This is why I like tools that allow reporters and others to break “story box” by creating real-time collages that combine original reporting and commentary with curated contributions from social media and elsewhere.

The past month, NPR senior strategist Andy Carvin has been doing this via Twitter — first for the Tunisia uprising, and now with the Egyptian revolution. Today Berkman Center research Ethan Zuckerman published an excellent interview with Carvin exploring why he’s been posting an average of 400 tweets daily for the last month, and what others can learn from his efforts.

I summarized some highlights from this interview that might especially interest news professionals over at the Knight Digital Media Center site.

See: How NPR’s Andy Carvin is using Twitter to tell Egypt’s story

See: Three generational gadget trends for news orgs to watch

The trends & implications I saw are:

1. Picture-taking is the most popular non-voice cell activity, even more than texting! So why not do more with community-contributed pictures?
2. Tablets are still a niche market. Right now, there are much bigger mobile fish to fry in terms of potential market size. Consider where your business interest really lie.
3. MP3 players are especially popular with young adults, so consider doing more with podcasts and other audio content.

I discuss the details more over at my article on KDMC.

1 5 2010 Concurrent Meeting of the Oakland Redevelopment Agency City Council 10-01-05 Meeting Agenda

…OK, just viewed this post in Firefox for Mac and the fullscreen function does work here. But on another site I publish on, which is a complex Drupal site, it’s not working.

Have other Scribd users experienced similar display problems when embedding documents on Drupal sites? Got any solutions?

Today Twitter has begin a broad rollout of a new feature, Twitter Lists. The feature had been available only to a select group of beta users, but product manager Nick Kallen tweeted yesterday, “Currently, 25% of all users have Lists.” I don’t have access to Lists yet, but I expect it’s coming soon.

The point of Twitter lists is relevant discovery: It’s an easy way to find and follow Twitter users you might not otherwise know about, but would be interested in. However, you might not be interested in everything (or even most things) a given Twitter user in a list has to say. This is more likely if you’re more interest in topics than people. In this case, Twitter lists might deliver more noise than signal.

But I think if you use a good tool like Tweetdeck for accessing Twitter (rather than just the Twitter site, which has always sucked for usability), you can combine Twitter Lists with filtering to end up with something very useful indeed, especially for staying abreast of news or topics…

As far as I understand it, Twitter Lists are defined groups of Twitter accounts. If you follow a list, you automatically follow all the accounts in that list. Kallen described it this way: “For example, you could create a list of the funniest Twitter accounts of all time, athletes, local businesses, friends, or any compilation that makes sense.”

…Well, that kind of list would be useful in some cases, but in many others I think it may not be what Twitter users or others are looking for. That’s because people don’t have one-track minds.

People who use Twitter most effectively tend to post about a lot of different topics that interest or affect them. Generally, Twitter accounts that only post about one topic tend to be more about publication than conversation, and that gets boring in social media.

For instance, many journalists follow me on Twitter because I have a lot to say about journalism. But I also tweet about my former abode Boulder, and my new town Oakland. And I occasionally mention other topics I love, like zombies, polyamory, my recent experience with knee surgery. Plus I cover live events via Twitter, too.

…Yeah, I tweet a lot. And not everyone who follows me is interested in everything I talk about. That’s fine for some folks, and not for others. And that’s pretty typical.

Someone who’s interested in zombies might decided to create a Twitter List of people who tweet about zombies. Right now, near Halloween, that would probably be a long list indeed. And I’d bet that most of those zombie tweeters would also be tweeting about a lot of other stuff.

So if you’re only interested in tweets about zombies, then the smart thing to do would be:

• Designate a group in Tweetdeck based on the zombie Twitter List (see the problem with this, below)
• Display tweets from that group in a column.
• Use Tweetdeck’s filter function on that column to display only tweets from that group that include “zombie” or “zombies.”

That way, you’d only see relevant tweets from the selected list of Twitter users.

LIST + FILTERING TO THWART TWEETSPAM & HASHTAG HIJACKING

Sticking with this example: If you use my strategy, you’d be viewing zombie tweets only from a selected group of users (and not from anyone who uses that keyword). Thus you’d avoid the growing problem of keyword tweetspam — when spammers post spam tweets that include keywords which anyone would see in a Twitter search. That gets really annoying, especially for trending topics and other popular search terms or hashtags.

In fact, the Twitter user convention of hashtags arose in part as a way to curate the quality of tweets about a topic. Twitter users who use hashtags when discussing topics or events generally tend to be especially dedicated to the topic or community — and often just better (or at least more experienced) at using Twitter.

The problem is, anyone can include a hashtag in a tweet. Which is why spammers start bombarding hashtags that get popular.

Also, hashtags can be “hijacked” by people who wish to disrupt ongoing discussion or coverage of a topic or event. For instance, often hashtags related to healthcare reform or climate change get heavily used by people who oppose action on both those topics. They’ll post rude or otherwise disruptive tweets that include the hashtag in order to make it difficult or unpleasant for people trying to have a civil ongoing discussion.

However, if you’re starting from a defined Twitter List and then filtering by keyword or hashtag, you’d never see spammy or disruptive tweets.

Keeping up with changing lists? I don’t know yet whether additions and deletions made to a Twitter List after you follow that list are automatically reflected in your own Twitter friends list (the people you follow). That kind of updating could be useful to keep up with a shifting array of recommendations or players. However, it could also be abused by spammers or other nefarious characters. I’ll experiment with that and report back later.

PROBLEM: MY BRILLIANT IDEA DOESN’T REALLY WORK YET (EASILY)

Combining Twitter Lists with keyword filtering would be great, IF: Tweetdeck or other sophisticated Twitter tools (Like Seesmic Desktop and Hootsuite) allowed you to automatically import a Twitter List as a group. As far as I can tell, they don’t do that yet.

So this brilliant idea of mine doesn’t really work well yet. Because you’d have to follow a Twitter List and then manually select those Twitter friends to create a Tweetdeck group. And then you’d have to apply your term-based filtering to the column for that group.

I just checked out help files for Tweetdeck, Seesmic Desktop, and HootSuite. So far none of them allow you to import a Twitter List as a group. I’d expect, they’ll add that automatic feature soon (nudge nudge), because Twitter Lists are likely to be popular — and maybe even supported directly via the Twitter API.

In the meantime, keep my filtering strategy in mind. It’ll work — it’s just clunky.

ALSO: If you create Twitter lists: Suggest filtering terms (formatted as a boolean “OR” search query). This will make it easy and fast for your List subscribers to filter for exactly what you intend your list to focus on.

…What do you think of my strategy? Any corrections, suggestions, or updates? Please comment below.

It makes my brain hurt.

This video from EpipheoStudios.com nails exactly why I hate e-mail, and how Google Wave is trying to solve the problems of e-mail.

YouTube – What is Google Wave?.

I don’t know whether Google Wave will actually solve these problems. But dammit, at least they’re trying to tackle the problem. And they have the development power and user base to stand a chance of pulling it off.

A friend has sent me an invite. I haven’t received it yet. But when I do, I’ll give it a try. UPDATE: I just got my Google Wave invitation today! I’ll get a chance to play with it over the weekend. I expect it to be rough. (OK, everyone who’s whining about it: rough is what “alpha testing” is all about!) And hopefully I’ll start to glimpse an end to the e-mail madness.

The apparent crack epidemic sweeping the executive suites of media organizations across the U.S. has claimed another victim.

Mark Cuban loves the news business. Over the years he’s done and said some smart things in media. But on his blog a few days ago, he took a big ol’ nose dive straight into the shallow end of the pool.

