COMM 361-001: Online Journalism

“Journalism needs to find new benefits from new marketing strategies and measurement tactics.”

Briggs’ last chapter in JournalismNext focuses in on “the fundamentals of building an audience online”:

• Tracking one’s content
• Web analysts
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Effective headline writing for the Web
• Distribution through social media

Our author begins by pointing out that “management consultants will tell you that ‘what gets measured gets changed,'” but that “in recent years some have also said ‘what gets measured gets done.'”

As a result, “newsrooms now track and measure everything they do.”

Tracking everything that one publishes (and setting benchmarks on a case-by-case basis) is crucial, but tracking one’s audience (using Web analytics softwares such as Google Analytics.

Briggs then dives into the main functions of SEO for journalists:

• Spiders and robots
• Indexing
• Queries

When writing effective headlines:

• Make sure to write it for both online readers — readers and robots
• Make good headlines better by improving keywords, trying to use more conversational language and not being afraid to inject a little attitude

Overall, in this last chapter, I took out a lot of information that I felt should be remembered as well as information that I found interesting (SEO functions).

“Journalists who didn’t cut their teeth in radio reporting tend to relegate audio to second-tier status, figuring that text is more informative, photos and video more compelling. That kind of thinking makes less sense than ever now that the Internet gives every news orgnaization and every reporter the option of producing audio journalism.”

So begins Briggs’ seventh chapter on audio journalism. He discusses its importance, its potential for you and techniques to use to your advantage with it.

Audio journalism “has characteristics that can’t be matched by other forms of media”:

• Presence: On location, a reporter can literally bring readers to the story. The simple fact of being there boosts credibility and interest.
• Emotions: Tone of voice, expressions, intonation and pauses–in the words of either the reporter or the sources–can enhance the message.
• Atmosphere: Natural sound–the sound that’s naturally happening around you as you report–helps pull the listener in close. Natural sound can be anything–weather sounds, crowd sounds, machine noises, whatever’s happening in that particular setting.

Further, some excellent opportunities that audio offers journalists includes:

• Reporter overview: Newspapers like The New York Times routinely post quick, simple audio overviews by reporters that accompany their articles. The Times calls them “Backstory.”
• Podcasts: Regular episodes on a selected subject help build an audience but can be time-consuming and difficult to establish in the beginning.
• Audio slide shows: Photojournalists have discovered the power of adding audio to their images to tell richer, more compelling stories.
• Breaking news: With free services such as Utterli.com, a reporter can file a quick audio report from anywhere by mobile phone, to be published on a Web site.

Volume, Pitch, Rhythm, Tempo — Varying these and controlling these is your BEST way to ensure a good voice-over.

When editing your audio clips and inserting them into your piece, techniques such as cross-fading, establishing music, segue (smoothly transitioning from one track to another) and transitions in general are very important to use and master.

“Even if you’re not ready to create fully developed stories with different layers and advanced editing, audio journalism can be powerful as a simple and quick publishing format.”