Building A Better Newsroom

Making Journalism Social

How do we make the question and answer process of journalism social in Central Ohio? Better question… how would YOU make the question and answer process social?

Part of what we do in the media is listening to questions, all kinds of questions, from our audience and then getting them answered. I see this as a great opportunity to be more social, to engage people in our product, and to get their questions answered.

Would it be a website? A mobile app? Google can get you an answer about who was the 4th mayor of Columbus, I want to get you an answer about why the current mayor made a certain decision, or even why we did a story a certain way. How would you use that? What would it look like? What would be the most important piece it would need to have so you’d use it?

I would start out with a website and then add in other features.  My 2 cents.

Your advantage over Google is access—your team has access to people who can answer questions that the public may ask. So you should create a network of experts who can answer questions on certain topics—from local politcs to the hows and whys of news production. So create a wiki-answers type system that allows your viewers to ask questions and your team of experts will get the answers. The best/most frequenlty asked are featured on your nightly news casts.

Just a thought from the Cleveland-peanut gallery.

Maybe in the case of the recent Marijauna “Bust”... instead of saying, “those people” like they are some degenerant social network. Because there are alot of people that “use those huge light bulbs” and they feel like your feeding the propaganda machine. It should not be illegal. Don’t critisize something you obviously know nothing about. That goes for any other subject. Don’t lie to us. Do something different, something no one else does, and you will get everyones attention. Simple as that. Show a different side of the story please, you make us afraid to come out of our house sometimes.

Place focus on doing and presenting more balanced reporting, espeically on soft news subjects such as “green alternatives” and “money saving ideas” (two subjects close to my heart because I blog about both.) which I admit is difficult to do when you’re trying to be the first outlet to break a story. All too often the pro side is presented as “everyone should do this and you will save big big big!“ without taking into consideration that such a pratice or product isn’t suited for everyone. For example, a green money saving method is to line dry laundry. All too often the pros of it saves $ because you don’t use a dryer or dryer sheets, etc. is only discussed and the cons such as it makes laundry day 24 hours longer (because you have to let the clothes dry), some communities don’t allow outdoor clotheslines (but these folk could dry drying indoors), sometimes line dried items are stiffer, and some folks just don’t like to have their unmentionables hanging on a line outside for all of their neighbors to see.

Present the facts, and let viewers and readers have a say in the blogs and emails of their opinions. Also, provide more contact info on stories like websites, email addresses, and the like so people can verify stories on their own.

I don’t know about social but I don’t like just headlines.  I really wish you would take the time you need and give indepth balanced reporting. A couple of lines here and there is NOT real reporting!  I could do that and I don’t have a degree in journalism. I should think the goal would be to get AND keep your “customers” viewers. I’ll gladly stay watching you if I know I’m going to see the true whole story even if your competition gave a one liner on it yesterday. Also i saw a program that has a segment called “Bring it on.“  They answer about 3 questions from viewers each time the show airs. Another idea is to run a story and ask the audience “what questions do you have that we didn’t answer about this piece?“  After a while you should begin to get the feel for what your audience is looking for.  As said earlier my two cents!  Thanks for letting share guy!!