In his Aug. 8 post, My Advice to Fox & MySpace on Selling Content – Yes You Can, Cuban exhorted news sites to start blocking access to links to their content coming from aggregators. So, for instance, someone might encounter a Newser summary of a USA Today story — but if USA Today blocked inbound links from Newser, someone who wanted to learn more from the full story would click the link and go nowhere.

Here’s the key point for news orgs to grasp: The audience would NOT view Newser as the problem there. Newser has already provided value with the story summary — and they were trying to provide the audience with even more value through a direct link to the full story.

Instead, the news organization would be spoiling its own reputation by presenting itself as an obstacle. The blocked aggregator link in effect says “We don’t want your attention unless you come to us our way, even though we’re not providing the kind of easy summary through aggregators that obviously meets your needs and attracts your interest.”

To which the audience would more likely respond, “Yeah, screw you too. I’ll take my eyeballs elsewhere, thanks.”

Not exactly good for the news business.

The sad and scary thing about Cuban’s post is that a lot of news execs will probably listen to Cuban right now, and maybe even follow his advice, because they’re scared and he’s playing to their fears, prejudices, and weaknesses. It’ll be sad to watch.

Perhaps the one bright spot in this mess is that it may be technically simple to get around aggregator link blocking…

Matt Nelson commented shortly after Cuban’s post hit the web:

“The day after the news providers start blocking aggregators is the day a browser plugin is published to hide or spoof the referring site. I would bet that the next major release of Firefox and Chrome would then incorporate it by default, with IE avoiding it until the loss of market forced them to relent.”

I’m not a web developer, but I just had a quick chat with a web developer I know. He confirmed that there are multiple technical options to get around blocked links — from browser plugins to proxy servers. This kind of subversion might reduce the significant harm news orgs would be inflicting upon themselves by blocking aggregator links.

But more likely, the more news orgs put obstacles between people and their news, the more likely it is that more open competitors will win out. As commenter Rob Levin noted:

“Why is this any different from free vs. paid radio? There is a fundamental disconnect in trying to make a business out of something where the product is not scarce.”

Michael Wolff, founder of Newser (a popular news aggregator that Cuban singled out for attack) published a pointed retort to Cuban. Wolff made an excellent point about giving today’s audience what they want, rather than trying to force them to surmount various obstacles just to get the kind of news that news organizations think they should want:

“People who go to aggregator sites don’t really click through to the original story. But he misses the profound and game-changing aspect of that fact: They don’t want to read the original story. Habits have changed on the Internet, where information comes faster and from many more sources. Hence, news needs to be short and it needs to be aggregated, which is precisely what brand-specific news sites lack: News from diverse outlets that can be consumed quickly. Here’s the rub: People don’t want news (there’s too much of that), they want aggregation (ie, efficiency and ease), which there isn’t enough of. Oh, yes, and free.”

I don’t agree with Wolff that “people don’t want news” — I think they do, as long as it’s relevant and (increasingly) efficient. That means providing summaries, and being available through aggregators.

As I noted earlier today (see Washington Post: Go Gawker Yourself), news organizations probably have more to gain by creating their own summaries and aggregators than by railing against the people who spotted this opportunity first. Or, if they’re just not up to that challenge, they could actively partner with aggregators, bloggers, and entertaining “newsmockers” like Gawker and The Daily Show to make the relationship more mutually beneficial.

Sigh…  If only staging a mass intervention for this crack epidemic would work. As Molly Ivins wrote in 2006:

“I don’t so much mind that newspapers are dying — it’s watching them commit suicide that pisses me off.”

But at least not everyone’s on the pipe. If you want to see a genuine bright spot, read this Aug. 4 commentary by Reuters president Chris Ahearne: Why I believe in the Link Economy. He wrote:

“I believe in the link economy. Please feel free to link to our stories — it adds value to all producers of content. I believe you should play fair and encourage your readers to read-around to what others are producing if you use it and find it interesting. …Let’s stop whining and start having real conversations across party lines.

