Four ways you can make Storify tell a good story
If you want to create a good Storify, then you need good content. Here are a few tips based on what I’ve learned along the way so far:
When using Twitter as a source, it’s often a good idea to fill in the spot for “Near.” This is handy if you’re searching for something fairly generic that could be found anywhere in the world. For example, there is a controversial proposal for mine near Kamloops called Ajax. But of course, Ajax could refer to any one of a number of things that have nothing to do with the mine — a Dutch soccer team, for example. By limiting searches to near Kamloops, I’m much more likely to get relevant material.
Another handy search is your own handle. We go by @kamnews, so a search for this brings up all the messages people have sent us, many of which are comments on stories we have linked to.
The Disqus tab is handy because it allows you to go through the comments on your website if you use this service. Just use the name you set up for yourself in the Disqus dashboard. With some lucky guesses, you might be able to dig into the comments for other sites as well.
Don’t forget that the ultimate way of getting content into Storify is by using the Storify This button in your toolbar. Navigate to anywhere on the web, sweep the content you want, and click the button. It will the show up in your Storypad with an icon from the site, if possible.
If you have any tips of your own, don’t be shy about sending them in. I’ll share them in a new post. And you can alway contact me via @newloops on Twitter.
Exploring Storify: when does it work best with the news?
Sometimes Storify seems brilliant. Sometimes it seems like a solution in search of a problem. I have yet to decide which.
In the few weeks that I’ve been using the social media aggregator, it has seemed like a bright idea twice: when I used it for roundups of Twitter and Facebook posts for major events in Kamloops.
One was a fundraising run with thousands of participants called The Daily News Boogie. People spontaneously took to the Internet to talk about the experience and share pictures. A Storify roundup seemed the thing to do because I was able to report the news, or at least give an impression of it, while it was still fresh in everyone’s minds. Posts from participants revealed the raw energy generated by the event.
I embedded the Storify in the Kamloops Daily News website within an hour of the end of Boogie, and this likely led to its popularity. People who had just finished the run were eager to know how other runners fared.
The other time I thought I was onto something good was when the Kamloops Blazers junior hockey team fell short of an amazing playoff comeback — but impressed fans nonetheless. There were a lot of congratulatory posts that night. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to do a Storify until the next morning. By then, much of the emotion had worn off, and it didn’t have as big an impact as I had hoped.
So what’s the lesson here? Get on top of a major event and post a Storify ASAP. But not necessarily . . .
As it turns out, another Storify that I thought was kind of lame turned out to be more popular than the one for the Blazers. It was basically just a roundup of comments and links about a controversial mine proposal called Ajax. There was no big event for a tie-in, but readers gravitated to it anyway. I can only think that readers are so thirsty for information about the project that they’re drawn to anything that might help.
So in the end I’m left no real conclusion, and the need to continue exploring if I’m ever to find one.
My next project is a Storify based on a Twitter search for @KamNews — the handle used by the Kamloops Daily News. Many of these are reactions to headlines we post with links to articles on the website. So far, I’ve found half a dozen worthy of sharing. If this one goes over well, maybe it will encourage more people to say what they think about the news of the day.
The difficulties of Disqus 2012
I pulled the trigger on Monday, bringing Disqus 2012 online for the Kamloops Daily News comments. But two days later I had to pull the plug.
There was nothing wrong with the new features — at least, not from my point of view as a moderator. There were some grumblings from readers, but they likely would have adjusted after awhile.
No, the main problem was that it simply didn’t work in many cases. Some people told me comments weren’t showing up at all. Others would click the Post button and nothing would happen. Or maybe something was happening but it was so slow, they gave up. Then there were those who complained about login problems that I couldn’t understand, let alone solve.
A big drawback with this beta is that it depends largely on feedback from users. But if they can’t make the system work in the first place, they won’t be able to say what’s wrong.
I thought the problems might depend on which web browser was being used. When I asked readers about this possibility, I received a jumble of answers that casts that theory in doubt.
So we’re out of the beta. We’ll wait to see what happens over the next couple of months, and maybe give it another try.
From a moderator's point of view, Disqus 2012 looks good
We pulled the trigger and went live with Disqus 2012 at the Kamloops Daily News website. So far, there has been mixed reaction from users, but my first impression as a moderator is that there has been a big improvement.
Over the weekend, one of the threads had devolved into a back-and-forth of off-topic squabbling. It was disappointing to say the least, and I felt embarrassed for readers who were exposed to it. So on Monday morning I closed the thread.
Later that afternoon, I went live with Disqus’s new system, which, among other things, allows readers to vote comments up or down. I went back to the awful thread that I had closed earlier and noticed a welcome difference. The bickering had completely disappeared — pushed to the bottom by positive and constructive comments that had received likes under the old system. What a relief.
Then something else happened that made my day. I wrote an article explaining the updated Disqus to readers, and soon after one of them posted to brag about all the down-voting he would be doing. It wasn’t long before other readers voted him down to the point where his comment could no longer be seen. Self-policing is a wonderful thing.
There have some worries about censorship, but I’m cautiously optimistic this will work itself out. People who see their nasty remarks voted down will have to ask themselves if maybe they could have expressed themselves in a way more in keeping with what is expected by their fellow readers.
Yes, peer pressure can be a double-edged sword, so I’ll be keeping a close eye on how all this works out. Stay tuned.
