Did print beauty get lost in the scramble for digital?

Last night, The Boy got a lovely package. It was a couple of books from the Folks at For Print Only. Each year, they do awards from print design and print them in a lovely little book.

I went to their site to check out some of the projects that didn’t make it into the book — namely magazines and journals. As I clicked through the sparse 3 pages of magazines, I realized something. Not one paper news outlet that I subscribe to is this beautiful. The magazines highlighted used words like bespoke, and low-fi, words I would not use to describe anything I have on my coffee table.

Wired is one of my favorite print subscriptions. It is pretty and well-designed. It is nothing like these. They have foil print, custom typography, paper that is heavy, things that I do not even know the word for.

Many of the amazing page designers I know have jumped into online wholeheartedly.

I’m not saying that online is responsible for the death of print design. I am obviously a huge proponent of online. But I simply cannot remember the last time I looked at a print product and said “Wow,” unless it was from the maker/artisan/Etsy community. What does that say about beauty in what we do?

I find the artisan community an interesting contrast to what has happened in journalism. I’ve been on Etsy since….ever, and many presents of mine come from there. I enjoy the curated, small shop experience. Etsy has brought back crafts that were thought lost like papercutting.

That feeling is one of the reasons I used to read Good Magazine and others. It’s a feeling that is all but lost in today’s print journalism.

Printing has gotten more expensive than ever, and online is cheap to make. A web site is nearly free whereas a piece of paper and ink costs. But Etsy is small scale. You want to own it before it is too late not to own it. I used to collect magazines for that reason. It’s why my father had a whole shelf full of National Geographic — it was something to save, something to look back at later. Why do that now when you can just archive it on a web site?

When the web first came about, it was the complement to the traditional product. Let’s archive it online, we would say. Cheap. Easy.

As web becomes predominant, what if we flipped that? Why has print not become the complement to online?

The notion of the dead newspaper might stay a notion if we change our thinking about what print can do that it has never done before.

Tell me, what’s the last beautiful piece of print journalism that you’ve seen?

(Note: This is probably the most strongly written thing I’ve said in a while and I do not confess to being a designer, just a consumer of design. I do want to be wrong about this — show me.)

Three reasons I gave Homicide Watch money

I am no Clay Shirky, guys, but here is my schpeel. Read it and back their Kickstarter, please.

1) Laura and Chris are two amazing human beings.

I may call a lot of people great and awesome, but these two….I met Laura at a fellowship last year. She wowed every single mentor and every single entrepreneur there with her spirit and her passion toward her project. I met Chris slightly later and he is no less awe-inspiring.

In an industry full of cut-backs and bankruptcies, it’s nice to have people with energy around.

2) Simple, amazing reporting.

I told someone yesterday about backing them on Kickstarter and they mentioned how impossible it seems that this crew gets so much information about each and every murder. But they do. Because they are not only amazing human beings, but they have a simple, fresh and unique way of reporting. Something I wish all reporters did.

3) Innovation on any level needs to be funded.

God Bless the Knight News Challenge, but some things don’t need $1 million. Some things need less. We need to find a way to fund medium-scale projects. I’m part of a newsroom that gets large foundations to help fund our journalism, but I’d like to be part of an ecosystem that funds all amazing journalism. $50? I can afford that.

On when to embed tweets {gripes}

I love embedding tweets in stories. I’m all about it, especially when it takes the place of a quote.

The idea being, sometimes, people will tweet things that they wouldn’t say into your mic, or in front of your notebook. Sometimes, Twitter brings a truth serum to our lips.

Or, Twitter will be a good place to find sources, where you can quote their tweet and follow up with an interview later.

Social media sourcing can be a great way to get parts of the story you wouldn’t have otherwise gotten. It’s a good way to display that in-the-moment thought, or quip.

But it’s not a good way to fill space. 

Take this HuffPo story: 

To take a step back, social media shouldn’t be used to fuel lazy journalism. It should never be a replacement for shoe-leather reporting. For a phone call.

And it should always be verified. Were they there? Did they see it? Do they have something to add?

