Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Case in point: Yesterday a clueless media relations professional whom I do not know sent me an e-mail with the subject line: “I sent a poem to a wannabee crotchety old bitch.” He was alluding to my recent birthday post, in which I reflected on aging.

The comment this person attempted to append to that post — which I did not approve — was the poem When I am an old woman I shall wear purple. That was in itself a mistake, though not a fatal one. If ever there was an overused, reflexive cliche response to any woman who mentions aging in a positive light, that poem would be it.

So this PR guy e-mailed me to let me know he’d tried to post that comment. Here’s the start of his message, and where he really screwed up…

He wrote:

“Hello Amy. I don’t think I’ll ever get to put the word ‘bitch’ in a corporate email subject line ever again but happy birthday. I hope you like the purple dresses poem that I commented with on your blog. It has stuck fondly in my memory since I was 13 and while I probably won’t wear purple dresses when I’m older, I aspire to that living.

“Anyway, here’s a pitch with some findings further below…”

And he did, indeed, follow that intro with a PR pitch. The real reason he was contacting me was that he wanted me to write up for CNN.com (where I blog about mobile technology) a study that his company recently released.

What can I say, but: Ick! No! Not in a million years!

I bear no personal animosity toward this media relations rep. But his note squicked me so much that I think it’s worth offering as an example for what people should generally not do when reaching out to strangers in order to try to get them to do something for you.

What was wrong with his approach?

• Transparently slimy.I have no problem that he read a post on my personal blog that contained personal information. I wouldn’t have published that post if I hadn’t intended it to be public. However, using my personal disclosures as a basis to try to ingratiate himself, and then launch straight into a PR pitch, lacked finesse and forethought.
• Presumptuous.If he wanted to comment on my personal post — even with that cliche — fine. Other people who I don’t know commented on that birthday post, and I welcomed (and published) those responses. But it was presumptuous for him to assume that leaving a comment on my personal blog post actually created some kind of personal connection between us that might encourage me, more than otherwise, to use his pitch for a CNN.com story.Granted, I have sometimes struck up meaningful personal connections and friendships via blog comments, and sometimes these cross over with professional matters. This is a process that happens organically over time. Trying to engineer that in a single e-mail is a really bad idea.
• Inappropriate/rude. When I saw the word “bitch” in the subject line of an e-mail from a person with a male name whom I don’t know, I nearly deleted it as spam immediately. That’s not the kind of thing a man should ever say to a woman who doesn’t already know him and consider him a friend. Even if she recently used that word in a blog post. And especially if you’re trying to contact her for professional reasons. No matter what you do, that language just won’t look friendly or funny. Gender power dynamics suck, but they do exist. So it’s dumb to act like they don’t, especially when you’re trying to build bridges.

What could he have done instead? If he felt so moved, he could have left his blog comment. Really, that would have been fine. Cliche included.

Then if he wanted to pitch me, he should have sent me a separate e-mail that did not refer to his blog comment, and that did not use language which could easily be mistaken for a gender-based insult. From there, if I recognized his name, I might have noted or asked him about his blog comment. But it was inappropriate for him to draw this connection, since it implied that I should give his pitch special treatment in a professional decision.

There’s a huge fuzzy gray area between the personal and the professional realms, especially online. So I can understand why these missteps happen. Personally I think it’s futile (and fundamentally not credible) to try to separate the personal and professional spheres entirely. It’s better to blend them thoughtfully in a way that suits you. That’s what I’ve been trying to do since I got online way back in the early 90s.

Being ignorant of, or choosing to ignore, the emotionally and socially crucial distinction between personal and professional information (and how they might imply relationships and influence) leads to overstepping that can look invasive or offensive.

In light of this reality, it’s more important than ever for everyone (especially media pros of all kinds) to be aware that there is still a difference between personal and professional, and to use those different kinds of information mindfully in pursuit of your goals.

In my opinion, journalists should be equally mindful of this pitfall when scouring personal posts on blogs or social media in order to find sources to contact, especially regarding breaking news with deeply personal angles like a murder or arrest. If you want to use digital communication tools to build those kind of community connections, do that up front as much as possible.

If a journalist must approach someone they don’t know about a sensitive personal matter in order to cover a story, be very very sensitive to the personal/professional distinction. Don’t use their available personal info to ingratiate yourself by pretending to be their friend, or that you care for personal reasons, and then try to get them to give you the information for your story. That tactic can work, but it’s unethical and slimy. And from a practical standpoint, it can easily backfire in a way that not only thwarts your goals but undermines your personal and professional reputation in a very public, findable way.

I chose not to publish this PR guy’s name or employer because I really don’t want to smear him personally. He made a mistake, and this is a “teachable moment.” We can all move forward from that.

In a recent post to the Wordtracker blog, The Bad, Good And Ugly Advice Given To Journalists On SEO (search engine optimization), U.K. journalist Rachelle Money made some excellent points about how journalists can craft stories in ways that will attract more search engine traffic.

I agree with much of what she said. However, I do disagree with her about the role of a journalist in the editorial process.

Money wrote that some SEO advice offered to journalists seems:

…overwhelmingly concerned with headlines and how to write better ones for the web. I hate to throw a couple of spanners in the works, but I have never, not once, had to write a headline for a newspaper. That’s the job of a sub-editor; they write headlines, they write the sub-headings and the picture captions and the stand-firsts. I have never had to write a title tag either; that’s the job of the online editor, and they are likely to write the links too. So in many ways the advice given to journalists isn’t really for us, it’s for the production department or the online team.

…That may have been generally true a decade or more ago.

But not today…

Today news is being published by all sorts of individuals and organizations — not just from established, well-staffed mainstream media newsrooms. Small news operations — or even individual journalists and bloggers — are publishing a considerable amount of news without a multilayered, multidepartmental structure and process.

Today, many journalist already are writing their own headlines, tags, links, and other microcontent elements. And that makes sense — because when you’re trying to establish relevance in the context of search engines, it really helps to have the person who knows the story best (the reporter) choosing and using appropriate keywords.

I agree with Money that it’s important for journalists to know more about how SEO works — because if people can’t easily find news, it might as well not exist. I just don’t think it’s reasonable to advise journos to avoid learning key SEO skills because other parts of the staff will handle those details. Even if you currently work for a news org that delegates some SEO functions to other staff, you can’t depend that those other staff will remain on the job long term — or that you will, either.

Better to learn how to write search-friendly headlines, links, and leads now than play catch-up on your own later.

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

Huessner interviewed me for this story because I’ve been blogging about it on Contentious.com and on E-Media Tidbits. She chose to include a few highly edited and interpreted quotes from me that I think grossly misrepresent my own views and the character of our conversation.

Yeah, being a journalist, I know that no one is ever completely happy with their quotes. I’ve been misquoted plenty in the past, and normally I just roll with it. But this particular case is an especially teachable moment for my journalist colleagues in mainstream media about understanding and covering the role of social media in today’s media landscape.

Today’s a pretty busy day for me, but I didn’t want to let this go unsaid any longer. So I made a little Seesmic video response to this story. Here I am speaking strictly for myself — not on behalf of any of my clients or colleagues. Yes, I am very emphatic here and somewhat critical. Please understand that my frustration is borne of seeing this particular problem over and over again.

Yesterday I wrote about how the New York Times missed an obvious opportunity for transparency by failing to link to (or publish) source documents released during a court case.

But also, a recent flap in Columbia Journalism Review has got me thinking about transparency. This flap concerns the role of press releases in science journalism. Freelance journalist Christine Russell kicked it off with her Nov. 14 CJR article, Science Reporting by Press Release. There, she wrote:

“A dirty little secret of journalism has always been the degree to which some reporters rely on press releases and public relations offices as sources for stories. But recent newsroom cutbacks and increased pressure to churn out online news have given publicity operations even greater prominence in science coverage.

“‘What is distressing to me is that the number of science reporters and the variety of reporting is going down. What does come out is more and more the direct product of PR shops,’ said Charles Petit, a veteran science reporter and media critic, in an interview. Petit has been running MIT’s online Knight Science Journalism Tracker since 2006. …In some cases the line between news story and press release has become so blurred that reporters are using direct quotes from press releases in their stories without acknowledging the source.