“…Our news ecosystem is evolving and learning how it can be open, diverse, inclusive and effective. With all the new tools and capabilities we should be entering a new golden age of journalism — call it journalism 3.0.”

If you like what Ahearne had to say (or if you don’t) be sure to tell him on Twitter.

Later today I’m giving a talk at an entrepreneur’s group about how you can get more benefit out of social media by using hashtags. I’ve found that these can be exceptionally valuable tools to connect with topics and people. They also can help you make yourself (or a topic, organization, or event that matters to you) much easier to find and connect with.

I’ll be fleshing out these ideas in a later blog post. But for now, here are my main points I intend to make — Plus some resources I will to demonstrate…

HASHTAG MONITORING TOOLS

Hashtags are a radar screen to pick up early on trends, emerging issues, events, breaking news, etc. Business intelligence, spotting opportunities, troubleshooting, etc.

Use a Twitter client or service that lets your monitor hashtag. Twitter search, Tweetdeck, Seesmic Desktop, Monitter, Twitterfall (article by Paul Bradshaw), and Twazzup.

Why not just monitor regular search terms, rather than hashtags? Use both, if you like! But search terms tend to be more inconsistently spelled or phrased and thus are more difficult to search for. Still, it can’t hurt. If I’m really into a topic, I’ll usually start my radar screen by monitoring several search strings (hashtags and not) and then hone in on where most of the action is. But when a community forms around a topic, one or more hashtags tend to crop up.

USE HASHTAGS ROUTINELY

Great way to get known as a go-to person on a topic.

Great way also to find smart, interesting, or important people on topic of interest to you. And to encourage serendipity based on your interests.

Popularity rules. Whatever hashtag is popular for a topic, use that. Like ad keywords: Use hashtags that reflect the perspective of the people you want to connect with.

Be specific: Easier to get reputation as the go-to person on a specific topic like #coalash, rather than a general one like #environment. Use both if you’re not well-known yet.

Try using hashtags in a sentence. Less awkward and more intuitive than jamming them all at the end.

If you see a hashtag and don’t know what it means, try looking it up in Tagalus or WTHashtag. If you don’t find it listed, @reply to the people using it and ask them what it’s about.

START HASHTAGS!

This is a great First search Twitter to see if it’s already in use. Don’t overlap current hashtags. Then register via Tagalus to make it easy for others to look it up.

Or tweet: @tagref: [#hashtag] is [definition, link]

More detailed listings: WTHashtag wiki — another good place to register hashtags.

If you have a company or brand that’s short, start & monitor the hashtag for the company name.

LIVE-TWEET EVENTS

Find out the event hashtag in advance, follow it, and use it for all your event tweets (including pre and post). Great way to get followers. They tend to stick around after the event.

Example: I recently called an event hashtag (#futurej) for a Senate subcommittee hearing on the future of journalism. Promoted it by searching for “future of journalism,” told those tweeters about the hashtag, and thanked people who used it. It caught on — About 900 tweets used it.

DELICIOUS TAGS ARE COMPLEMENTARY

For your radar screen, if you monitor a hashtag on Twitter, there’s probably a corresponding tag on Delicious. Use subscriptions function for tags on Delicious to expand your radar screen. My current Delicious tag subscriptions.

Newspaper publishers and advertising managers routinely toss around print and online readership numbers — but sometimes in ways that don’t make sense, and that might even miss opportunities to build revenue, business, and community.

Yesterday Dan Thornton, community marketing manager at Bauer Media, explained why it’s dangerous to compare print figures to Web site statistics.

It all boils down to this…

Thornton points out that in the UK, sales figures for print copies of the Guardian and Observer newspapers typically are multiplied by three to take into account shared readership, based on circulation research. However, online readership statistics generally fail to account for online reading that happens beyond the news organization’s Web site…

“It’s easy to overestimate the online figures in comparison to print products,” he writes. But, “I have to say that I think comparing print and online readerships directly …is equivalent to comparing the number of people who drive cars with the number of people with vowels in their name.”