Prismatic is not the web version of Zite I was hoping for
The wonderful thing about newspapers is that a team of seasoned editors picks out the news for you and presents it in a way designed to keep you interested. Or at least that’s the theory, and for many people it works just fine.
But what if you could be your own editor? In a way, that’s possible. You can roam the Internet seeking out stories that appeal to you. And you could subscribe to some of the RSS feeds to get more from the sources that you find yourself going back to. But, in the end, it’s easier to let someone else be the editor.
Not just easier, but more fun. An app like Zite, for example, can learn what you like and bring you similar content that you might not have otherwise thought about. I’ve written about Zite before — suffice to say I’m a big fan. So when I came across Prismatic, my first thought was: Wow, a web version of Zite.
I got an invitation and have been test driving it for the past couple of days. And my first reaction is that it is not as much like Zite as I would have hoped. Prismatic figures out your interests by connecting with your Twitter account. I connected it to my Newsloops account and, not surprisingly, Prismatic figures I must be interested in journalism, newspapers and social media. If I had connected with my Thriftmac account, I’d be getting all kinds of stuff about Apple.
Luckily, Prismatic has an Explore tab that allows you to wander off from what your Twitter account suggests. Each story presented by Prismatic has three options attached to it. “I don’t like this story”, “Favorite this story” and “Share this story”. Stories you don’t like are removed from the stream while stories you “favorite” are kept for posterity. Sharing places a link on Twitter.
What’s not clear to me is whether Prismatic is capable of learning. Zite make this abundantly evident with messages such as “You’ll see more stories like this”. Clicking on a plus sign in Prismatic will stash a story away so you can read it again later. This could be handy in some instances, but it would be nice if there were some intelligence at work as well. Sure, I can tell Prismatic to give me stories about newspapers, but how does it choose which ones? I’d like to be able to refine what articles I get, and to have Prismatic remember the types of choices I make. You know . . . like Zite.
I want to like Prismatic, but I have a feeling that even it gets to be as good as Zite — or even better — I still won’t like it as much. That’s because kicking back on the couch with an iPad app that understands me really is the ultimate luxury for a news junkie.
Free food or death!
Not sure how this blog slipped under my radar for so long, but thank goodness it has been found. Stuff Journalists Like helps us do what we need more of in this business: laugh at ourselves.
Sure, we can go on about freedom, democracy, transparency and all that — but what is that truly interests us? Free food, sarcasm, cursing, cluttered desks . . . yeah, that’s more like it.
On the front page today: 10 Additional Jobs That are Worse than Being a Journalist. You know you want to see what they are.
Link: Stuff Journalists Like
Journalists hurt themselves by behaving unprofessionally
Steve Buttry at Digital First Media has issued a reminder that journalists should be professional at all times — even on Twitter. It’s something that bears repeating, but there are still some fine lines I’ve seen crossed.
The trouble comes with journalists who show their sense of humour, which is fine, but display a sense of humour that makes them look more obnoxious than anything else. I’m not sure how you get around this. If someone is irritating in real life, they’ll come across that way on Twitter as well. To make things worse, they often have such an inflated sense of self-worth that they don’t realize they are actually held in low esteem by their peers.
These people need guidance from their supervisors, but all too often the people in charge aren’t aware of what’s going on. And the rest of us don’t feel it’s our place to “tell” on the offender. In the end, though, people like this will find that they have ruined their own reputation, and that career opportunities will be diminished.
Link: Journalists should be personable but professional in social media use
The AP breaks with Twitter, engages with Facebook
Does the Associated Press take Twitter seriously? These numbers speak for themselves:
About a dozen staffers run the AP’s flagship Twitter account, and the AP’s 20-plus Twitter accounts are run by around 100 staffers.
Those figures come from Josh Sternberg at Digiday, who provides an inside look at how the wire service uses social media. It’s unimaginable that these people work full-time on nothing but Twitter, but the commitment is there.
The article notes that AP uses Twitter mainly for breaking news and Facebook for news of a more “transcendent” nature. Still, the wire service places much value in Facebook:
The AP finds that Facebook, not Twitter, is the best social tool for engagement. It has five or six accounts that actively communicate with its fans. It also does a lot of crowdsourcing on Facebook.
Twitter’s great for news junkies who need their news fixes, but Facebook does a better job of spreading your message far and wide — and in the end brings in much more traffic than Twitter.
Link: Inside The AP’s Social Strategy
Fallout from the falling bear
If you haven’t seen the falling bear by now, you’re one of the few. Not only has this bear gone viral, but it’s the subject of a Tumblr log. There’s an example at right.
What’s so a amazing about a bear falling out of a tree after being hit by a tranquillizer dart? Nothing, really. The photographer caught the bear in mid-air, striking a pose you don’t normally associate with bears.
In a week or two, the picture will join Kony2012 in the mists of time. It’s just another example of how the Internet has shortened our attention spans to the point where they have become almost microscopic.
The bear has now been released into the wild, but the story is not over yet. Photographer Andy Duann is looking at suing the newspaper that originally published the photo because he wasn’t paid for it. You can read more about his plight at the Poynter website, and see the picture itself, which Poynter has reproduced with Duann’s permission.
My prediction is that the picture will be long forgotten before the case ever gets to court, and that not a single reporter will bother covering it.
Fireball XL5 theme song
The first science fiction TV show I ever saw was Fireball XL5. To this day, I still enjoy the theme song. Here it is in all its Supermarionation glory:
