Megan Taylor

The days are starting to melt together. Was it yesterday or the day before that we had a walking tour through former East Berlin? When did we go to the Allied Museum? Were those chicks or dudes making out on the bus? Did those break dancers really just try to charge for taking photos in a public plaza? How many times can we get on the wrong bus going in the wrong direction?

The pressure is on: our projects are due in one week. I have a few subject ideas, but nothing concrete yet. We're going to have a lot more free time from now on, so I'm planning on going back to some cool places and re-shooting.

I'm really tired of trying to get my shots with 15 other people trying to get the same shot or otherwise getting in my way.

Zac Echola reminded me yesterday what this blog is about and why I started it.

• 1. A networking blog should be a living document of your professional self. You should stay focused on topics that matter to people who may hire you. You should start reading blogs from people in your field.
• 2. When someone makes you think, you should think out loud on your site. Have a conversation with others. Email people questions. Chat with them on twitter. Get to know people. Working a blog isn’t much different than working a room at a conference. Stay focused.
• 3. Show off your work. When you do something good, show it off. Don’t be bashful.
• 4. SEO the crap out of yourself.
• 5. Seize every opportunity you can.
• 6. Always remember that there’s a real human being on the other side of the machine.

I've been really bad at updating lately, and I'm going to work hard to fix that, starting with a bunch of updates on what I've been doing lately. I think short posts are preferred, so I'll split things up. Keep an eye out for stuff on Twitter, Google Maps, Django and more.

I spent Thursday and Friday at the NextNewsroom Conference at Duke University. Thanks to Chris O'Brien for coordinating a great discussion and helping college students attend.

My interest in the conference stemmed from a previous interest in exploring the idea of a "virtual newsroom." I wrote a little about this before.

Due to some initial crazyness at the Gainesville airport, I was late to the show, so here are some links documenting what I missed:

Greg Linch posted the highlights of Chris O'Brien's opening words and collected some excellent quotes from Saf Fahim's keynote speech. I've been following Greg on Twitter and his blog for a while now, and it was awesome to finally meet him. We even collaborated on live-streaming and recording sessions on the second day. More about that later.

Byran Murley used Cover It Live to keep up on speeches the first day and sessions the second. Cover It Live looks like a sweet live-blogging tool.

I did make it in time for Randy Covington's speech on "New Roles in the New Newsroom." I posted my notes earlier, but the quick takeaway was that the current structure of the newsroom is an impediment to convergence and integration between mediums. As examples of alternative structures he pointed to London's Daily Telegraph and the Tampa Bay Tribune.

Next there was a panel discussion with Robertson Barret, Sharon Behl Brooks, Christian Oliver, Rusty Coats and Keith Hanadel as moderator. The discussion was a little disappointing, I felt like they kept drifting into different arguments instead of responding to the questions and comments posed via Twitter.

There's video from all this at Ustream.tv.

On Friday, the second day, Greg and I joined forces (and equipment) to live-stream video from the sessions we attended. We had some technical difficulties, but it was really fun!

Session 1: We went to a discussion facilitated by Brett Erikson, Kathy Stofer and Sharon Brooks on operating a converged newsroom in the context of student media. Check out the video.

Session 2: How can the newsroom management structure be reorganized? Led by Bryan Murley. Takeaway: The Web editor needs to be high up on that ladder. I'm gonna point you to Greg again, as his notes are better than mine for this session.

Session 3: How to change from old news culture to new - led by John North, Knoxville News Sentinel. If we had come up with any answers to this problem, we could make a looot of money.

Session 4: Balancing work and class, learning and innovation in college media, led by Kathleen Sullivan. Ustream was crashing no matter what I did, so I switched to Yahoo Live. Unfortunately, it doesn't save video, just broadcasts it. :(

The best thing about this conference was that after breaking out for different sessions we all gathered back together to share what had been discussed in each group. I've never done this at a conference and I thought it was a great way to walk out with as much to think about as possible.

So, what is the next newsroom going to be like? We don't really know. There are so many aspects to consider, from roles and structure to physical space to technology. I'm still trying to remember names, Web sites, and ideas, gathering all my notes off of napkins, stray paper and boarding passes.

Facilitated by Kathleen Sullivan

How do we build in opportunities for trying new things?

How do student journalists balance work and classes?

How do we manage more (with only so much staff)? Where can you scale back, where can you do more?

Different deadline realities, diff sources for content, what can be delegated and what can't?

Teamwork for stories instead of individual ownership?

The story doesn't end when it goes to print. You can have all sorts of discussions online.

Build in-house wiki(s) to avoid starting over with new staff

Google 20% project time

Additional platforms = additional people, so ppl get territorial. How do you solve that problem?

Aside: Livestreaming is so cool!

Get interdisciplinary staff, not just j-students.

What can you make into a product (low-hanging fruit)?

Ustream.tv crashed all my browsers a dozen times, so we're on to Yahoo Live!

So for the first session of the day, I ended up at a discussion on operating a converged student media newsroom. I can't really relate; The Independent Florida Alligator, being separate from the university, can't take advantage of all the available tools and skills at UF. But the ideas from the converged model applied to our print and web publications could make things work much more smoothly and allow us to go farther.

Greg Linch and I got video, using UStream.tv

Now I'm at a discussion of newsroom structure, facilitated by Bryan Murley. We've been talking about who takes responsibility for what and how work is distributed through roles in the newsroom.

The sessions for this morning:

Session 1
1. What are the keys to successfully operating a converged newsroom, especially for student media?
Facilitators: Brett Erickson, Kathy Stofer, Sharon Brooks
2. How can design of space promote innovation in the newsroom?
Facilitator: John Keefe
3. What productivity tools can transform the newsroom?
Facilitator: Christian Oliver
4. What is the role of social networking in the newsroom?
Facilitator: Kara Andrade

I want to go to all of them!

Yesterday was the first day of the Next Newsroom Conference, with keynote speakers and panels and all kinds of good discussion. Unfortunately, I missed the first couple of speakers, but Greg Linch totally has my back: check out his complete coverage of yesterday.

My notes from Randy Covington's speech:
Newsplex:
Its not about formats or technology but on stories
cover stories across media
stories are better because of audio, video, community interactivity
we live in a mutli-media world
people are using media in diff ways

TRAINING

newsrooms will be different: no more assembly line
Edipresse - cubicles and open space 2002-2003

New roles for full media newsroom

Newsflow editor: story
directs coverage across formats and delivery services
integrates multiple products under unified editorial brand
service to a broad range of news consumers
multiskilled journalist: content
able to work in diff formats and do diff things (video, text, graphics, audio, photos and interactivity)
NOT EVERYONE NEEDS TO BE THIS - BUT - bring in MORE multiskilled people who like to shape and control their own work
news resourcer: context
informatics journalist/editor
apply news judgement with understand of informational landscape
cybrarian, not news librarian
google is not good enough
story builder: experience
one editor handles story for all mediums
combines roles of print copy editor and broadcast producer
convergence organizational models:
Tampa Tribune

Nordjyske - denmark was dying, needed to reinvent, created an all-news cable channel on model of old cnn news, dont need lots of people
NOW - free papers, local papers, the news channel, 2 radio stations and a web site with 248 jous
editors for each medium refine the content
editorial depts serve all media
NOT one size fits all
started charging for tours, jous all over were willing to pay
super desk: groups for diff mediums in open space with editorial mtg place in the center

Daily Telegraph - london
24-hr digital multimedia newsroom
story components integrated from the start
three job titles: reporter, editor, producer
hub and spoke system for organization of newsroom

I'll come back later and clean up the formatting on that. After Covington there was a panel discussion responding to questions posed by the audience through Twitter. So I stopped taking notes and made my commentary there instead. I'll round that up into something cohesive later today as well. But you can check out the continuing conversation on Twitter.

A lot of people tell me I'm really good at this Web stuff. Yea, I'm a geek. I love to program and play and diddle around with technology, especially if it can be made useful.

But I've really only had 2 years of this. I fell in love with journalism late in my sophomore year. I'm the managing editor for the Web site of a student-run paper and I'm making it all up as I go along.

OK, I spend hours every day scanning blogs, newspapers, Twitter and other Web sites learning as much as I can about this thing called online journalism. For me, there is no ivory.

But rarely do I get a chance to sit down with someone more experienced than I and discuss what I'm doing and how I should be doing it differently. (Maybe that's a new direction to take this blog in?)

Last week, the Journalism Advisory Council sat down for lunch with us budding journos. It was a really cool experience.

I talked to one member about data potential for B2B magazines.

Another responded to my questions about the Web site by listing the things they do and then shoving me into a conversation with someone else.