“This week, Petit criticized a Salt Lake Tribune article for doing just that. In an article about skepticism surrounding the discovery of alleged dinosaur tracks in Arizona, the reporter had lifted one scientist’s quote verbatim from a University of Utah press release as if it had come from an interview. ‘This quote is not ID’d as, but is, provided by the press release,’ Petit wrote in his critique. ‘If a reporter doesn’t hear it with his or her own ears, or is merely confirming what somebody else reported first, a better practice is to say so.’” (Note: I added the direct links to the article and release here.)

In other words, Petit is arguing for transparency. He recommends using extra words as the vehicle for transparency (i.e., adding something like “according to a university press release”). That is indeed a useful tactic. But we have more tools than words — we have links…

Petit called for transparency on the basis of professional ethics. That’s one very good reason to be transparent. But there’s also a practical consideration: avoiding embarrassment.

Your audience expects transparency. Furthermore, if they catch you not being transparent, they will “out” you — probably in a very public, findable, documented, linkable, and not-fun way. This will not help your credibility.

So if you’re quoting from anywhere, including a press release, DO cite your source and link back to it. Don’t be lazy about finding the link — almost every press release is published on the web, at least in PDF format. But if you really can’t find it online (or if it’s presented in a stupid way that’s not linkable, like Flash or a Javascript-driven pop-up window), then post the release on your own site or blog and link to that. I’m virtually certain you won’t get into copyright trouble for that with a release. But if you are quoting from copyrighted material (like a white paper or report), then post an excerpt and provide specific citation info.

WHY DON’T MORE NEWS ORGS LINK TO PRESS RELEASES?

…I know that many talented, ethical journalists in the mainstream media do lift quotes and info from press releases without citing the release specifically. Usually, the closest that they come is saying: “According to company X” when citing facts. Almost never do I see a link from a mainstream news org to a press release.

There are many possible explanations for this — from journalists not wanting to take a moment to look up links, to news orgs using content management systems which make it hard or impossible to create links from within stories, to editors discouraging press release references for “style” reasons.

But I suspect that a core reason for this mild obfuscation is about appearances: Though they rarely admit it, news orgs and journalists dislike revealing how much of the everyday practice of journalism simply is not rocket science. Today, anyone with a computer can quickly acquire most of the source information which journalists rely upon.

And Russell’s correct that newsroom cutbacks only make it more tempting and practical to lift from press releases. Not just because of lack of time — but for a need to bolster the appearance of their own importance.

DON’T TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR OTHERS’ STATEMENTS

In fact, citing and linking to press releases isn’t just more transparent; it’s also safer. Not all press releases are created equal. Some are high-quality, well-sourced, and responsible — and they’re frank about their own spin, agenda, or interests. Others are, um, not.

When you lift quotes or info from press releases or other sources without attribution, you’re implicitly vouching for the accuracy and authenticity of those statements. In effect, you’re saying “This is what this person said,” or “This statement of fact or context is correct” — even though that information is actually secondhand. That’s not always a wise bet. Everyone messes up sometime. Just ask Judy Miller.

I was tipped off to the CJR flap over press releases by my colleague Earle Holland, a public information officer at Ohio State University who penned a sharp rebuttal to Russell’s salvo. CJR ran it on Nov. 19: Press Release by Science Reporting. Holland wrote:

“As to the quotes I’ve included in the [research-related] press releases I’ve done, they’re all direct statements by the sources, approved by the sources, and aren’t vetted by anyone else. No administrator okays them, nor do PR gurus spin them in any direction. …Also, in most cases, the research in question is work I’ve followed for years, giving me the same kind of knowledge advantage that a beat reporter has over a general assignment reporter in the newsroom. Does anyone really believe that a reporter’s blind call from even the most prestigious news media will yield the kind of information that comes from a reporting relationship that’s grown over years? I don’t think so. The last decade or so has seen top science PIOs shift their prime goal from coverage to credibility, since they know that the former depends on the latter.”

I’d argue that conscientious PR is in fact a valuable kind of news reporting. It’s not traditional objective journalism, but that doesn’t make it worthless. However, all PR should be presented as what it is: information (probably promotional) from an involved party.

When an organization publishes a press release on their own site, they’re being honest about that context, and they’re taking responsibility for their own statements. When a news org fails to attribute or link to that same press release, they’re misrepresenting context and assuming responsibility for the quality of another party’s information.

Personally, I’d rather not gamble on whose PR is high-quality. That can vary considerably by organization, PR person, time, and topic. If I don’t have time to or cannot contact the source directly, I’m all for passing the buck by linking back to the release. I’d rather be faulted for not confirming quotes directly than for glibly passing them along, implying I’d gathered or confirmed them independently.

…For that matter, this caution also applies to repeating quotes or other information from traditional news stories. Don’t blindly assume that the reporter got the quote or facts right. Instead, say: On [DATE] the Podunk Tribune quoted Joe Schmoe as saying… and link to the article.

Anyway, that’s my take on this issue. What’s yours? Please comment below.

Public documents are the crux of this corruption story — specifically, “e-mails and internal documents from Johnson & Johnson made public in a court filing.”

The article included lots of detailed background on this complex case. However, it failed to supply or link to the source documents — or even cite the case (court, case name, docket number) in a way that would allow interested people to find the documents on their own.

I see this a lot, and it confounds me. Here, the New York Times evidently believes its readers are savvy enough to understand the risks of commercial interests undermining scientific research and — in this case — possibly putting kids’ physical and mental health at risk.

…But they expect me to just take their word about what those documents said? They don’t think I’d care to see the original context in which the statements they quoted were made? They don’t even think I might want to be able to look up the documents, or follow the case?

Obviously, the New York Times has these documents. Also, these documents are public information — so you don’t have to worry about breaking copyright or confidentiality. So why didn’t the Times simply present them?…

Assuming these documents are available online, the Times could have linked to them, either from the story or in a sidebar. If not, they could scan the most relevant ones and post them as downloadable PDFs. Or at the very least, they could cite the court case well enough to facilitate independent follow-up.

But no. The article doesn’t even say which court is hearing this case.

Well, screw that!

If you’re interested in this case (which involves Johnson & Johnson, Massachusetts General Hospital, the famed child psychiatrist Joseph Biederman and the controversial antipsychotic drug Risperdal often prescribed for kids diagnosed with bipolar disorder), here are the documents. I got that MS Word file, which contains scans of the released documents, from the blog Pharmalot (run by journalist Ed Silverman).

Took me five seconds in Google to find that. Still, why did the NY Times make me turn elsewhere?

Unfortunately, those docs don’t indicate the court case information in any way that’s easily evident to a layperson like me. So I Googled around and quickly found the class action suit. The complaint document for the suit indicates the case was filed in the US District Court of NJ as two civil actions: 3:06-cv-03044-FLW-JJH, and 3:07-cv-02224-FLW-JJH.

WHY BOTHER?

Is this more detail than most people would want? Probably. But providing that information and making those links inobtrusively demonstrates a willingness not just to inform, but to empower.

Providing options for action is a service. It demonstrates awareness and respect for the agency of readers, many of whom aren’t nearly as passive as they once were assumed to be. And it doesn’t have to clutter the story for more casual readers.

It’s the kind of touch that makes an impression. In short: it’s a brand-builder.

Right now, mainstream news organizations are losing their audiences. Little touches like this can make a news brand stand out and earn continued respect based on today’s criteria. So if you already have source information, why not share it?

Again, it confounds me why I don’t see more mainstream news orgs routinely requiring source links. This should not be optional.

I’d have noted my consternation directly to the NY Times but — surprise — they don’t allow comments on their site. I have e-mailed Harris via the Times site to request his input. Hopefully he’ll respond in a comment here or via e-mail.

This series is a work in process. I’m counting on Contentious.com readers and others to help me sharpen this discussion so I can present it more formally for the Knight Commission to consider.

So please comment below or e-mail me to share your thoughts and questions. Thanks!

To compensate for our government’s human-unfriendly info systems, some people have developed civic info-filtering backup systems: news organizations, activists, advocacy groups, think tanks, etc.

In my opinion, ordinary Americans have come to rely too heavily on these third parties to function as our “democracy radar.” We’ve largely shifted to their shoulders most responsibility to clue us in when something is brewing in government, tell us how we can exercise influence (if at all), and gauge the results of civic and government action.

Taken together, these backup systems generally have worked well enough — but they also have significant (and occasional dangerous) flaws. They’ve got too many blind spots, too many hidden agendas, insufficient transparency, and too little support for timely, effective citizen participation…

In other words, the patchwork network of backup systems often fail to supply enough civic information to precisely those people who are most likely to be involved or affected by civic issues, in ways that engage them and support participation. Also, often the civic info they offer generally reflects the providers’ own agendas, assumptions, habits, and preferences — about which they may or may not be conscious or transparent.

Yes, having these backup civic info systems is certainly better than relying solely on the government’s own information systems — but too often, not by much. And sometimes they can even be much worse.

JUST GIVE ME THE DATA

The Knight Foundation has been supporting some efforts to make civic and public info more user-friendly and direct, like Adrian Holovaty’s Everyblock project. This is another third-party civic info “backup system” that aims to provide a more direct experience of civic info. They try (and mostly succeed) to improve upon government communications by enhancing relevance and usability. Everyblock empowers users to search and filter civic info as they choose (at least within a geographic context).

…But there’s a big catch to offering this valuable service: Everyblock must cope with the fact that usually getting raw civic info from government and public sources is a huge pain. It requiring considerable tweaking and maintenance to constantly adapt their “screen scraping” processes.

Screen scraping is a painstaking, cumbersome programming technique. A screen scraper program extracts data from the final display output of another program (what gets shown in, say, your web browser). According to Wikipedia: “The key element that distinguishes screen scraping from regular parsing is that the output being scraped was intended for final display to a human user, rather than as input to another program, and is therefore usually neither documented nor structured for convenient parsing.” That means the whole process is inherently pitfall-prone and inefficient.

Blogger and author Jon Udell nailed the underlying problem of data friction inherent in situations where civic media are forced to resort to screen scraping to obtain public information:

“Data friction can be intentional or not. When it’s intentional, you might have to file a FOIA request to get it. But in a lot of cases, it’s unintentional. The data is public, and intended to be widely seen and used, but isn’t readily reusable.

“…Now it’s time to grease the wheels. Here’s one way that can happen. An enlightened city government can decide to publish [its] data in a reusable way. I’ve written extensively about Washington DC’s groundbreaking DCStat program which does exactly that. I can’t wait to see what happens when EveryBlock goes to Washington.

“But city governments shouldn’t have to go out of their way to provide web-facing data services and feeds. Databases should natively support them. That’s the idea behind Astoria (ADO.NET Services), which is discussed in this interview with Pablo Castro. If the NYC Department of Health had that kind of access layer sitting on top of its [restaurant inspection] database, it wouldn’t put EveryBlock’s screen-scraper out of a job — it would just make that [person's] job a whole lot more interesting and effective.”

This all leads back to why I like what the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy is doing: They’re flipping the focus around, to put people’s needs first.

They’re doing this by starting from the question “What kind of information do communities need?” — rather than simply settling for “How can we tweak the badly designed, human-unfriendly entrenched patchwork system of civic information so that it becomes at least slightly less painful or more useful?”

…Well, they’re doing that to a point, anyway. The crucial limitation I see in their approach lies in how the Knight Commission has chosen to define “community.”

(COMING THURSDAY: Part 3, Beyond Geography…)

Almost daily, people e-mail me to ask me for advice about their online-media careers. I just got such an inquiry this morning. It started out pretty typically:

“I found your Contentious.com recently. I’m very interested in online writing as a career. Can you tell me something about it? How do you start, etc.”

OK, after I explained that I needed his question to be more specific so I could offer a meaningful answer, he offered a bit more detail: He’s about to graduate with a sociology degree, likes writing, and wants to combine those skills to earn a living. Still an overly generic inquiry — but since it’s a basic question many people have, here’s my honest answer:

Don’t assume in advance that being a writer (in any medium) is your ultimate career goal. Often, media is merely a means to an end — I guess that’s why they call it “media,” since it’s usually “in between” real stuff happening.

In my experience, it’s more useful to pay attention to what’s really going on, what people really want or need, and what you really have to offer, than to assume you already know what you “should” be doing. You can’t really be in business by yourself, since business is about the exchange of value. Who are you going to trade with, and what do they need?

