A presentation for the Green Shoots event at the Reynolds Journalism Institute, Oct. 30, 2014.

1. Who’s the audience?
Participatory Journalism class expands
the life cycle of a community’s story
Joy Mayer | @mayerjoy | mayerj@missouri.edu

2. ⋙100th anniversary
of a bizarre high
school mascot
⋙Plenty of coverage
planned. But who’s it
for? And how do we
make it social?

3. ⋙Let the community
know what you’re
working on.
⋙Invite them to
participate — and
to invite others
to participate

4. ⋙Watch for what users
say, and follow up leads.
⋙This one led to a
story we weren’t
planning to write.

5. ⋙Run highlights from
social comments in the
“From Readers” section
⋙Roll these out early,
and tag Facebook
participants when their
comments publish.

6. ⋙Run highlights as
print teases throughout
the week leading up to
the big package

7. Talk concretely about the audience.
⋙Who would most
enjoy the content?
⋙Where do they
already get and share
information?
⋙How could we take
our content to them in
those places and on
those platforms?

8. ⋙Post in Facebook
groups where alums
spend time. Also with
school-related Twitter
accounts.

9. ⋙Make a flier with
coverage highlights.
Take 500 copies to
a home game.
⋙Include a url to track.
How many people
consume full content
based on handout?

10. ⋙Sell an ad on the
back to the school’s
booster club.

11. ⋙Provide Snapchat
coverage from the
game. Reach the
young audience where
they are.

12. ⋙Healthy web analytics
across the package, with
high percentage from
Facebook.
⋙Participation and buy-in
from community
throughout the process.
⋙A truly social life
cycle for this community
story.
⋙The main
crowdsourcing
Facebook post reached
15,000 users.
⋙We made $150
selling an ad based on
customized distribution.
⋙Track url from
handout. More than half
of recipients went to
website.
Then ask: What “worked”?

13. If it works, repeat it. If not, don’t.
But treat it all as an experiment.