What worries me is the idea that social media reporting is a good substitute for actual reporting. It’s not. It’s a good tip-sheet. It’s a good tool, not a replacement.

The telephone is used to make the call. Twitter is the telephone. It’s the mechanism by which we can touch our audiences. Using it does not mean you know how to ask the right questions, or call/tweet the right person.

There still needs to be good reporting behind it.

Remembering where you are from {journalism philosophizing}

I was realizing the other day I never properly wrote out a response to Mandy Jenkins’ very true post about social media editors and Twitter monkeys. Now that no one is talking about it, it is an apt time to write down my thoughts on that plus some.

We tried a new thing the other day and I sat down and talked to our business blogger (along with a reporter) about Facebook and the free labor we give them. My decided position was to defend Facebook (or at least talk about them from the stance that I make my career off them). This is relevant because I had to remind them that just because I work in Facebook and Twitter, that doesn’t mean I live and die by them.

We were other people before we were social media editors. We were reporters, community organizers, editors, copy editors, designers. We came to this field for different reasons. And the fascinating thing is because I was lucky enough to be in the first “class” of social media editors, many of those who come after us will most likely not have the same perspective.

So who are we really? Who am I? (Man this is going to get existential). Twitter monkeys? Reporters who came to this because we wanted a job?

Here’s why I am here, and why I don’t think this is what I will do forever.

I came to social media because it was fun. I like the web. I like the logistical problem of how to make a story fit into 140 characters and then the conversation it generates. I am an oversharer. Always was.

I am not, by any means, in love with this medium. There are so many challenges, so many problems. Facebook changes that keep you up at night. How to make that media buy work better. When to launch that contest. Why an important story was not RTed. These are things that I do not love.

I love talking to our audience. I like telling stories in unique ways. When I was a city council reporter, I decided I would have to write one less story if I just picked the 5 minor things that happened from each council meeting and write a blurb about each. This is why social media is fun. It’s finding new ways to tell stories. Every day. And it’s not a tweet. I want it to be a story flow, or a Facebook page or an interactive, social video player. 

We are a conduit. We are air traffic control, customer service, speechmakers, trainers, researchers, reporters, and editors. We are so much more and we could be so much more. The skills my colleagues have baffle and amaze me and most of us rarely get to use them. 

I should, and I want to, build stories that talk with and to our audience. And if that does not have the title “social media editor,” I do not care. 

We have made our own future (and I’m not just talking about social media editors here). We are on the precipice, the edge of journalism (supposedly). We can’t look over the edge with fear. We have to look at it and say, how do we go higher? 

There is so much frustration in trying to change minds and processes. I’ve changed my own mind about how to train and work with reporters. At this moment, I could name 20 things I’m frustrated with.

My commute is my meditation time and lately I’ve spent that time reminding myself why I am driving to a place that frustrates me so often. It’s because this is where I am from. This precipice. This uncertainty.

As aggravating as it is, sometimes it is wonderful and sometimes I get to tell the most beautiful, important, amazing stories with a staff who, sometimes, remembers where they are from. 

How a tweet turned into a DDOS attack {stories from the front}

Sometimes, I play reporter (for those of you who do not know, I was a reporter for years before I moved over to social/web).

Last night was one of those nights. 

Earlier in the day, our friends at the LATimes broke a story: Someone had posted a bunch of personal information on LAPD officers. The immediate question was “who?”

Around 5 p.m., the reporter who sits next to me figured it out. It was a hacker group called CabinCr3w. 

What did the other news sites do? They said “a hacker group.” The initial stories did not list the group’s name at all.

I have a personal interest in Anonymous, and the cloak-and-dagger side of the Internet thanks to dating one too many developer/nerd types. 

As Tami called the LAPD, I hit up the internet. I looked at the group’s tumblr, their twitter, and all their various profiles trying to find the post where they listed the info and anything else I could get. Then, using what we had, I tweeted.

Here’s what happened after that tweet.

I had more questions, so I asked them to DM me. We followed each other and then I got a DM that linked to an IRC chatroom.

I interviewed them.