Increasingly, participating in online, conversational, and social media (from blogs and forums to Twitter and Second Life) can help nearly anyone find their niche and their path. Because ultimately, these forms of media are about PEOPLE (especially binding communities) — not technology.

On the practical side, here’s the advice I offered this reader…

1. Find relevant blogs and forums, subscribe to them, and start reading them regularly.
2. Comment frequently on relevant blogs and forums. It’s usually more useful to speak up in public than to converse behind the scenes. You learn more about communities that way, and you make yourself more visible and findable.
3. After you’ve gained experience with and built connections with the communities you want to reach — and once you’ve learned what’s already available to them — THEN figure out what kind of unique value you can add and what kind of business or project might support it. That may be an ad-supported, subscription-based, or grant-funded project; or working for a mainstream media organization or other company; or a consulting business; or publishing a book (or e-book); or selling a product; or an academic or research career; or something entirely different.

In other words, starting with the assumption that you already know what kind of work you should be doing puts the cart before the horse. It also deprives you of options, since you’ll probably only copy what kinds of work other people are doing than focusing on yoru communities and their needs. There is no business without a market, and markets are about people. So start by connecting with people, and grow from there.

Make sense? Agree or disagree? Please comment below.

Recently, my Poynter colleague Roy Peter Clark caused a stir with his article Your Duty To Read the Paper. There, he wrote:

“I pose this challenge to you: It is your duty as a journalist and a citizen to read the newspaper — emphasis on paper, not pixels.

“…And here’s why: There is one overriding question about the future of journalism that no one can yet answer: How will we pay for it? …Until we create some new business models in support of the journalism profession, we’ve got to support what we have.

“…I have no proof, but a strong feeling, that even journalists, especially young ones working at newspapers, don’t read the paper. That feels wrong to me — and self-defeating. So join me, even you young whipper-snappers. Read the paper. Hold it in your hand. Take it to the john. Just read it.”

Oh yeah, that piece drew a lot of criticism. It’s also generated useful discussion, in the 83 (and counting) comments to that post and elsewhere.

This may surprise my regular readers, but I don’t think Clark is entirely wrong. Part of what he’s saying is that if you’re in the media business, eating your own dog food is crucial context. I’d add that you should not just eat one flavor, but the whole damn menu.

Here’s my take: If you work for a media organization that publishes a print product, you should indeed read the print edition regularly. You should also read the online edition regularly — including the comments and forums (if any), and explore the multimedia and interactive offerings.

But don’t stop there…

Subscribe to your company’s podcasts, vidcasts, and feeds. (If you don’t yet have an MP3 player or use a feed reader, get one and start now.) Check out the mobile offerings — not just the mobile version of your company’s site, but also mobile services (including SMS alerts) and tools for posting content from camera phones like photos, video, or audio. Participate in public conversations hosted by your employer by making public comments on its stories, blogs, and forums.

Do these things even if — perhaps especially if — certain aspects of your operations aren’t making much money yet.

Here’s why: If your online operations aren’t making much money, and if you want your company to stay in business so you can keep your paycheck, then it’s YOUR BUSINESS (not a moral imperative, just smart business) to figure out what your company is missing or doing wrong. Then offer constructive solutions or new options to try, backed up with first-hand experience about your range of current offerings.

In any field, but especially media, it’s important to have some skin in the game. Normally people say that to refer to making a personal financial investment in your company (from buying shares to buying and using products. But we’re also in an attention economy, so we all “invest” in media ventures by deciding where we put our attention.

I would challenge Clark on this point: Most journalists already know how to read a newspaper. They already have that context, they know how that works and what to expect. If you have limited time AND limited experience with your company’s full range of offerings, it’s probably more useful to invest your attention in gaining new experience. So don’t make a special effort to read the print paper. Instead, invest in learning something new about what your company offers.

The fact is, I know many media pros who still don’t use a feed reader, subscribe and listen to podcasts, or use mobile content and services. Also, many journalists simply don’t bother to explore interactive or database-centric features, participate in public conversations via comments or forums, use social media or online collaborative tools like wikis, or even check out how their content is getting picked up and positioned by Google, Yahoo, and Technorati. The sad part is, some of these media pros actually seem proud of their limited online experience and interest; or they believe that mere theoretical knowledge about online options will suffice.