Thornton suggests that if your newspaper factors shared readership into your print circulation, then to be fair you should also try to estimate how many people encounter your online news without ever logging into your site as a visitor. This includes people who:

• Block cookies
• Use a feed reader or personal home page (like MyYahoo)
• Get news or headlines via social media or news aggregators
• Access mobile or cached versions of your news (which often aren’t estimated adequately)
• Read reposts of news stories elsewhere online

According to Thornton, “There’s a big elephant in the news room. Whoever said that print newspaper readers were guaranteed to only be getting their online news from newspapers?”

Therefore: If you think your online readership (as estimated by direct Web site traffic) only represents only a small percentage of your estimated print circulation — think again. When considering the future of your business, how many people visit your site ultimately may be less relevant than how many people connect with your news content and brand via any online or mobile channel.

I think Thornton has a good point. The catch is recognizing the opportunities inherent in this broader view, and (in the short term) communicating that value effectively to advertisers and other potential partners.

…As a side note, to illustrate how diverse online distribution of your content can build your brand and attract readers, I first heard about Thornton and his post via this OJaggregator tweet, a headline service from fellow Tidbits contributor Paul Bradshaw’s Online Journalism Blog, which republished Thornton’s article. A link from that repost led me to Thornton’s blog, The Way of the Web. I liked what I saw there so much that I’ve subscribed to that blog’s RSS feed and am now following Thornton on Twitter. So he’s now part of my regular fodder for Tidbits, my own blog Contentious, and to pass along to my nearly 3,300 Twitter followers.

Which goes to show how potential ripple effects from distributed online or mobile encounters with your content (even just your headlines) can yield surprising benefits to your brand. Thus, trying to be too controlling about where and how your content appears online can work against you in the big picture.

(NOTE: I originally published this article in Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits.)

Earlier today Nokia’s Charlie Schick posted a thoughtful comment about how Nokia and its current and would-be customers might, through talking openly together, improve the situation in the high-end US phone market. (Also, Nokia director of corporate communications Mark Squires also just left a comment on this theme.)

Here’s my response to the excellent points Charlie raised…

————-
Hi, Charlie

Thanks for commenting. This conversation is getting very interesting, and I’m glad to see that Nokia seems willing to engage in a non-superficial way.

Thanks also for starting to raise these issues on Nokia’s Conversations blog. I posted some thoughts today on why discussing problems publicly is so important.

Despite vast time-zone differences, I think this could be a quite interesting and possibly constructive conversation.

To respond to your points:

1. “PLEASE, let’s together make sure that this isn’t a one-off ‘help Amy’ thing.”

I TOTALLY agree with you on this. My main concern here is that I want US journalists and mobloggers to be able to get ASAP the kind of pro-quality tool that will enable them to do their best work from anywhere, anytime — while staying connected to what’s happening elsewhere.

So far, Nokia’s N-Series tools (especially the N95 and N82) seem to offer the best shot at that. But with mobile tools, service is at least as important as product. If Nokia USA can get its service act together, I think we’d have a winner that ultimately would enhance the quality and diversity of news, information, and perspective available from the US.

Furthermore, until Nokia USA gets its service act together, I personally couldn’t bring myself to commit to owning another N95 — no matter how much I want one. By itself, a great product isn’t enough. So the only way to “help Amy” here is to improve how Nokia USA works, starting with short-term fixes and moving up to more substantive improvements (like widespread local distribution and service in the US).

2. “My comment on ‘intermediaries’ wasn’t to shift the blame. Tut tut. It was saying that your category of problem (service) was a complicated beast.”

I understand that your comment on intermediaries wasn’t intended to shift blame. However, I hope you understand that from the *consumer’s perspective* it could easily appear that way.