I discussed eye-tracking studies and the difference between print and Web design, fairly eloquently for someone who can't...well, I can design my way out of a paper bag, but it's not one of my strengths.

Another member wanted to look at The Independent Florida Alligator's Web site. My baby. No sooner had the site loaded than suggestions for improvements were being made.

Yes, we need to label our multimedia so that readers know what's what. Yes, we should be publishing online as soon as we know something. Yes, I need to make Opinions, Sports and Avenue headlines as Web-friendly as the News heds have become. Yep, that event on the calendar shouldn't be labeled TBA, it's an all day event. Must fix the PHP.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

As soon as school is back in session, I'm going to find some unofficial guidance. The print managing editor and the editor go over the paper with one of the professors once a week. The Web site needs similar help. (Mindy, Dave, you up for this?) And I'm going to make sure the guidance continues, because one simple conversation can change so much.

The online capstone course, Applied Interactive Newspapers, is built to work like an internship.

There are 6 students in the class this semester. Each of us is responsible for pulling in 7 stories each week, from The New York Times or AP wire.

These stories are published on Newszine, the Interactive Media Lab's news Web site.

Recently, in addition to the 7 stories, we were assigned a multimedia requirement. Each week, 2 Soundslides and 2 videos will be published to the site along with our stories, with labor divided among the staff.

It was my turn to do a video this week. I chose to do a video tutorial for using Soundslides. I wrote out my script and talked to my partner, Matt Gonzalez, about the shots. We set the camera up and also set the editing computer up for screen-casting.

Then I did my thing. I'm not particularly pleased with the outcome. I get massive stage fright as soon as the camera's watching, even though I'm only on the screen for a few seconds.

But I learned a lot from this. I should have run through my actions a few times before I did it for the camera. It also could have done with a little more editing.

In any case, I'm learning a lot about video and editing, so by the time I graduate I should be pretty good at this.

There's a new trend in online journalism these days: Stop talking, and do it.

Stop trying to convert, stop making lists, stop fighting the print bias with words. Start doing things that will make the difference.

David Cohn wrote:

I think the time for evangelizing is over. At this point if you are in a mainstream news organization and you don't see the need for change, the battle is lost and I'm not going to spend time trying to convince you to change the culture in your newsroom. I will simply shake your hand, wish you an honest good luck and move on...If you want to see real change - don't tell news room editors what to do - DO IT YOURSELF.

And Zac Echola, writing about Wired Journalists, wrote:

Something happened early this year in the media blogging world. We suddenly stopped talking about what we should be doing and started talking about what we are doing. We started talking about being the change we wish to see. It was at the same time a jarring change in tone and an exhilarating one.
Now is the time to be that catalyst for change in your news organization. No more talking about it. We’re doing it. And we want you to do it too.

Wired Journalists is a social networking site set up by Ryan Sholin, Howard Owens and Zac Echola after Owen's post on getting wired.
In a very short amount of time, the site has gained over 300 members. It opens up discussions, not on why online journalism is important, but how to start doing it. Members are both newbies and established "wired" journalists.

I realized today that consciously or not, the "just do it" trend is affecting me, too. I spent a lot of time at The Independent Florida Alligator last semester trying to win over some very print-oriented editors. I spent a lot of time making lists of projects I wanted to start. Not that I didn't get anything done; we made a lot of progress on getting our content management system working the way WE wanted it to work.

But this semester I've spent more time actually ticking projects off that list. I finally got the Gainesville Explorer project running. A multimedia stringer made a map of apartment complexes in Gainesville. Yea, that's right, I have stringers. (I think we need to change this lingo, minion is a much cooler word.) I met with some of the business staff regarding the missing alumni page. I've gotten the editor and managing editor for print writing blog posts. All in just three weeks.

This is a hell of a lot more fun than fighting print bias and trying to get reporters to see the light.

My plans for this summer just got more interesting.

I got an e-mail yesterday notifying me that I could do a photojournalism study abroad program in Berlin! I've wanted to go on this trip for some time, but it was always full when I got around to checking on it. This time I got lucky; it was my last chance because I am graduating this semester.

I've been to Spain and Costa Rica, and my parents took me to Japan when I was 1. Here's to another ridiculously long flight.

During the week after I get back from Berlin, I'm moving back to Miami. Hopefully, the people my parents leased the house to when they moved to Costa Rica will be out by then. I'll be attending the IRE Conference and then starting my internship at The Miami Herald.