There is damn little chance that any news orgs’ online or mobile operations will start making serious money until most of the staff has a rich, ongoing, first-hand experience of everything on offer. That, I think, will provide the culture shift that can steer the business safely into the future.

So put some skin in the game. Really. You, personally. Step outside your media comfort zone, and go where your market is going. (Not where they are today, but where they’re heading — which includes spending more time with 20-somethings, teens, and tweens and actually learning from them.)

Also, learn from media ventures that are already making money online — especially niche content operations. There are profitable lessons and models that can apply, and journalists and ad sales staff alike should learn them.

Clark isn’t entirely wrong: Having skin in the game really does count, and it is a crucial job skill for media pros. His specific advice for practicing that skill is maybe only 90% wrong. (And I say that with all due respect, Roy; I really like your work.)

(NOTE: I’m cross-posting this from Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits, since I thought Contentious readers might find it interesting as well.)

Today I received an intriguing query from my colleague Dave Poulson, associate director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University. With his permission, I’m excerpting and answering it here.

Poulson wrote: “…I’m going to take your concept of coming up with a toolkit of basic online stuff a reporter should know and turn it into some class assignments. I’ll have them pick a beat and set up Google Reader to [subscribe to] relevant feeds. I’m not sure how I’ll evaluate the result.”

That’s a great idea, Dave! Make sure they practice subscribing to search feeds (about topics), as well as feeds from specific sources (like blogs). And here’s a short video tutorial on Google Reader I made for one of my clients. The first half of it is the bare basics, most applicable to what your students would be doing.

To evaluate this assignment, you could have student export their feed list as an OPML file and send it to you. In Google Reader, that’s under “manage subscriptions,” then “import/export” (choose the “export” option there.) You can then import that OPML file into your Google Reader (or many other feed readers) to see what they’ve subscribed to.

Poulson continues…

“Maybe the assignment will be simply to list the feeds and produce three story ideas that came from them. I already have an assignment where they must join and monitor a [discussion forum] for a week and produce three story ideas and a posting that they made to the [forum].”

That’s also a great idea. Of course, focusing on a single post doesn’t capture the core value of conversational media. Maybe in addition to asking students for story ideas, you could ask them to summarize the value of one or more discussion threads, or the culture of that forum, and to explain what they learned by participating actively. This would include links to a few posts they’ve made, not just one. Ask them to initiate threads as well as respond to threads. Get them to consider the nature of an ongoing conversation, not just treat posting as a writing assignment.

Poulson also asked for assignment ideas related to commenting on blogs. I’d recommend combining this with the Google Reader assignment — making an effort to comment on blogs they’re subscribed to. Ask them to actually read comment threads, not just blog posts. On the environment beat, Treehugger and Inhabitat often feature very lively and thoughtful discussion in the comments.

Furthermore, learning to track online conversations is very useful for journalists. You can ask students to use the dead-easy tool Co.mments to track the blog comments they make, and the responses they get. They can subscribe to their own Co.mments feed in Google Reader to easily see when their comment has received a response. (Here’s my own co.mments feed, as an example.) They can also give the instructor their Co.mments feed so the instructor can easily watch for activity.

Again, making a lone comment really doesn’t give you a sense of participating in a public conversation. I’d expect at least 5-10, personally. Probably making at least three to the same blog (even in the same thread, if it’s a lively thread).

Dave wrote, “I could have them write a wiki entry for any wiki, including ours. Is that relevant to journalism? We’re running a wiki, but I would never let a student cite a wiki as a source in a news story. I would allow them to use a wiki as a way to find links to original source material that they used in a story. Maybe that’s the assignment.”

I think you answered your own question there, Dave. However, I do think that learning how to contribute to a wiki — and use ancillary information like discussion or revision histories of specific wiki pages can impart journalistically useful context. Maybe even let them play with WikiScanner, see if they turn up any intriguing conflicts of interest.

…Those are my ideas for Dave Poulson. Do you have suggestions for him? Please comment below. And thanks for starting this discussion, Dave.