Right about this time, we experienced a heavy load of traffic — what amounts to a denial of service attack. If you’ve ever experienced one of these you know it’s either that you hit something big or that there was an organized attack. We’ve had one before, but that was as a result of our stuff living on the same server as conservative news outlet. 

What is important about this to me is that no one else thought to tweet these guys. Other news outlets were too cautious or didn’t know to link to them or call them out. 

Because I sent out one tweet and @ mentioned the subject of the story, we got the story behind the story. 

That’s important to me. Being “of the internet,” I have always felt like few people have gotten Anonymous and hacktivism. I barely get it myself, but I’ve made an effort to learn as much as I could.

I asked CabinCr3w is they launched the DDOS attack. They said no. I asked if we had reported their involvement correctly and fairly. They said yes.

Just because they’re a part of a cloak-and-dagger movement doesn’t mean they are any less legitimate than any other source. 

The lessons?

  • @ mention subjects of stories, even if you haven’t interviewed them
  • Everyone is worth of an interview
  • Getting a better story using social media doesn’t take a large amount of mining or work. Sometimes, it’s a simple tweet.

#newsfoo distillations: audio, occupy and werewolves {braindump}

After every conference or gathering I attend, I’ve built in the habit of sitting in the airport (if it has wi-fi) or on the plane and typing up everything. It’s almost necessary to ensure that I go back home and remember the conversations I had and things I learned.

But to get this out of the way. Yes, newsfoo was an invite-only conference. I consider myself far from the media elite, because I’m fairly young to the high level tech discussions that happen at these sorts of things. The moment I walked in the room, saw who else was there, I was flabbergasted. I only knew 1/3 of the room. It was full of people I respected from afar, considered good friends and others i had only dreamt of talking to. 

Even if I don’t get invited back, I can’t thank the kind folks who organized it and everyone who came enough for filling my brain with the awesomeness it now contains.

I actually got the guts to propose a session I led with the amazing Monica Guzman of GeekWire, Ryan Jones of Frontline SMS and Jon Vidar of the Tiziano Project. It was about the psychology of sharing. But I don’t want to write about that.

The Takeaways

Occupy the News

I arrived at News Foo after a very, very long week of covering the Occupy LA raids and ridiculous wind. The challenges, successes and failures of how our coverage went down were very fresh in my mind. 

I had a couple of really long conversations with Michael Levitin and Sasha Costanza-Chock about Occupy LA, the resulting media coverage and the general issues and quandaries that come along with covering one of the most well-documented national movements in recent memory. 

I also attended a session where I shared some knowledge about the media pool in LA and how well (or alternately not well?) we dealt with citizen media as a whole. 

Personally, I do not think Occupy is going away. I do not think the resentment and anger will go away. This is not the last time I will have to debate whether to put an activist tweet under our name, or when a protest becomes a movement or how to reliably verify reports that come from “biased sources.”

I am a very transparent person and the work that Andy Carvin and others have done has already begun to shape a precedent. We can work with and utilize movement-based journalism. We can still filter it through out lens, whatever that lens is. 

Also, my plane reading is the Occupied Wall Street Journal. A printed product. How cool is that?

Audio is the new cool kid

I’m not a radio producer by any means, but working on the digital side of a radio station has a bit pitfall — seeing radio as the “old folks.”

So it surprised me that in several sessions I went to, that we talked about audio and it’s potential. (Note: I only went to sessions that had nothing to do with what I do for a living, so I actively avoided social media themed sessions)

This is alternately great and terrible in my eyes. 

Great: Public media, in particular local stations, has a great opportunity. It could build something that starts at passive consumption and span across multiple devices and locations and builds toward interactive. Audio is not doing much for us right now. We can do everything with it, and there are evidently interested people.

Terrible: Innovation in public media has been centered around digital. Blogs, social, etc. NOT audio. We are missing something here. The innovation is happening on the web site and the web site is rebelling against the radio, instead of making it cooler. I’ve seen this in my own newsroom, the divorcing of audio and web content. Why haven’t we done it yet? Why are non-public media people pointing out to us that we could do more? Are we so blind?

Fight for fun

The dense pessimism that has infested us media types is killing us. My newsroom spent a week kicking ass and taking names (on air and online) and it took over a week for a positive sentiment to be e-mailed.

The day after, no one said to the newsroom, “We kicked ASS!”  They said: “Well, that could have gone better. Let’s have a meeting.”

What. The. Fuck.

That pessimism I speak of is killing the souls of innovators. Someone needs to be our champion.

I consider a good chunk of foo-ers my colleagues (sometimes more so than my colleagues). They are optimistic. The believe. They subscribe to the Church of Making News Better. Yet, I saw a bunch of tweets from people angry that we were tweeting about werewolf, a game we played until the wee hours to bond, instead of the future of news.

What. The. Fuck.

Aren’t we allowed to be optimistic? Aren’t we allowed to have fun?

Robots+humans=good

Algorithms were a huge topic of discussion. Automating some of our news process so we could focus on the best of what we do.

I don’t have much more to say on this than let’s go.

Let’s go build something. 

One last thing..

A few tips for anyone doing this next year (I can only dream of being invited again):

  • They are not kidding when they say arrive well-rested. I was exhausted and felt like I could have gotten more if I hadn’t covered all the things I did the week prior.
  • Bring a jacket. I’m a terrible packer, apparently.
  • Participate. Host a session you do not know the answer to. I talked about the psychology of sharing and I definitely learned just as much, if not more, than I shared.
  • Make it a point to go to sessions you know nothing about, and talk to people you’ve never seen. There are some of the most amazing people there, but you have to get out of your bubble.
  • Jenny 8 Lee is *always* a werewolf.

The spread of mis-information and realities of live-covering events {braindump}

(Just a note to remind you that I’m posting as me, not officially KPCC.)

{Edit, adding in some stuff from Alex Cohen’s interview with RTNA rep Royal Oaks}

It has been a whirlwind of a week here.

Last night, Occupy LA was raided and cleared out by the Los Angeles Police Department. To cover it, we continued a live blog we started Monday as well as live-tweeted. 

I want to jot down my thought on two things. One more nerdy than the other.

Media pools and the spread of mis-information

Somewhere around 5:30 p.m. I sent an e-mail to our radio and print staffs about a LAPD briefing that would happen at 7:15 p.m. The alert went out via Nixle, a notification service LAPD uses for crimes and media events. It was picked up on Twitter quickly.

This was the first tweet I saw, which is a good summary of the text we got. 

Jazmin_Ortega: #LAPD meeting to do lottery to select “pool media” for future #OccupyLA activity. Interested media in pool must have rep attend mtg @ 7:15pm 

A note: you needed to be credentialed with the LAPD to be considered. 

We sent three people to the event, both from web and radio side. In that meeting, the reporters and LAPD agreed to three pools of four people, each pool would have a radio, print, TV and photo/video representative. The general rule was (which I don’t believe is uncommon with pools) that you can’t do any of your own reporting until you file to the pool.

A good explanation from Alexis Madrigal’s Atlantic article

The POOL consisted of our our editors, editors of other print publications, and a central news service that anyone else (tv, radio, more print) could read,” Smith told me. “Once we filed to the POOL… that info could go live anywhere. The premise was that we just couldn’t be greedy and publish information from inside the park directly to our own site without first sharing with the POOL so everyone could have it at the same time.

An RTNA rep told us in an interview today that originally, LAPD only wanted one pool and media negotiated to three.

“There was a negotiated resolution to the question of a need for a pool and the extent of a pool,” he said.

One of the first articles that went up on this was from the LA Weekly. Then there was this post, from an Occupy LA blogger. (In retrospect, maybe we should have written a story on this right away.)

Here’s what bothers me. Immediately, this was reported as censorship. Depends on how you look at it. Should they have set up a pool to cover a public event? Not sure. Do you normally need police permission to go beyond police lines at an event? Yes. (Think of crime scenes here) 

That was still not clear to Oaks. He sad he wasn’t clear that press had “unfettered access to the entire area.”

I asked SPJ-LA yesterday if they were concerned with what had happened. They said discussions had taken place, but no official stance.