Nokia has pulled together a complex network of connections to bring its N Series products to the US market. This involves sales, fulfillment, distribution, support, service, and more. When you look out at that network, you see intermediaries. But consumers see Nokia. As far as we’re concerned, we’re dealing with *your brand*. So we expect Nokia to be accountable for our experience with your products and service.

I understand that building a coherent brand vs. managing necessary intermediaries is a tough balancing act for any consumer products company.

One thing I hope this discussion will do is help consumer’s peek behind the curtain of your brand to understand more about how Nokia really works — and who you work with. The goal of this is to reality-check consumers and Nokia alike so we can focus on getting to market the product-service package consumers really need, in a way that’s lucrative enough for Nokia to keep it up over the long haul.

3. “Wow. This was a great article. It has many aspects and I think it’s pivoting around your krappy experience with the FW update. I think you could make a deeper post in each of these items you list.”

Thanks, I’m glad my efforts are appreciated, because I am putting more energy into this than I expected. I’m surprised how much this matters to me — but if you saw the half-assed tools most journalists have to do their job, and how that hobbles their work, then my passion for this topic might make more sense.

To be clear — the firmware update that bricked my N95 was *only the trigger.* Don’t mistake that for the core problem.

The core problem here is that, through this technical snafu, I realized how woefully deficient Nokia USA’s service is (at this point) for N-Series users. I realized that Nokia USA was forcing consumers to assume an unacceptable level of risk, and I was relieved that by quickly deciding to ditch on the N95 for now I escaped that morass with minimal financial harm (but not without heartbreak)

And yes, if this discussion continues constructively I’m sure I’ll have much more to say on my suggestions for action.

4. “What pains me most is that you CARE and you have to suffer such an experience. But, it’s sad to think of all the people who don’t care that we turned off.”

Yeah, I know, that is a major bummer. Be glad that Nokia has developed a line of products that can instill such passion and also be so very useful to people in a position to do important work (journalists and bloggers).

The tricky thing about instilling passion is that it can quickly turn against you in a harsh way if you frustrate those passionate people. That’s one thing that concerns me here: Nokia has created a situation to engender passion, but Nokia USA has created a situation to engender frustration. Not good. I don’t envy you having to manage that conflict.

The good thing is that transparent, frank, public conversation can act like control rods in a nuclear pile. It provides a vital reality check that can keep expectations from spinning out of control, without leading people to lose hope and passion, and while finding solutions to thorny issues.

5. “It’s obvious that sometimes the firmware updater bricks a phone. Indeed, I hold my breath every time. But, it seems to be improving (it actually saved my son’s N81 user data — finally). And it’s been really popular. BUT, yeah the big BUT, maybe we should have been prepared for any of those rare instances when it BRICKS THE PHONE. Sigh.”

Regarding the firmware update process, you’ve got two big problems as far as the US market is concerned: It’s clunky as hell, and it’s Windows-only. Those are technical barriers that *can* be fixed.
Let your US users know what you’re doing to fix them — and involve us in the process. Offer us safety if we agree to be your beta testers as you improve this process. (Like maybe starting a registered beta program where, if the firmware upgrade bricks your phone, Nokia will overnight a new one to you. Just a thought.)

But in the short term (i.e., immediately) three things Nokia could do to improve the situation and gain US consumer confidence are:

• Post bulletins about what is and is not known about the firmware upgrade problems, and put them in an easily findable place that people can subscribe to by feed and e-mail. For instance, is the problem really due to trying to update non-US phone models with US software, as Nokia’s support reps told Beth Kanter? (Your comment to Beth on that indicates that may not be the reason.) Consumers want clarity on this point. FUD is bad for business.
• Train Nokia support reps ASAP about this issue, so they’re giving consistent information and advice.
• Reduce consumer risk. Update your warranty for US N-Series phones to unconditionally and immediately replace any phones bricked by your update process. No questions asked. I’m sure you can confirm though your servers whether a particular phone attempted or completed a firmware update prior to bricking. Since this is a known problem related to crucial Nokia-provided support, consumers need to know that Nokia is really taking responsibility for it, and not leaving them at risk.

