1	Be a Wired Journalist A guide to blogging and social media
2	Scary Numbers 11,494 This is the total number* (so far) of layoffs/buyouts throughout the newspaper industry in the United States – This Year. 4 Some newspapers are cutting distribution down to 4 days a week.
3	Getting Wired Learn how to incorporate online tools such as liveblogging and Twittering into your reporting style. Explore blogs and social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and Ning community sites Interact with your readers
4	Get Wired. Get Networked Journalists should be easy to find online. Get on Facebook. Join LinkedIn.com Buy a domain of your name – Store professional bio about yourself and contact info (or blog!) Join WiredJournalists.com (for free!) and learn from other journalists around the world.
5	Got Blog? Free blog sites: Blogger.com – free to use, easy setup and publishing – great starter blog. Wordpress.com – Free to use, easy setup – offers stats. Do I need to know how to code? No! :)
6	Beat Blogging Blog your beat. Talk about stories you’re working on. Solicit tips from your readers Science blogger, Eric Berger, asks his readers what scientific topics they would like him to cover Answer reader questions – Embrace two-way communication! End posts with a question – Encourage comments
7	Live Blogging www.coveritlive.com This is the best live blogging software out there – and it’s FREE. You moderate and preview reader questions before they go live. Post quick polls, video, streaming video, images and audio right in the chat Liveblog a political debate or city council meeting Open a liveblog when a big story breaks Offer weekly chats with local politicians, business owners, or reporters
8	Media & Community Blogs The Independent Blogs: Grandislandblogs.com – a list of our internal and community bloggers Types of media blogs: “Mommy blogs” are very popular (dooce.com) Political blogs – even local politics can pull traffic Sports blogs – Sports reporter can do some blogging – or recruit someone in your community
9	Tips From Media Bloggers Respond to blog comments – INTERACTION is so very important. Don’t be afraid to talk to your readers. They love it and it keeps them coming back. “An obligatory listing of our e-mail address at the end of our stories doesn’t invite our readers to contact us, it just allows them to. Interacting with people online, and really advertising that we really, really do want to hear from people can directly lead to stories." – Daniel Victor, Harrisburg Patriot-News You may think you have a feel for your community – but until you begin interacting with them when a story breaks, or you’re covering a hot topic, you don’t know it at all. “It helps your reporting because you get to know a lot more people,” Dallas Morning News blogger, Tawnell Hobbs said about her beat blog. “Now you have hundreds more people. It opens you up to such more out there and so many more opinions. That blog reaches so many people.”
10	Blogging Do’s & Don’ts Don’t “hotlink” images In other words, Don’t add a picture to your blog that pulls directly from another person’s website. If you do this, you are essentially stealing that person’s bandwidth and possibly costing them money. Just ask permission to use the image and host it yourself or just put a text link to the image and send your traffic to that person’s website. Remember to credit someone properly if you use their image or text. Spellcheck Spellcheck Spellcheck Try not to use copyright images or text if you can help it. Instead, just link to that photo or text.
11	Social Media? What’s that? Social Media simply means Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information. Tools include: Twitter Facebook Bookmarking systems like deli.cio.us and StumbleUpon Community networks
12	Twitter? Tweet? What? Twitter is a service that allows people to "tweet" short messages (140 characters, the cellphone text limit) about what they're doing. Originally intended as a way for friends and family to stay connected, the media has found it incredibly useful for breaking and following stories. You can send updates from your cell phone, from the web, from an instant messenger, or from a desktop twitter client.
13	Twitter Examples Recent earthquakes/fires in L.A. were “tweeted” before showing up in mainstream media. Locally, The Independent broke the story of the Muslim protests on Twitter before other local news media could report it. The Austin, TX paper ‘ The Statesman’ set up a Twitter stream during Hurricane Ike and sent updates, info, evac reports and shelter info that ended up driving over 470,000 pageviews to their website in a 4-day period.
14	Twitter Terms Twitterers People who use Twitter Followers The people who follow your twitter stream Tweets Updates you post to Twitter Tweeps Another word for your followers J Examples: “There are over 500 Twitterers in Nebraska.” “Let me know when the story is confirmed so I can tweet it for the followers.” “Thanks for your feedback tweeps!”
15	How The Independent uses Twitter I set up an account at Twitter.com in November of 2007. Used site called ‘Twitterfeed’ to auto-send headline updates via RSS feed. Followers trickled in. Turned off Twitterfeed last month and began tweeting manually, giving updates a personal “voice,” and interacted with followers. Followers have doubled in less than a month.
16	Building a Community Look into free software called Ning (www.ning.com) to set up your own social network. We created one for our area prep sports. Readers can blog, post video, pix, or comment on other readers posts. (community.gipreps.com) Or create a Facebook group for your readers.
17	Resources TOOLS: http://www.twitter.com – Your newspaper or magazine should be Twittering. http://www.coveritlive.com – Liveblogging software – free to use, easy to set up. Allows you to place your liveblog on any website, and leaves it available for “replay” when it’s over. http://www.blogger.com and http://www.wordpress.com – Two excellent places to begin setting up blogs for free. If you are tech-savvy, you can go to http://www.wordpress.org and install the blogging software on your own servers (recommended if you have the capability.)
18	Resources OTHER RESOURCES: http://www.wiredjournalists.com – every journalist, photojournalist and editor should join this site. Get great info, learn new tricks, meet other journalists and network. http://www.graphicdesignr.net - Industry blogger and St. Louis Post-Dispatch designer, Erica Smith, keeps track of newspapers that Twitter as well as layoffs/buyouts in our industry http://beatblogging.org/ - Great resource for reporters who blog their beats http://www.ReportingOn.com - A simple way for journalists to update their peers on the stories they're working on right now. Tag your 140-character-or-less updates with the beat you're on, and find peers reporting on similar beats to make connections, introduce yourself to potential mentors, or discover an unsung hero. Sort of like Twitter but for journalists. Still in Beta but has great potential – get in on it now!
19	Contact Stephanie Romanski Web Editor: www.theindependent.com Email: webmaster@theindependent.com Follow me on Twitter! @stephromanski - http://twitter.com/stephromanski