1. INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON
ONLINE JOURNALISM 2013
The best journalism conference in the world.
Really.

2. ENGAGEMENT
 Don’t mistake loyalty for deep engagement. They
are not the same! Just because a user comes back
to your site several times a month, doesn't mean
they're talking to you, about you, spending a lot of
time on site.
 Tell your viewers HOW the they have contributed to
your coverage or social conversation. That
increases their trust in you. It shows you see your
audience as equals and important to the
conversation.
 Thank your viewers for re-tweeting your content.

3. STRENGTHENING JOURNALISM IN AN ERA OF
DIGITAL DISRUPTION
 We must recognize there are fundamental physics going on in
our industry.
 High market share sites separate their Web team’s physical
location, sales team, content, product team, and they have a
separate management structure
 Historical data dictates that a disruptive business (example:
Web) starts outside the core, established business (TV).
 As time goes on, the disruptive business encompasses the
established one
 Online will and is encompassing all other forms of media and
creates new growth, but the established businesses are blind
to that
 Journalism is on the brink of a GROWTH opportunity, but
journalists too often focus on what has been LOST by the
digital revolution.

4. GOOD NEWS!
There IS a path to survival.

5.  Focus our resources and efforts. We must decide what
we want to be the best in the world at, and create that
type of content really, really well.
 Have the rigor to decide what we're going to be good at,
then set up a Web-only team for that content because it
makes the entire journalistic product stronger
 Example: No one is coming to our websites for sports
news. They have ESPN.com for that. So what ARE they
coming for? Focus your efforts there.

6. WE MUST ALSO…
 Find the conversation people are already having
and put your content into that flow.
 Be mindful of trending topics and stack your newscasts
and create Web stories accordingly
 To find that conversation, you must first know what
you are good at/want to be good at so you know
where to look for the conversation.

7. STRATEGIES FOR THE NEW MEDIA
ECOSYSTEM
 How do we attract and audience? The user looks at you to fulfill a job in
their life. Think about what job we are trying to do. Entertain? Inform?
 Focus on searchable, shareable (a la BuzzFeed) content instead of
waiting for people to come to your homepage.
 “Supper hour news” is no more. We have two different cultures:
Broadcast and Web.
 Instead of capturing the living room, we now need to capture the
bedroom (people with tablets in bed!)
 Fail fast, fail cheaply. Create prototypes. There's too much scolding in
this industry. If you try something and it fails, just move on!
 Diversify your sources of revenue = start or purchase new businesses.
 Separate news and Web into two different entities. Separation gives you
the freedom to try new things; separate budgets. Separation is also great
for the newsroom culture because when the Web wins awards for its own
work, it'll get the TV people's attention and admiration. However being
separate doesn't mean being strangers to each other; news still needs to
think about where they’re publishing. Must think “digital first.” You need
someone to work as a "bridge" between the two “worlds.”

8. PROFOUND THOUGHTS FROM ANDY CARVIN
SENIOR STRATEGIST AT NPR/SOCIAL MEDIA MASTER EXTRAORDINAIRE
TRANSCRIPT OF HIS TALK: HTTP://WWW.ANDYCARVIN.COM/?P=1773
 Errors have always been a part of journalism but
corrections are more recent.
 How often do we all post a report without a second
or third source to back it up? Social media now
requires you to work even more rapidly than before.
 Social media makes an obvious target for blame.
Never before have we been able to spread
misinformation so rapidly. It's never been easier to
spread rumors. Before, you'd hear the rumors, but
you could scrutinize them and leave them out of
that story before it went to print/on air. That era is
over. Today everyone has a device in their pocket
that can send information.

9. SO WHAT SHOULD WE IN THE MEDIA DO NOW
THAT THE PUBLIC CAN INFORM EACH OTHER?
 We need to get back to the core of journalism.
Rethink what it means to inform the public. To
create a more informed public means to help
people understand, not telling them what to think.
 For instance, help the public understand what it
means to “confirm” something. The public doesn't
understand journalists’ jargon.
 We can no longer afford to underplay the public's
role in helping tell a story.

10. BRILLIANT IDEA
 Perhaps we can use social media to SLOW the
news cycle, not just to send out rapid breaking
news headlines or asking for pictures from the
public. Journalists can use it to actively address
rumors and challenge them. It should be ok to tell
the public what we do and do not know.
 Use social media as a collaborative newsroom.
 Twitter is 99.999 percent noise. It's journalists’ job
to sort through the .001 percent. We have the ability
to put things in their proper context and more
accurately interpret that noise.

