The discussion about journalism’s future so often focuses on Big Changes — Kill the print edition! Flips for everyone! Reinvent business models NOW! — that it’s easy to forget how simple innovation can be.
Sometimes all you need is a few Tweets, a bunch of links, and some like-minded pioneers.
That’s how a quiet revolution began in Washington state Wednesday. Four journalists spontaneously launched one of the first experiments in collaborative (or networked) link journalism to cover a major local story.
But it gets better. Those four journalists weren’t in the same newsroom. In fact, they all work for different media companies. And here’s the best part: Some of them have never even met in person.
“The whole thing came together on Twitter yesterday morning,” Elaine Helm, new media editor at the Herald in Everett, said in an email Thursday.
The story was crazy rain in western Washington: evacuations, flooded and closed highways, avalanches, a breached levee, the whole deal. Elaine (@ehelm on Twitter), put a call out for local Twitterers to adopt a common hashtag for flooding coverage. Paul Balcerak (@paulbalcerak), assistant editor of dynamic media for Sound Publishing, suggested #waflood, which they agreed on and posted for their Twitter followers to see.
As Paul described it in an email, Brianne Pruitt (@briannepruitt, Wenatchee World web editor) and Angela Dice (@adice, Kitsap Sun web editor) picked up on the hashtag, “and it snowballed.”
That would have been innovation enough, but Paul went a step further: He saved links to flood coverage through Publish2, tagging each with “waflood,” and posted on Twitter that he was doing so. Soon Elaine, Angela, and Brianne were also adding links to Publish2 with a “waflood” tag.
They then put Publish2 widgets on their news organizations’ sites that displayed the links they were collaboratively gathering, greatly expanding their sites’ coverage of the flooding.
Here’s the Herald’s link roundup (which is also linked on the Herald’s homepage);
Kitsap Sun’s (inset in a story at left, linked on the homepage at right, and on this full page of links);
Wenatchee World’s (see inset box at left);
and the one at Sound Publishing’s pnwlocalnews.com (see “Washington state flooding” at the bottom).
Voila — instant collaborative link newswire!
The collaborative spirit of journalism’s future
This collaboration is remarkable in all kinds of ways.
First, you can tell by the Twitter timestamps how quickly everything came together. Second, with a link newswire fed by multiple news organizations, there’s a danger that everyone might add only their own stories to the mix. But this group added outside sources as well (including the News Tribune, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Seattle Times, Yakima Herald-Republic, the Daily Record, and more). Third, all four independently and instantly “got” what the others were doing, which shows how much the ideas of collaboration and link journalism (and even the term itself) have spread.
Lastly, did I mention the four journalists work for different media companies? The Herald is owned by the Washington Post Co., Kitsap Sun by Scripps, Sound Publishing by Black Press (of Victoria, B.C.), and Wenatchee World is independent/family-owned. Paul hasn’t met Angela or Brianne in person, and has met Elaine briefly once. Yet none of that was an obstacle.
I asked Angela in an email whether she knew the others in non-Twitter life. Here’s her wonderful answer:
I used to work with Elaine at the Sun and talk to her regularly, and she’s one of the reasons I joined Twitter. While I’d never done any project with Brianne before, she had made it a point to visit other papers around the region and introduce herself when she became the Wenatchee World web editor, which is how I started following her on Twitter. I met Seth Long [Sound Publishing's new media director] on Twitter, which is how I met Paul, neither of whom I’ve met in person. They both, however, work with a former co-worker and friend of mine. It’s a small, small online journalism world in Western Washington.
How refreshing is that? Forget walled gardens — this is the spirit of journalism’s future.
In some ways the networked linking process is an extension of how newsrooms collaborate with traditional wire services, but I think the Washington project is more than that. Papers using a traditional wire service aren’t really collaborating. They’re primarily trying to a) extend the reach of their stories, and b) get access to material they can’t afford to produce on their own.
The dynamic on display Wednesday, and the relationships Angela described in the quote above that allowed for this collaboration, seem more organic — a mental leap forward. They even emphasized the collaboration in the widget descriptions: Kitsap Sun’s says “Stories are chosen by news reporters and editors from Washington news organizations,” while the Herald’s says “Below are news stories that journalists around the state have selected to post using a service called Publish2.”
I asked Seth Long (@greenergrad) about a similar project he and Angela had worked on in December to round up links to snowstorm coverage. (For future Wikipedia articles on link journalism: To my knowledge, theirs was the first example of networked link journalism across media companies.)
He noted that “Her newspaper is a direct competitor with a group of our community weeklies.” In the old world, that would have made collaboration a non-starter. But today readers rightly come first. As Seth said, “My perspective is that our job is to serve our communities as best we can.”
Innovation that’s easy, popular, and cheap
The Washington link projects should serve as models for the entire news industry. They show that collaborative linking draws readers, is easy, and costs nothing more than time (and not even much of that).
Seth said the December snowstorm link roundup was on the homepage for three or four days — but it was the site’s most-trafficked story for the entire month. (This tracks with Knoxnews.com’s success with a popular football link roundup.)
Angela described some of the other benefits of collaborative linking:
I think it’s especially useful in situations like these, where events affect a large region. I can also see it being used as a way to track things like state government news, or any broad-reaching issue that your readers will be talking about.
Having a group of people adding the links just makes your job that much easier. As both a reader and a web editor, I can keep updated on what’s happening on a particular topic without opening and slogging through a dozen web sites.
This is the power of collaborative news networks. By forming a network, newsrooms can discover not just a greater volume of news, but a greater volume of relevant, high-quality news than one person, one newsroom, or one wire service could alone.
Compare the Washington group’s great waflood link roundup to a Google News search for “Washington flood” — I know which one I’d rather have as a resource if I lived in that area.
Doing this isn’t complicated. In an email, Brianne described the extent of her planning: “I follow the others on Twitter, and they had started a hashtag, #waflood, and then mentioned using the same tag for publish2 links.”
That’s it! Any group of news organizations can do this, even if they’re not Twitter-friends.
A good way to start is to set up a Publish2 newsgroup and invite other journalists (as Angela did with a Northwest News newsgroup in December). Collaboratively save links about a couple of non-breaking-news subjects to get a feel for it, and try publishing feeds of those links. Then when a big story breaks, it’s a simple matter of choosing a common tag and alerting everyone in the newsgroup.
Don’t get hung up on worries about sinking a lot of time or money into this. As Angela said, “There’s a perception that with some tools, it’s a lot of extra work, but — I’m specifically talking about the Publish2 model — when you realize how little time it really takes to bookmark a page you’re already reading, it’s a wonder you weren’t doing it before.”
As for money, when the technology is free all you need to invest in is smart journalists. Here’s what Paul had to say Wednesday:
I think it’s worth pointing out that everything we did today cost us $0.
That, too, is the spirit of journalism’s future. I can’t wait to see what this innovative crew cooks up next in that spirit — and who will be the first to follow their lead.
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19 responses so far ↓
1 David Poulson // Jan 9, 2009 at 10:38 am
Great analysis here. I would like to hear from readers who benefitted from this collaboration. Did they realize what was going on? Did they think they were getting an incredible value in news coverage?
And did other journalists use it for story ideas and to plan coverage?
2 The Outsiders: New voices empowered to act « Jason Kristufek’s We Media blog // Jan 10, 2009 at 7:16 pm
[...] example of that happened recently with a major local weather event in Washington state. Four journalists from different media companies worked together to cover the [...]
3 Markus Merz | Hamburg St. Georg // Feb 12, 2009 at 11:06 am
Great article. I would love to organize something like this for a local network here in Hamburg, Germany.
What I still have to get is the big difference between sharing and subscribing to tags on delicious.com and the potential of the publish2 workflow.
Btw: I would love if other microblogging services like identi.ca/Laconica (OpenSource twitter clone) or FriendFeed are added. Esp. FriendFeed is a great tool for collaboration.
4 A Modest Proposal for the Seattle Times « ReJurno // Feb 24, 2009 at 12:05 am
[...] This network does one more thing: it enables jurnos to share trusted information with each other. If it’s a smart network, then it can alert jurnos to similar issues cropping up in several communities, and help them work together on reporting an issue, as well as coordinate developments with jurnos in topic-based communities. This approach is already developing in a nascent form with Publish2. [...]
5 How four journalists and Publish2 redefined the rules of collaboration. But could it work in London? | Dan Mason // Mar 10, 2009 at 12:54 pm
[...] a blow-by-blow account of the day on the Publish2 blog, in which Josh Korr comments: “This is the power of collaborative news networks. By forming a [...]
6 Collaboration can’t cure #swineflu, but it can fight filter failure - Publishing 2.0 // Apr 29, 2009 at 9:41 am
[...] In the Pacific Northwest, #wanews has you covered. This group of reporters and editors in and around Washington State first came together to use Publish2 to aggregate news and information when flooding hit the area ear…. [...]
7 Chuck Peters // Jan 11, 2009 at 8:38 am
Jason -
Thanks for continuing to pursue, and promote, the BarCamp. I agree with your assessment of closed/open on the national and industry levels, as well as your call to action and the call for individual courage to act with a new mindset and actually perform new tasks in the first instance to create the base of the new information web.
To bring this back to the local level, I was invited, and participated in a community planning process yesterday. All were invited, but only 250 wanted to show up and spend 8 hours in the Crowne Plaza yesterday. We had the requisite flip charts and sticky notes. I wanted outside input. The facilitators and all in my small group knew nothing of Twitter. So I tweeted “What would give you hope for future of Cedar Rapids” and asked that #crhope be used as the hash tag. The responses were great http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23crhope and one response by @hidama, too long for Twitter, was used repeatedly in our discussions http://is.gd/fd1a
If the organizers had used CoverItLive (www.coveritlive.com) as the organizing engine, we could have had 3 CIL events covering 10 tables each. Each table could have used a Twitter feed to input into a common CIL event, and all the information would have been captured, time stamped and searchable. Instead, we wrote on flip charts, and some poor people transcribed. Much was lost in the translation, as I personally observed.
I think news gathering operations for events are going to go to a combination of CoverItLive and Twitter and Blogs as the most efficient creation of content in the first instance. With CoverItLive (www.coveritlive.com) a trusted reporter can engage up to another 12 trusted observers on Twitter, and with the promotion of the CoverItLive event anyone in the world can weigh in with questions or comments. After the event, the record is preserved in its entirety, with time stamps, so it creates a first recording of history. That record can also be saved as a word file. Any stories written about that event can link back to that original record. Also, any stories should be written in a blog with links to any other assets or information on the internet. So, atomized content is created by creating it that way in the first instance.
Do you think BarCamp will expand on, or develop more details for, how to implement concepts such as this?
Thanks,
Chuck
This comment was originally posted on Jason Kristufek’s We Media blog
8 wemediaguru // Jan 11, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Thanks for the note, Chuck. I do think that BarCamp NewsInnovation will deal with implementing concepts such as this. That is the goal. The tasks you described about the local event is a great example of one formula, especially one where no institutional barriers exists. I agree strongly with changing the way we collect information in the first instance to feed the web. The live aspect, I feel, goes to the heart of great journalism.
This comment was originally posted on Jason Kristufek’s We Media blog
9 Your industry information guide // Jan 28, 2009 at 1:07 am
The concept sounds really interesting. And I am sure, with the involvement of the normal public, it is surely going to hit the bull’s eye.
This comment was originally posted on Jason Kristufek’s We Media blog
10 One weekend, three NewsInnovation barcamps « Jason Kristufek’s We Media blog // Feb 19, 2009 at 5:11 pm
[...] The Outsiders: New voices empowered to act (wemediaguru.com) [...]
This comment was originally posted on Jason Kristufek’s We Media blog
11 Carlos Virgen // Apr 29, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Thanks for the mention but just a small correction – Walla Walla Union-Bulletin. Congrats on the Publish2 gig by the way
This comment was originally posted on Publishing 2.0
12 Seth Long // Apr 30, 2009 at 4:01 pm
We just added our own collaboration page for h1n1 at http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/news/flu/
This comment was originally posted on Publishing 2.0
13 Jon Henshaw // Jun 12, 2009 at 10:09 am
This didn’t seem to get mentioned, but it also benefits the website with search engine exposure. Meaning, it’s good to link out, because it will improve your performance in organic search engine results (SERPs), especially if the links are relevant to the article content.
This comment was originally posted on Publishing 2.0
14 Craig Stoltz // Jun 12, 2009 at 10:11 am
Ryan–
Excellent work. A cogent defense. I now have my go-to bookmark when trying to explain this counterintuitive notion.
On a more hopeful note, yesterday I was talking to a publisher of trade journalism on the web and in newsletters. The publisher “got” link journalism completely and was pushing the cause internally.
He is a business guy, not a journalist.
There is hope.
This comment was originally posted on Publishing 2.0
15 llaurén // Jun 14, 2009 at 2:08 pm
All this may be painfully obvious for the journalist, but i still missed one most central thing: The most important reason to link for me is accountability.
To link to your source is your way as a journalist to say “this is where it came from, i didn’t make this up”. And it a way for whoever person or whichever organization to have the audience’s eyes on them.
You’re not giving away your golden egg and making yourself redundant just because you are naming your sources. If you any good, the people are going to come back to you for more. The source is not the news. The news is what you make of the source. That is your job.
I wonder if anybody reads this.
This comment was originally posted on Publishing 2.0
16 Ryan Sholin // Jun 15, 2009 at 8:47 am
@llaurén – Little of this is painfully obvious to *every* journalist, and that’s why I’m a bit of a crusader for the obvious.
You make an excellent point: Linking to your sources gives readers a trail to track your reporting, and to learn more for themselves.
In the blogosphere, the “via” link to a source essential to credibility — as a matter of transparency, accountability, and attribution.
This comment was originally posted on Publishing 2.0
17 Erik Vlietinck // Jul 6, 2009 at 10:53 am
Every web site should link. That’s not even open to discussion. However, with regards to newspapers and magazines, we should not forget the systems these publishers use to manage the content they publish.
I am now analysing such systems for a couple of years on a regular and recurring basis, and most of these publishing systems (aka editorial workflow) don’t make it easy to link, simply because most of them keep one copy of the same content and push that one copy out to multiple channels –print, web, mobile.
From where I stand, the will and habit to link to other sites is important, but just as important is the system’s support for allowing that. Most mainstream systems still don’t cater for ‘clean’ (stripped from links) copy that goes to the print channel and rich copy that goes to online.
This comment was originally posted on Publishing 2.0
18 PeelaaSqueela // Jul 9, 2009 at 6:39 am
Good article on collaborative journalism http://bit.ly/TRLsQ
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
19 VicThompson // Jul 9, 2009 at 6:45 am
RT: @PeelaaSqueela: Good article on collaborative journalism http://bit.ly/TRLsQ
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
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