6. “Well, yeah, if you pay a lot for a device, there are certain expectations.”

True. That comes down to understanding and respecting the consumer. No one wants to do business with a company that doesn’t show them respect.

Furthermore, US high-end consumers currently are weighing Nokia’s offerings against the iPhone, and the iPhone currently is winning that contest. Apple offers fast, great service for iPhones. You can buy iPhones or get them serviced/replaced at hundreds of US locations (Apple stores and AT&T wireless stores).

But the iPhone’s problem is functionality: It isn’t yet the best tool for a serious journalist or moblogger. It’s not 3G network compatible (slower data transfer), it’s locked into one US carrier, it doesn’t support an external keyboard, it only begrudgingly has begun to support 3rd-party apps in a negligible way, and it doesn’t have real GPS. Nokia currently has the advantage on all those issues. I’d like to see you use it.

One thing’s for sure — either Apple or Nokia will get the product/service mix right for the high-end US market, sooner or later. It’s just a matter of who will get there first.

High-end phone users are willing to pay a premium price for the right product/service mix. But we expect the very best in return for our money and their passion. Don’t let us down.

7. “As for sales price, distribution channels, etc, let’s see if we can split those discussion up instead of all on one place. Also, for me, at least, those are much bigger issues than I can respond to.”

Then maybe it might be best to start an online community focused on improving Nokia USA — something that addresses the technological, support, service, distribution, and pricing issues for this market as a whole.

I’d hate to see this discussion get too fragmented. (It’s already too fragmented, across various blogs and forums.) In order for all this talk to lead to action, we need coherence. And really, since it’s Nokia’s US high-end business at stake here, it makes sense for Nokia to host that discussion.

Thanks,

- Amy Gahran

Picking up on my post yesterday, Univ. of Florida journalism professor Mindy McAdams challenged me (and her other readers) to translate my quick list of what j-schools should be teaching into a something more testable and measurable that could be translated into a curriculum.

Here’s my first shot at that:

• Content management systems (including blogging tools): First, I’d have the students run a group blog on a topic of their choosing for a year to get comfortable with the content and commenting apects of blogging. (A group blog is likely to get more activity and discussion than individual blogs.) This blog should be based on an expandable, customizable tool like WordPress. Then the students should be taught the basics of information architecture, and from that figure out how to expand or customize their blogs to deliver or integrate new kinds of content or services. This could be as simple as finding and installing WordPress plugins to add features, or integrating content from other places (such as Flickr or del.icio.us). The goal would be to get them to not just understand, but demonstrate that on their own they can envision, research, evaluate, and act upon options to do more with their content online. There’s a lot you can do without getting too geeky. They need to gain the confidence that many options are within their personal grasp — they don’t always need to get permission or beg someone else to do things for them.

There’s a lot more on my list, of course…

• Mobile tools and mobile media strategies. These students all have cell phones anyway. Require them to subscribe to mobile news and information services, and critique the quality of the service and user experience. Also, require them to create whatever kind of content their phones support (photos, video, audio, GPS data, even just SMS to Twitter, etc.) and post or stream it from their cell phones. Include participatory exercises based on SMS or MMS to include students who don’t have data plans on their phones. Free services like NowPublic, Flickr, Qik and CNN’s iReport could be especially helpful and even fun for your exercises.

• Social media. The point here is to help students learn a key tool for engaging communities, while also gaining experience with how influence works and information travels through social media. I suggest starting with whatever social media services most of the students are already using (like Facebook, MySpace, Ning, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Twitter) and explore both the one-to-one and group interaction options through exercises. For groups, it’s probably better to get them involved with existing, active groups on these services — rather than try to start a new group from scratch. Where possible, use both web-based and mobile options for these services. They should learn to use these tools for community outreach, story/issue research, and promotion of their work.