Oaks, again from our interview, said that LAPD may trying to avoid a repeat of events in 2007 that resulted in a lawsuit against them when reporters got hurt covering a protest.

Press were certainly allowed in the park as police raided, but if they failed to listen to police, they would be subject to arrest. 

Grant Slater was our videographer on the ground, was not arrested. Some of his thoughts, summed up from tweets.

“I watched the pool come and go from the epicenter, whisked on by as i remained. eventually, though, i was led out by the arm.” he tweeted “seemed for a moment that i had better access than pool who were being ferried around.”

But what I saw on Twitter was far from what Grant said happened. I saw fevered claims fueled by the mis-information that pool press was censored, not allowed to tweet or say anything until the raid was over. As far as I know, no one from our team was told explicitly that they could not tweet.

Frank Stoltze, our guy in the pool, tweeted the whole night.

We wrote about this at our liveblog. I tweeted under our official live handle AND my own in an effort to get the incorrect information changed or correct information spread. It was beyond difficult to get that to stick.

In an age where social media rules, what role do we, as media, have to correct the quick and virulent spread of social media? Is it worth pursuing?

The realities of live….covering

Now the nerdy part.

We covered the move by LAPD in two dynamically new ways for us: A Scribble liveblog (a tool we’ve never used before) and livetweeting from a brand new account.

Some stats on the tweeting part that I sent out last night.

We gained 414 followers in less than three days on KPCCLive
We tweeted 560 times
We made 15 lists
We were Retweeted 437 times and @ mentioned 698 times
We possibly reached 2.81 million people

The most difficult part of what we did last night is in the same vein of what I said above. In an effort to be completely transparent and verify as much as we could, I made a decision

I would not RT something that appeared to be a first-person account that was not. There were a lot of people watching livestreams, then tweeting and it was hard to tell who was there. So over time, I built a private list with people who told me, and proved to me that they were actually at the camp. 

I did RT some things from second- and third-person sources, if it was decently clear that it was a RT of a first-person account or a note or press release.

If you look through KPCCLive’s feed you’ll see a lot of me @ messaging people “Were you there? Where was this? Do you have a photo?” I wanted to make sure people know I was trying to verify, so no DMs unless it was sensitive.

If I came across something I found compelling, but could not get confirmation, I old-school RTed with a question (not unlike Andy Carvin’s style).

It was hard to do this on a brand new account. Unlike Andy, I had not spent significant time building up Occupy sources. I probably missed things and good accounts. Next time, we’ll start building that list early if we anticipate live-tweeting something,

On the liveblog, we took in tweets and other info and tried to build it out more with context. We used Campfire to pass info between the team working on the liveblog (thought sometimes I was tweeting and blogging) and myself or who was watching the account.

We came across interesting issues. 

I considered it a service to embed and link to livestreams within the camp. But many were from protestors or activists. There were things said that were biased. Should we promote that? Is it like a RT? Does out audience know the difference?

I talk and write a lot about trusting the audience, so it’s a bit easy to guess my stance on this. But it’s a good point to think over. At what point is something that, regardless of the service, too biased to link to? How do you show your audience that it’s NOT you? There were certainly points where I cringed at what the livestreamers were saying.

—

I’ll try to build out my thoughts more on both of these topics. But if you have questions or things you think we should ponder, give me a shout.

Success is not all-staff e-mails. A plan, a manifesto, a philosophy for engagement

Last night, I couldn’t sleep. I have been reading Seth Godin’s Linchpin lately (highly recommend) and had a rough day. 

So, I wrote in what is now apparently a journal for my work thoughts. I’ll re-write them here, slightly more coherent.

Edit: Read this with your rose-colored glasses on. I’m not saying anyone this in a bad or derisive way. This is not a stab at anyone but myself. Ultimately, the nut graf on this is that I realized I am the one responsible for my own engagement destiny. Waiting for others to get it was a folly. It’s about believing in myself enough to create something awesome without a memo or permission from others. I have room to do this here, and I need to stretch out.

—-

I had a plan six months ago. A plan I thought would change things. I even gave a presentation about it.

