Digital Journal ‘Power User’ list features top contributors in global crowdsourcing project

Nov 7, 2011 // by admin // Media blog // No Comments

Digital Journal, a global digital media network, today published a comprehensive list of the 20 most active contributors for the month of October. The data was published as part of an ongoing crowdsourcing project that tracks and reports how Digital Journalists, bloggers and citizen journalists interact in a newsroom.

In September, Digital Journal launched a massive gamification project that tracks and reports the activity of contributors across the media network. Recording actions such as quantity of articles published, frequency of visit and level of engagement, Digital Journal rewards points and badges to individual contributors based on how active they are. The members who stay the most active in the month are then rewarded with a “Power Users” badge.

“When we launched our gamification project in September, we expected to see some interesting results because we are recording virtually every move made by our contributors each month,” said Chris Hogg, CEO, Digital Journal. “When we looked back through the data, we were really happy to see such a diverse group of contributors from around the world take home the coveted Power Users badge.”

In addition to creating incentive for contributors to participate in the social news network, Digital Journal’s gamification project aims to showcase talent and create a level of transparency that gives a completely open look at how people interact with a news organization and how user-generated content is valuable in the wider news ecosystem.

“We’re as much a technology company as we are a media company, and this project really aims to marry the two so we can rely on data to identify key contributors across the world,” said Hogg. “Most newsrooms have no idea how productive or hard-working some of their employees are, but this initiative gives us a granular look at how every one of our members and contributors interacts with us in real-time.”

In no particular order, Digital Journal’s October 2011 Power Users include:

Digital Journal compiles data on a monthly basis and resets the points with the beginning of each month when a new competition begins. More info on Digital Journal’s gamification project can be found on the company’s website here.

About Digital Journal:

Digital Journal is a global digital media network with 33,000+ professional and citizen journalists, bloggers, photographers and freelancers in 200 countries around the world. Regarded as a pioneer and leader in crowd-sourcing and user-generated content, Digital Journal is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Digital Journal also consults news organizations on how to empower their audience to acquire content, drive revenue and increase engagement from digital media properties. For more information, visit digitaljournal.com.

Digital Journal offers editorial blueprint for newsroom success

Aug 16, 2011 // by admin // Media blog // No Comments

Our sister site, Digital Journal, issued the following press release this morning:

After receiving widespread praise for its Global Editorial Meetings, Digital Journal today released feedback to give newsrooms and editors a chance to hear about the types of content people are looking for.

Throughout the month of July, Digital Journal hosted online story meetings that were open to the public. The live-chat discussions invited reporters, citizen journalists, bloggers and average news consumers into the editorial process to help shape the coverage being produced by Digital Journal. Participants were invited to provide input on the type of content of interest to them.

Participants interacted with Digital Journal editors and management to express their thoughts on stories and topics they believe were under-reported; emerging trends and topics that needed more media attention; and geographies and local stories that were being missed by the press. Readers chatted live and responded to polls and questions, and that feedback was used to assign stories to thousands of contributors via Digital Journal’s content assignment technology.

“We learned a lot about what people look for in a news site, and we were surprised by some of the feedback we got,” said Digital Journal CEO, Chris Hogg. “One of the most interesting things we noticed was that local content matters to people, but those people are also likely to read local content from other regions if the right context is provided. Several people told us they will read foreign news coverage if it’s presented to them through a single content source, and they really enjoy reading about news from other cities.”

Several key themes surfaced in the Global Editorial Meetings, including:

Local content is widely sought-out by news consumers, but the majority are also interested in local stories from other geographies when context is provided.

Readers are increasingly turning to social media sites to discover new information, following content feeds from media organizations on Twitter and Facebook because they are often curated and timelier than a website.
Readers view their social media friends as content sources, often citing their social circles as sources of information.
When a major or developing story breaks, a large percentage of online news consumers turn to their social media circles to validate information and to get updates rather than turning to a specific news site. Readers will often follow a story as it breaks on Twitter and Facebook, and then look for validated information from news sources after.
Several readers want to see more investigative journalism and original work in the mainstream press and less content from wire services.
A large percentage of readers enjoy reading opinion pieces, even if it’s an opinion contrary to their own sentiments.
Most readers want to see more editorial coverage from regions such as South America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Several readers said they hope to learn more about these regions beyond the typical headlines that come from these areas.
When it comes to content verticals, several readers said they want more business, science, and environmental news, regardless of the geography from which a story originates.
Readers want to see more photography with news stories, citing preferences for photo essays and on-the-ground reports filled with high-quality visuals.