• Economics and business theory/models. Journalism students should be taking courses in the media business that offer the fundamentals of historical, current, and emerging media business models. They should learn what budgets and balance sheets look like, how grant funding and investment works, and how to evaluate the economic environment they’re operating in — including how it’s changing. Get them used to seeing the big picture and looking ahead. Practical skills could include analyzing the economic environment of the local community, spotting emerging trends that could offer journalistic or other media opportunities, and writing a basic business plan to capitalize on those opportunities.

• Business skills. This could involve evaluating and estimating revenue options from grants to investors to advertising to subscriptions to partnerships and more, as well as knowing what steps to take to pursue that funding. Example exercise: Develop a strategy and action plan for increasing online revenues for the campus or local daily paper — including calculation of expenses and revenues, and a timeline for implementation. In addition, they should be aware of what it takes to start and run a business — requirements for taxes, healthcare, getting SMS shortcodes, working with advertisers, etc. No part of the business that supports their journalism should be alien to them.

• Management skills. I’m envisioning this both from an entrepreneurial and organizational perspective. In all exercises, put the students in a decisionmaking role and guide them through learning how to manage time, resources, and people — whether employees, collaborators, or community members. For instance, if a class project is increasing online revenues for the campus paper, divide that mission into sub-tasks, assign someone to manage each part of that project, and require them to make decisions and delegate. Teach them how to use tools like Basecamp to coordinate team efforts. In fact, it might be a good idea to coordinate projects with other j-schools around the country or world, since increasingly in the media business project teams are widely distributed. The point is to encourage them to take charge of the process, not just to pigeonhole themselves as content creators.

• Marketing, advertising, and SEO. In addition to taking a marketing basics class oriented toward media products and services, j-students should learn the basics of search engine optimization — since findability generally translates into traffic, engagement, and revenue for most media ventures. Exercises can include learning to use Wordtracker to optimize headlines, stories, and metadata to increase both traffic and relevance; using Google Analytics to analyze traffic patterns to a news/info site (such as for the campus paper) and suggest strategies to boost traffic and engagement; developing and running Adwords campaigns (with a modest budget) to promote a class project; researching niche ad networks that might help support various types of coverage or beats, etc.

• Community engagement and management. This is perhaps one of the most marketable skills any journalist can have for the next several years or decades. The point is to get them used to creating news as part of a conversation, rather than simply as a one-way product for publication. It’s about promoting constructive public discourse through active engagement. Exercises could include participating in an active community forum; working as a volunteer moderator for an active forum where contentious topics arise; taking and active role in editing and discussing a Wikipedia page of interest; helping to coordinate (not just cover) local events like town hall meetings, conferences, or festivals; participating in or running local meetup groups, etc. These experiences tech how to handle conflict, foster consensus and diversity, produce events, and demonstrate respect and understanding for communities in order to build credibility. In this respect, working through local government, advocacy groups, social service agencies, neighborhood associations, and ethnic or religious groups could be as valuable (maybe more valuable) than working through journalistic or media organizations.

…I realize that my list sounds like a hell of a lot of stuff, but I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface in terms of what today’s journalists really need in order to take advantage of current opportunities, spot emerging opportunities, and take charge of their own destinies (rather than relying on a paternalistic news org to shelter them while they write, write, write).

I realize also that there may be resistance in journalism schools to much of what I propose, for reasons ranging from “we’re not a vocational school,” to IT staff resisting implementing the kinds of tools I’ve mentioned, to the need to integrate curricula more closely with business schools, to the tenured faculty who must teach at least some of these topics not knowing or caring much about them.

I’m not saying this would be easy. But I do think what I’ve outlined, in addition to teaching core journalism skills and values, is what today’s j-students really need to prepare for the kinds of careers they are most likely to have — and the kinds of media they can play a key role in inventing or developing.

Thoughts?

(And thanks, Mindy, for making me think this through more.)