After that, who knows? But life after college is looking better and better.

My first assignment for my CAR independent study was to get some data from the Alachua County Health Department.

Professor Armstrong charged me with getting all current salaries, as of Jan. 1, 2008 for nurse practitioners and physician assistants working in the Alachua County Health Department, both full and part time. It took a couple of tries to get someone on the line. Then they asked me to send an e-mail. But in 3 business days, I had the data. Much easier than I thought.

I know all data requests won't be so easy, but it's good practice in asking for it. The experience was similar to what I did to get a gas prices map on The Independent Florida Alligator's Web site: Figure out who has it, find a contact number or e-mail address, and ask.

My next assignment was to decide on a story I wanted to do the data analysis for. I had a lot of trouble with this, because I had to choose something that was timely, accessible, etc.

After going through a bunch of ideas

• location trends for car accidents in the gainesville area. are holidays/game days a factor?
• something about uf sustainability. the website was basically a bunch of press releases, but i bet if i went and asked they could dig me up some data.
• I looked at http://earmarkwatch.org/ and found that all the earmarks for the state of Florida are for defense bills. UF and some other Florida universities were getting some cash too.
• go back to crime or poverty :( i'm trying to avoid these because they seem too obvious/easy.

I finally hit on something:
Given that Crist just put out the budget for public universities and UF is apparently not getting any help, I think that would be a good direction to take. I can compare funding for public universities in Florida and maybe other states, compare growth in attendance, that sort of thing. Look at how funding for UF has changed now that we have fewer people in legislature and other schools are building strength. (UCF, SFU) Is UF still the "flagship" university? I'll also be looking at tuition.

So the next step is to figure out how far back to look. I'll start at 10 years, hit up Lexis and see what I can dig up.

I'm much more confident now that the topic is locked down.

RSS has got to be one of my favorite reporting tools. Although my writing lately is limited to this blog and News Videographer, I still have to find something to write about and keep current in my field. That means communicating with a lot of people.

But I don't have time to talk to all those people. Many of them have Web sites and blogs, and those who don't get written about online by the former. It's much easier and faster for all this information to be compiled in one place for my viewing pleasure.

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. It is most often characterized by the orange and white icon you may see on many Web sites. (See the icon at the top of the right column?) An RSS feed basically delivers new content from a chosen site to a feed reader of your choice.

A feed reader, also known as a news aggregator, can be compared to your e-mail inbox. Instead of e-mail addressed to you, it receives the updates you have subscribed to. Some readers let you interact and organize your subscriptions in many different ways.

So start receiving these handy-dandy updates, you first need a feed reader. My favorite is Google Reader, but other options are available such as Bloglines and NewsGator. You can also choose, like e-mail, to use a Web-based or desktop feed reader. You can peruse these options by simply doing a search for feed readers.

Having chosen your feed reader, start subscribing! In most cases, the orange and white RSS icon will appear somewhere on a Web site. Some browsers will also show the icon in the address bar if there is a feed for that site. Some sites do not have feeds.

I've subscribed to a slew of different sites, from news to blogs to entertainment and more. If your city government has a Web site, chances are it has some sort of feed (even Gainesville has one for municipal minutes). State and federal governments are more likely to provide more information. And don't discount blogs! Even though you will have to double-check the information, blogs are an amazing resource, and with a little hunting you can find the good ones.

Now, all you have to do is remember to check the feed reader every day.

This post was also published at Wired Journalists.

I'm doing an independent study on Computer Assisted Reporting with Professor Cory Armstrong in the Spring. I was told at a couple of job interviews that I need CAR experience, but the University of Florida takes data no further than the Fact Finding class.

So I'm going to find a dataset, explore it, and hopefully be able to produce a story package.

Right now I'm doing some research on different datasets currently available, but I'm having trouble narrowing down my subject.

I've been looking at some PEW studies for ideas on what sort of data to look at, as well as the IRE Database Library.

Some ideas so far:

• Campus Crime: compare Florida colleges or SEC colleges or just look at UF crime
• Walter Reed: I'm not sure how to find this data, or if it is readily available. But it was one of the seriously under covered stories listed by PEW. This could be taken more broadly: reduced funding in VA hospitals, funding vs. number of troops vs. number of living vets, 2001 to present for all kinds of money issues, number of wounded, currently enlisted, vets no longer enlisted, maybe also insurance
• Fluctuating Gas Prices
• Tasering Cases in Florida

Edit: I'm also trolling the Sunlight Foundation's "Insanely Useful Web Sites."

