Curious on the Road

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/regret-the-error/214484/since-twitter-hasnt-built-a-correction-feature-here-are-3-things-journalists-can-do-instead/

Craig Silverman at Poynter argues we shouldn’t keep waiting for a Twitter feature to help us deal with misinformation in case of big events such as the Boston marathon bombings. His most useful tip is the first one:

“It’s not the kind of news product the vast majority of the public grew up with. People now see the sausage being made, and receive conflicting information. In many cases, I imagine, they feel overwhelmed, confused and frustrated.”

One of the solutions: transparency, transparency, transparency. We need to get better at telling people what we know, how we know it, how sure we are of it, and what we’re still trying to figure out. The challenge is not on Twitter, but on all of us spreading news through their network.

(Thanks to Bildblog for pointing this story out)

“On the one hand, social media has become so central to a newsroom’s mission that dedicated functionaries may be obsolete. On the other, doesn’t every outlet need a boy or girl wonder to lend a human touch to the Twitter handle?”

Read the story for a great summary of the changes in social journalism from the tactical questions of what to tweet when to the strategic ones, which are much more fun to think about anyway.

(via the always-smart Craig Kanalley)

The new books about blogging.

When he would tell his story, “It made people walk away wanting to be better people, to care more, to remember not only the Holocaust but to remember that we can never be indifferent,” a friend remembers.

Cory Bergman of Breaking News writes that news organizations’ mobile efforts should aim to “solve problems” for readers.

breakingblog:

To me, the two-year experiment at The Daily — which we should all applaud — signals a bigger challenge.  Mobile is not merely another form factor, but an entirely new ecosystem that rewards utility.  To succeed, companies must solve consumers’ problems.

A smart summary of four key obstacles the iPad magazine “The Daily” struggled with. Be sure to read through to the conclusion.

Vorher:

Während die Lohnentwicklung im oberen Bereich positiv steigend war, sind die unteren Löhne in den vergangenen zehn Jahren preisbereinigt gesunken. Die Einkommensspreizung hat zugenommen.

Nachher:

Sinkende Reallöhne sind Ausdruck struktureller Verbesserungen am Arbeitsmarkt.

Beispiel 2:

Vorher:

Allerdings arbeiteten im Jahr 2010 in Deutschland knapp über vier Mio. Menschen für einen Bruttostundenlohn von unter sieben Euro.

Nachher: Nichts. Passge wurde gestrichen.

Einkommensverteilung in Deutschland - Bundesregierung schönt Armutsbericht - Politik - Süddeutsche.de

via egghat

Meet the founder of DuckDuckGo, a search engine that prides itself on not tracking users and hopes to attract those who are feeling creeped out by Google.

The new sexism, ironically.

Smart thoughts on social storytelling from Kim Bui.

bui:

I’ve followed UpWorthy for awhile (particularly after a friend said it was a viral startup that actually got news). I read Buzzfeed, too.

What strikes me about it, and this aligns with this Nieman article, is that it’s not about the easy viral story, it’s the viral story that matters to people. And the social bit here is that they plan social.

It’s not ”We wrote this story, now make it go viral via social media.” There is no false ploy to the audience for engagement to make something hopefully resonate with that audience. In an age of digital-first, I think Upworthy (and Buzzfeed) aims to be social-first.

I realize Upworthy is not writing stories. But they are taking stories, making photos, infographics, etc that make the story social without taking away the meaning of it.

I will argue until I am blue in the face that while it is fun to do Storifys about where the best taco in LA is (something I actually did), the opportunity has always been to figure out what about tacos resonates with your audience and write the story with that in mind.

This is the reverse of how many newsrooms operate. We do not produce meaningful content on social. We produce content, and then tack some strange engagement piece onto it to make it social. A thoughtful story about the history of cherry trees is D.C becomes “show us your cherry blossoms.”

Just because people enjoy posting photos of their cat on Instagram does not mean that we must make cat photos on Instagram into news. We should figure out what makes those cat photos do well and apply that lesson to things that matter.

Really, in a way, this is what makes Upworthy different than Buzzfeed. Now the question is, why can’t the rest of us do that?

Hurricane Sandy is messing with early voting in the DC region, reports WJLA:

Voters waited in lines for up to five and a half hours to cast their ballot. Voters and election officials say they’ve never seen anything like it.

Early voting continues until Saturday, Nov. 3.

Memes are all over the election campaign and are changing who gets to define a candidate’s message. “Local reporters and national reporters thought [the phrase ‘You didn’t build that’] was pretty minor, or nothing,” commentator Dave Weigel told Amanda Hess at Poynter. Then it went viral - and became a monthlong talking point.

Now campaigns don’t have to worry about their own gaffes and misspeakings alone, but also about to the hive mind of Internet users everywhere to seize on one phrase and keep passing it along in hundreds of iterations.

Part of the reason these short-lived jokes get so much attention, Hess argues, is that many highly engaged voters and journalists are multitasking while following debates and rallies. That makes it more likely that they’ll notice and grab onto something superficial and funny, however irrelevant that is on the grand scale.

There’s another reason memes spread so far and wide into news coverage, though. It’s really easy to find them. One look at Twitter’s “trending topics” gives you at least two or three highly discussed phrases on any debate night or rally.

Twitter claims that more than half of the messages sent during the third Presidential debate were about the economy. But even millions of messages about the same topic are very difficult to track if they all happen disparately, using different terms and phrases. One catchphrase like “horses and bayonets” however, is highly visible. Both users and reporters will therefore continue to spread the memes.

Twitter would do well to get better at surfacing the more in-depth conversations happening on the service if it doesn’t want to be associated only with an insidery meme culture. Journalists, too, need to wonder whom they’re serving by covering these viral jokes.

Because the question is, do memes swing any votes? Hess is not so sure.