It was two-fold. Build a team of mini-evangelists and get buy-in — complete buy-in — from the glass offices. I would send-all staff e-mails of our accomplishments. I would hold meetings.

I talked to people who loved this idea. And while it may still be a great idea, I might be wrong.

Here’s the issue with getting buy-in: No one wants to buy in. I was operating off the idea that everyone cares as much as I do, that all I had to do was show them the light. They are not standing by my desk every morning, waiting for my brilliance. They simply have other things to care about. 

That’s OK. This is my job and not theirs.

When I started, I told worried onlookers that I would never force anyone to tweet. They simply wouldn’t care enough to do a good job of it. I would lightly push and they would come around and I’d be ready when they did.

And that’s just it. What would getting buy-in on a full scale get me? An all-staff dictate no one would read and maybe Poynter (I miss saying Romenesko) would pick up? Does that really change the way anyone does their job? Does that get them engaging with their audience on a real scale?

I stayed up because I realized that I don’t need that. I don’t need someone telling everyone else this is important. They’ll either get it, or they won’t. Six months of singing the praises of what I do and the biggest headway I made has nothing to do with me — it was because the pope started a Twitter account. That’s disappointing. But on the plus side, when I and the people who are as excited a I am shined on a big news day, people noticed. That day, the work, it converted someone. 

No one is paid to care about engagement. I am. Any good therapist will tell you that you cannot change people. You can change you and you can change your reaction.

As for my mini-evangelists? I set up meetings. No one has time for meetings. They want to do work. I thought I’d show up and prod them and they’d have discussions on their successes. Instead, it turns into a Q&A with me. 

I have a new manifesto.

Motivation: I don’t need the approval of three levels above me to succeed.

I am lucky enough to work with an incredibly excited, loving audience and a few excited, engaged reporters/producer. I can’t change others. But I can show them how much they mean to me. How much they can achieve. When we succeed, they’ll care. 

Action: I will create small. I will create often. I will fail often.

I was so focused on getting approval — from the industry, my boss, my newsroom — that I lost sight of what real success is. It’s much smaller than a gigantic project that wins awards. I wanted impact. I wanted to change lives. It’s why I got into the crazy business in the first place.

There is idealism that cost cast aside somewhere around 2 a.m. I can’t change millions. But I can change a few a day. So small projects, as often as I can. if they work, I’ll build on them. I’ll call on people I can rely on to help. It will get bigger. It wil have impact. 

And if they fail? They fail. I’m allowed to fail. Often.

Action: I won’t, I don’t have time for complicated process. 

If it takes longer to think up than it does to do, I can’t do it. Yet.

To create, to build what I want to build can’t stand by the wayside while someone approves an e-mail or paying for that software. 

And some philosophy: This is not about me.

This is a ridiculous line to put in here, but it’s true. There is so much woe is me, in my own life, in journalism, everywhere. 

In some cases, it’s needed.

But this thing I do, which some days is so far beyond the word engagement, this is not about me. 

I’ve written about trusting the audience. It’s time I remember that I’m doing this for the audience. When they love it, I do to. I do this for the thrill of seeing, hearing people love my work as much as I do. I do this because my soul does cartwheels every time we produce a great story that now other people will know about.

I’m getting a little teary-eyed at my desk. This struggle, it got me, it’s put us, for far away from where and why we started.

—

Now I’m going to have some coffee and get to work.

Post-#ONA11 thoughts

I wanted to take a minute to think about the talks I had and the sessions I attended at ONA11. Random and not necessarily journalism-related topics.

Tech is not everything

I’ve had the privilege and honor to be a part of the weekly phenomenon that is #wjchat. And we were lucky enough to get a session at this year’s conference. Thanks to @webjournalist, we had some awesome temporary tattoos to spread around the conference. They spread like wildfire. So did the delicious rice crispy treats at the Disney booth. 

A lot of ONA is about technology and what is coming for newsrooms and journalists themselves, but a lot of it, at least for me, is about re-forging connections in person. I cannot even begin to spout off the list of amazing people I met this weekend, and the people I only get to see once a year, but feel like are some of my best friends. 