11. RESPONSIVE DESIGN
 Responsive design is a way of making the Web
work. It's not a content strategy.
 Mobile is an idea, not a specific size. It's not a cell
phone or an iPad. It could be huge! We don't know
how people are going to access our content in the
future.
 Ads are complimentary to a website. We need them
to work with us, not against us.
 Thus, more communication between Web teams
and sales teams is needed. With responsive sites,
problems with ads only get worse unless you’re
communicating.

12. WHAT DOES RESPONSIVE DESIGN LOOK
LIKE?
 Responsive design isn't just about ad width. It
includes other parts of the users' experience = what
time of day are they coming to our site? What if we
had a day vs. night version of the site? What about
a user’s location? What about a site that responds
based on stories users have seen/interacted with?
What are our viewers reading or sharing? What are
they talking about/ commenting on? Respond to
those things.
 When a user looks at our site at 5 p.m., what
happens if an important story has already fallen off
the page? The site needs to adapt to what the user
needs to see.

13. MORE ON ADS…
 Keep in mind people on a fast, business Internet
network aren't always the people accessing your
site. Consider users' bandwidth when designing
ads/your site.
 Build tolerant ads - flexible width is better than
heights.
 We should spend more time to make ad concepts
as good as our content - advertising is really our
business.
 There's room for someone to own the advertising
space today, like back in "Mad Men" days when ads
were essentially art. Let’s get creative!

14. THE POST-INDUSTRIAL PRESENT
EMILY BELL - COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, FORMER DIRECTOR
OF DIGITAL CONTENT FOR THE GUARDIAN
 The Industrial Age of journalism is drawing to a
close.
 We're seeing movement away from the packaged
journalist. We had been training journalists for
predictable jobs, but now training needs to focus on
skill sets.
 A deepening of technical skills and specialized
areas will be critical. (Data skills, statistical literacy,
technical literacy/basic knowledge of code, etc.)

15. JOURNALISTS NEED TO…
(ACCORDING TO EMILY BELL)
 Be transparent in how you construct your stories
and arrive at your conclusions. You need to do your
work in public and interact with citizens.
 Be self-organizing and collaborative. Unfortunately,
the competing nature of employers stops
collaborations among journalists with common
interests.
 Become better, faster. Use real-time storytelling.
 Extra tidbit from Bell: The U.S. tends to think news
has to make a profit to be good, but the rest of the
world doesn't see it that way.

16. MOBILE, MOBILE, MOBILE
 Chris Courtney - mobile product manager for
Tribune Company (Chicago Tribune)
 Strategy is never 100% - assume you're doing it wrong.
 Apps are tricks. They’re the last thing you need. You
need to get to your customers as quickly as possible.
 Find your customers and talk to them! Don't build
anything until you know who that customer is!
 "The suits" fear you'll hurt the brand with experiments.
They only want to release something that's perfect.
Then don't use your brand name. Do your research at
Starbucks.
 Go do things that will help people, solve problems.

17. MORE MOBILE
 David Ho - editor of mobile, tablets, and emerging
technology at The Wall Street Journal
 Tips for mobile engagement:
Tip 1: Do not annoy. It is SO easy to make people mad on a
mobile device. Be careful about the thing you think is really,
really cool. It's probably only cool once.
Tip 2: Listen to your readers and respond accordingly.
Tip 3: Make it an experience. News apps need to “sing.” They
need to be as beautiful as the stories they deliver. We need to
make it worth our users' time.
Tip 4: Beware of phrases like "click here." The mouse is
dead! You now have voice recognition and touch screens.
Users who see "click here" on your touch-screen device are
insulted.

18. AND STILL MORE MOBILE
 Joey Marburger - mobile design director at
Washington Post
 SIMPLIFY!!! It's his mantra (and also Apple's).
 You're competing for people's time, so you don't want
anything to be taxing. Let’s create experiences that are worth
people’s time. Speed leads to satisfaction. People remember
if something took a lot of time.
 Good apps in his opinion:
- Summly - simple design, focuses on content
- FourSquare started out very simple and clean and slowly did
progressive enhancements to keep their users happy
- Rise - an alarm clock, cool, simple design. You want to wake
up and be happy. Very gesture-based (you can shake it and it
snoozes)
 User experience: 37 % think mobile sites are difficult to
navigate (which can translate to thousands of people in your
user base. Not a number to be overlooked)
 Responsive Web design is not a mobile strategy.

19. THE END!