That's it so far. (Thanks to Mindy for the help.)

Picking a subject has always been the hardest thing for me. I just want to look at everything!

Suggestions, as always, are welcome.

We've been hearing about convergence and converged newsrooms for a while now. Many papers haven't even looked in this direction, some are trying, few have made progress. And I don't think any have perfected it.

In the spirit of forward thinking, I would like to suggest the next trend: virtual newsrooms. What if you didn't have to go to an office every day to do your job? Instead of a "mobile journalist" sending reports back to a newsroom, she/he would send info to a server, and copyeditors, wherever they might physically be, could edit and post stories.

It's a big step, and not one that will happen soon. But the technology to do it already exists: we have big blogs with multiple contributors and online-only magazines.

I've been playing with this idea for a while, and trying to come up with some workflow concepts. But I only know the newspaper workflow. Can anyone point out the broadcast (TV and radio) workflows?

What do you think of the idea of a virtual newsroom? Good or bad?

Today I was inspired by Joe Grimm's "Ask the Recruiter," a daily column about problems getting journalism jobs and internships. Today he wrote about a reporter who is having trouble cultivating sources.

For some reason, this brought to mind Adrian Holovaty's data collection of hotels he has stayed in. Which led to my spending an hour or two creating a Google Spreadsheet of every source I'd ever spoken to for a story. (I always kept my notes in a box in the closet.)

No, this won't lead to some crazy database on a news Web site with all my source info and notes. But I am willing to share my template. (I've exported it as an Excel Spreadsheet.)

I think this would be especially useful for reporters covering beats, but a great resource either way.

Here's how it works: One column for source names. This includes titles, where they work. The next column is for phone numbers. Then e-mail addresses. Then stories they helped you with. Simple right? The next two columns are trickier. One column will record the first date on which you spoke to this source. The next will record your notes, whatever it was you talked about. If you are granting a source anonymity, make sure to make a note of it here as well. Now, on each subsequent talk, you add two more columns for this source: date and notes. Get it?

I think it's a pretty cool way to keep track of this information. However, some newsrooms have policies against keeping these types of notes for legal reasons. Please check your newspaper's policy before you implement this.

I spend a lot of time hanging out with my professors and some really cool grad students. It sounds weird, but they are my greatest resources for stuff like, "What's the best video camera that you can pull stills off of?", "Why isn't [insert reference to code here] working?" and other questions.

On Friday, the topic of conversation, while 2 out of the four of us ate lunch, turned to the j-school curriculum. Currently, there are 4 online journalism courses: a CSS/HTML course, an introduction to multimedia course, a Flash course and the capstone, Applied Interactive Newspapers.

Here's the problem: the CSS/HTML course is required for the Flash course. The intro to multimedia course is not required at all. Given how turned off a lot of students can be by the idea of programming, shouldn't a) the beginner's multimedia class be offered first (its a 4000-level class, the other is a 3000) and b) that course be required?

With people like Rob Curley and Howard Owens complaining about close-minded graduates, journalism students need to be exposed to the mindset behind online journalism. This course takes a brief look at many aspects of online journalism, plus the students learn Soundslides, Google Maps, blogging and audio.

I'm just sayin'.

My weekly column is up at News Videographer.

Few teachers in the print realm ever mentioned the possibilities of online journalism. And at the University of Florida, none of the online classes are required. So students who don’t get the Web, don’t get online journalism. Students who spend hours a day on Facebook, don’t get online journalism. Students who don’t take that first step, don’t get online journalism.

I've started my job/internship search and therefore have had occasion to communicate with a number of journalists, mostly via e-mail. A trend I've noticed is that once I've made initial contact, addressing my e-mail to Mr. _____ , there is a very strong objection to the title.

One journalist jokingly (I think) threatened to kill me if I addressed him that way again. Oh, by the way, so far this response has only been observed in males.

I'm not calling you Mr. cause you're older than I, or because I'm sucking up. It's either a) I actually respect you, or b) I don't know you or a combination of the two. Every "how to get hired" guide in the world requires the use of a title until otherwise specified.

Yes, most journalists are an informal bunch, but when it comes to job inquiries, better safe than sorry.

So don't get your panties in a bunch when I start with Mister. I'm just c.m.a.