The technology is not everything. The technology helps us reach new people, but low-fi things like temporary tattoos that won’t wash off spread the word and face-to-face chats cement the bond. 

That thought is not just personal, but a good reminder for when I get lost in the technology of social networks. I could spend hours looking at code, widgets and metrics. But getting out there, talking to some people and handing out pieces of paper will really make a difference as well. Look at the whole Open Newsroom movement, pioneered by folks at JRC and California Watch.

We need to get on the bus, and get out into the community, as was the message of @acnatta’s “If I were in charge…” pitch.

The user is the driver

I swear to God that I only sort of knew what Matt Thompson and Megan Garber were up to. Yet, somehow, our ideas crossed paths.

It is no longer about the brand, the person, or the entity. It’s about the user.

They’re driving our brands, they’re driving our social media. 

It’s nothing I haven’t written about before (Trust the audience!) but it seemed to come out full-force at ONA11. Not only did @mthomps and @megangarber remind folks that brands cannot be #shelfish, but I pushed social media editors to let go of the notion that we know what our audience will share on networks.

Facebook and Google proved it by blowing up what we knew about news on their platforms. It should be scary, but it’s exciting. We can now get back to really working with our audience and working for them, not just the advertisers.

I’m provoked by the thought that we have access to so much data and the ever-increasing potential to include audiences in our stories. Storify is on the way to releasing new changes and the folks at Chartbeat spoke to me about how much social intelligence I can get from their product. It’s amazing. This can, and probably forever will, change the way we produce journalism.

For some things, there are still no easy answers

I got involved in a long tweet chain between @racialicious and others after the diversity keynote Saturday. 

My point in longer than 140 characters: While as a minority, I appreciate news outlets’ efforts to include diversity, over the years I’ve grown cynical as to how authentic some of these efforts are. I’ve seen news corporations put up rules like “every story must have a diverse source” and “Every front page must have a diverse face.” While it’s a simple way to increase diversity, what if the from page is about farmers and the pope in Iowa? Are you going to force diversity on the page just to fill that quota? In some instances, I think the answer is yes.

And there comes the rub. Newsrooms are being sacked by a call for more diversity — it’s happening in my own newsroom, too. We all want to hire more diverse candidates, include more diverse stories and show the world from a different viewpoint. Why can’t we find the existing diverse staff, have them help us recruit and tell stories that are relevant to the whole community by asking the community what we’re missing? Here’s where this all usually goes wrong. I have been asked — several times — to write stories about Chinese New Year or some other Asian heritage celebration. First off, you are better off by sending someone who can learn from such an event. Second, covering diversity in the form of holidays, events and protests is not covering diversity. 

It’s not an easy problem and I have no easy solutions. But this is not it.

Nor is the issue of how to get more developers into journalism, which I have discussed at length, several times, with the amazing @michelleminkoff. It’s a hard job, pays little and many journo-programmers want to work of data or partially reporting projects, which is understandable. But news sites are in a state of decay and I can’t think of a site that couldn’t use another programmer just to work on making what is there better.  No easy answers there either.

But we need to try. And as was the topic of a whole session, we need to learn to fail better.

Last thought: You need a power strip

Even though I was part of the group that help put together sessions, I still can complain about the lack of power outlets. There were several moments during the conference where all my technology was dead or dying. That is not a good thing when you use them to track where everyone is and you know, maybe get some work done.

The amazing @jenleereeves had a power strip and she made some #powerfriends. She gifted what she had to the rest of the conference and we were grateful. I also leeched some powerstrip time from @NABJDigital and her amazing Griffin Powerstrip of which I need to buy.

What lesson is there in this? Bring a goddamned power strip, because there will never be enough plugs. Which really means: I am constantly blown away by the work done by people who sat two feet away from me. @jonkaj of @tizianoproject is a friend of mine, yet I am in absolute awe by the work he and his team accomplish. In a time when we are supposed to be struggling, there is amazing work being done and amazing work left to be done. The well of hope for web journalism will never dry up. So bring a goddamned power strip and let’s make this disco happen.

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