Save the Media

A few short-takes of interesting finds around the blogosphere. Hope you find them useful.

Be authentic: Sure, news organizations try to be authoritative, reliable and popular. But Ryan Sholin, director of news innovation at Publish2, writes at Invisible Inkling that authenticity is vital as news organizations try to engage their community in the social media world. He offers five ways to be authentic, including “be human” and “be everywhere.”

Today, he expanded on his authenticity post and explained how to teach it to young journalists during a live chat at P0ynterOnline. Really good, specific suggestions for j-profs or anyone trying to understand how to make social media work in a professional sense.

I like the whole concept of authenticity on the Web because I think it deals with the concern of ethical breaches as journalists engage readers. If you’re authentic — which includes honesty and forthrightness and decency in my mind — you’re not going to have a problem with breaching anything. To me, authenticity would makes it needless to impose cumbersome rules for journalists’ social media use.

A newsroom from scratch: I talk a lot on this blog about what an online-first newsroom might look like, but that talk is about converting an existing newsroom. What if you had the luxury of gutting the place and creating your dream newsroom? That’s just what Martin Langeveld did in his post at Nieman Journalism Lab. He offers some simple tips, such as realize you have a global audience and mention the name of your community on your Web site.  Good read all around.

What would Winnie the Pooh say? Copyblogger has an entertaining and thoughtful post channeling everyone’s favorite honey-loving bear with tips for bloggers. A sample: “You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” Just pretend “Forest” is “Web,” and you’ll have an important example of  the mindset news organizations need to adopt online.  Read the rest of the tips, which are equally charming and useful.

Improving journalism: I always love when bloggers pull together a bunch of resources in one place, so it makes it easy for readers like me. Jeremy Porter at Journalistics has done that, compiling 30 organizations dedicated to  journalism, and commenters suggested additional groups. It’s worth reading and bookmarking for future reference.