. If you’re in college media (or love those who are), here are some college papers on Twitter.

Forums

• This item and the two below it were suggested by photojournalist Joey Baker. Maybe he’ll chime in with more advice, because I don’t have any experience using forums for news. UPDATE: Indeed he did! See his comments on several of the items here.
• If you need to,  though, you have a couple options, installing one using PHP or on Wordpress.
• I think you’re better off just creating a social network on Ning.
  

Facebook Connect

• Facebook Connect allows users to sign in and comment on your blog using their Facebook accounts. To understand its feature, see the Facebook post about it.
• Mashable has a useful post on how to install Facebook Connect on your blog.
• I admit that I don’t have any experience using Facebook Connect–can someone in the comments suggest more resources or ways to use it?
  

“Share This” Links

• These are the buttons next to articles and blog posts that invite you to share the article on a myriad of social media sites or email them friends. I don’t know how much people actually use them, but they can’t hurt.
• On Wordpress, use the ShareThis plug-in.
  

Source Documents

• Source documents can be anything that was used in reporting a story–a press release, a pamplet, or document obtained through open records reqeusts. By putting them online, you earn readers’ trust, let them investigate the story themselves, and maybe let readers find things you missed the first time through.
• Documents that are in plain text, like emails, can just be posted that way. But if you are posting PDFs, you’ll need a way to embed them, like Scribd.
• If your source documents didn’t come electronically, you’ll need to use a scanner. If you’re not sure how, check out this BBC tutorial.
• If you’re hungry for documents of any sort, check out my post about easy Freedom of Information Act requests.

Audio

• With the internet, sound no longer has to be the domain of radio and television. You can record audio, edit it,  and post interviews or podcasts on your site.
• For audio editing, I recommend the free program Audacity.
  

Audio Slideshows

• Soundslides is the program of choice for this, although you can create similar products with much more effort in Flash or Final Cut. You’ll also need to know audio editing and photography to put together a quality one, but Soundslides is generally intuitive.
• For slideshows that are more interested in conveying bullet points than a general feeling, you can use Slideshare.
• If you want inspiration, see the Las Vegas Sun’s slideshows. If you want a plug, see mine on saving classified ads and Washington City Paper.
• Soundslides files require hosting space.  Learn how to get free hosting for them and how to turn them into embeddable files.

Photo Gallery

• Interactive photo galleries come in a variety of forms, but one of the easiest ways to implement one on your site is using this Flickr plug-in. It pulls selected Flickr photos and makes it easy for users to click between them without leaving your site.
• For an example of how this works, see these Georgetown basketball photos.
  

Video Story

• The internet and the availability of free internet hosting means presenting video stories on your site is easy, once you have a camera. For that, I recommend the small, relatively cheap Flip Mino, but you some digital cameras can shoot video too.
• Video editing gets tricky if you don’t have iMovie for free on the Mac. There aren’t many free video editors, but Videospin can do in a pinch.
• Now that you’ve put it together, you need hosting and an embeddable player, you can use old standby Youtube, challenger Vimeo, or a variety of other sites. Youtube videos are likely to get more views because of that site’s higher traffic, but Vimeo features a better (to my mind) embedded player and higher video resolutions.
• For sharp thinking and motivational talk about online video, read Michael Rosenblum’s blog. Rosenblum is a prime mover in the grab-a-camera-and-go school of video journalism, and that’s exactly what you need to be doing to get video on your site.
• Shooting online video is a whole new game in journalism, especially if you’ve never done video before. Get advice from the experts:  some British journalists, USA Today (PDF), the St Louis Post-Dispatch, and the BBC. For more video tutorials than you’ll ever need, check out my “video” tag on Delicious.

Calculator

• A calculator can be used to illustrate the personal effect in a story involving numbers. For example, Barack Obama’s campaign used a calculator to show voters how Obama’s tax plan would affect their taxes, while the Las Vegas Sun created a flight delay calculator (via Mindy McAdams).
• I’m having difficulty finding a calculator solution that doesn’t require some coding knowledge (some help, commenters?). Until then, here’s one you can make in PHP if you know it.
  

Timeline

• An interactive timeline can help readers understand an article with interlinked events. There are several embeddable options, including xTimeline and circaVie.
  

Map

• The easiest map to use maps in journalism, Google Maps, offers ways to create maps both for the tech illiterate and programming wizards. For the former, you can just go into Maps (while signed into your Google account) and make a custom map. From there, just grab the premade embed code and embed it on your site. For an example of this kind of map, see this map plotting a criminal’s spree in one neighborhood.
• If you know Javascript, you can use the Google API to set up something more advanced. Google Maps mash-ups are everywhere–see Yelp and 50 Things to Do With Google Maps Mash-Ups.

Liveblog

• Liveblogging is posting rapid blog posts, often with minutes of one another, commenting and covering an event while it happens. Some liveblogs just use updated posts, but services like CoverItLive create embedded environments where users and creators can interact during the event.
• The kind you want to use it up to you. If it’s an intense event where getting news out quickly is important and where there won’t be enough time to gather readers, you might want to just keep updating a post manually.
• For examples of both ways of liveblogging, see this Georgetown press conference and the GW Patriot’s student government liveblog.
  

Livestream

• Livestreaming streams video and sound instead of text while an event happens. Sites like Qik, Justin.tv, and UStream support streaming from  video and internet-equipped phones.
• Livestreams can also be watched after the event is over, making them an easy way to get video online permanently if you want to avoid the tedium of video editing.
  

Searchable Database

• If you can get a lot of data, you can make a database out of it. The trick is having the coding chops to put it together. To learn how to build a searchable database, you could learn Django or Drupal, two open-source programming languages.
• For some inspiration to hold you through late night coding, see Huffington Post’s Fundrace (Google Maps mash-up with campaign donation data) or some examples at Django Journalism.
  

Interactive Panorama

• I think Murley is talking about stitching together multiple photos so the user can get a 360 degree (or close) view of a place. Here’s Edinburgh Castle, and others.
• To create a panorama, just take regular photos while rotating in one place. Then stitch them together using a photo stitcher, like the freeware Clevr.
• Much of the panorama work on the internet is more from a tourist-sightseeing point of view, and might initially seem hard to apply to journalism. But once you start thinking of possibilities–from inside a large protest, on the court or in the crowd at a raucous basketball game–you can’t stop.

Interactive Game

• This is a tricky one, because it’ll almost definitely require programming skills. To get started with Flash programming, see Kongregate’s tutorials. They only teach you how to create a sidescrolling shooter, but it’s a start.
• For ideas on how games can be used in journalism, there’s this Online Journalism Review interview with the Gotham Gazette, a site that has created several games, including one about planning the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site.
  

Video Comments

• Once you’re used to being calling your work shoddy in text, have them say it to your face with video comments. The application of choice for this (for now) is Seesmic.
• There are Wordpress and Movable Type plug-ins available for Seesmic.
  

Second Life Presentation

• Murley rightly placed this in the most difficult slot, as it requires at worst experience with 3-D graphics coding and at best familiarity with a massive online world. I’m not sure it’s worth thinking about, unless you work on a campus or in a community filled with Second Life obsessives.
• But in case you do need to be in Second Life, check out Tips for Establishing a Presence in Second Life and Learning How to Build in SL.
  

If you insist on going the online game route, why not build an outpost in World of Warcraft instead? Judging from my friends, it’s a far easier place to reach college students. Thanks to Brian for inspiring this post.

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