In addition to these overall themes, participants also noted that while a lot of the news they read informs them about what’s happening around them, deeper context is often missing in news articles in the mainstream press. That is especially true when it comes to discussions on the debt crisis and global financial markets, readers said. In addition, readers said geographies such as Africa and the Middle East are often in the news because of conflict occurring in those regions, but they believe media outlets need to do a better job of explaining the various sides of a story, such as who is involved, historical context and why the story should matter to them.

“Digital Journal is well-known for giving a voice to anyone who wants to take part in the news-gathering process,” said Hogg. “Learning from our readers, as well as people who are just discovering us as a news source, helps us improve our news offering and I would encourage every newsroom to start experimenting by bringing their readers behind the curtain to involve them in the everyday process of reporting news.”

Full transcripts from Digital Journal’s Global Editorial Meetings are available on request.

About Digital Journal:

Digital Journal is a global digital media network with 32,000 professional and citizen journalists, bloggers, photographers and freelancers in 200 countries around the world. Regarded as a pioneer and leader in crowd-sourcing and user-generated content, Digital Journal is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Digital Journal also consults news organizations on how to empower their audience to acquire content, drive revenue and increase engagement from digital media properties. For more information, visit digitaljournal.com.

Digital Journal commended for opening newsroom story meetings to the public

Aug 16, 2011 // by admin // Media blog // No Comments

Our sister site, Digital Journal, issued the following press release this morning:

Digital Journal, a global digital media network with contributors in 200 countries, reported a strong response to its series of Global Editorial Meetings, ushering in a new precedent for how newsrooms interact with their audience and how editorial content is produced.

Online story meetings were open to the public, taking place throughout July. The live-chat discussions invited reporters, citizen journalists, bloggers and average news consumers into the editorial process to help shape the coverage produced by Digital Journal. Participants were invited to provide input on the type of content of interest to them.

“In an age where people go online to find content appealing to their tastes, it’s important for news organizations to adapt and ensure their editorial process aligns with reader interests,” said Digital Journal CEO, Chris Hogg. “By opening up our story meetings to the public, we provided a platform for people everywhere to tell us what they care about. We received a lot of great feedback that will allow us to target geographies and stories we know people care about.”

During the Global Editorial Meetings, participants interacted with Digital Journal editors to express their thoughts on stories and topics they believe were under-reported in the media; emerging trends and topics that needed more media attention; and geographies and local stories missed by the press. Readers chatted live and responded to polls and questions, and that feedback was used to assign stories to thousands of contributors via Digital Journal’s content assignment technology.

Several participants said they enjoy reading and contributing to Digital Journal because of the variety of content.

“I like Digital Journal because it gives me a mix of everything,” said Denise, a reader based in the UK. “I enjoy visiting a news site that offers me news I want to read from my location but also something else.”

Kim was also fond of Digital Journal’s diverse editorial mix. “I like a variety of hard-hitting news and politics as well as the odd news and light-hearted stuff, the same mix as Digital Journal provides,” she said.

Participants were very happy to have the opportunity to participate in a discussion about what is newsworthy and what stories they felt were not being covered by international press. Participants were also happy to have an opportunity to speak directly with Digital Journal staff members.

Pulling back the curtain and offering the public a chance to take part in the news-gathering process has earned Digital Journal kudos and praise from people all over the world.

“Thank you [Digital Journal] for great moderation, openness, and opportunity for feedback,” said Sam Halaby.

“Thanks for asking us what we think,” wrote Darren W. “Don’t see that often in the media.”

Full transcripts from Digital Journal’s Global Editorial Meetings are available on request.

Digital Journal will also be publishing an editorial summary to provide media organizations with an overview of the type of content average readers enjoy consuming, as well as input on how to improve online news coverage. The summary can be found here.

About Digital Journal:

Digital Journal is a global digital media network with 32,000 professional and citizen journalists, bloggers, photographers and freelancers in 200 countries around the world. Regarded as a pioneer and leader in crowd-sourcing and user-generated content, Digital Journal is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Digital Journal also consults news organizations on how to empower their audience to acquire content, drive revenue and increase engagement from digital media properties. For more information, visit digitaljournal.com.

Digital Journal launches Global Editorial Meetings, story meetings opened up to public

Jul 5, 2011 // by admin // Media blog // No Comments

Our sister site, Digital Journal, made a big editorial announcement today. To keep you up-to-date, we’ve included a press release below:

Digital Journal today announced a new community newsroom initiative aimed at widening the scope of news covered globally, and involving the public in the news creation process.

Dubbed “Global Editorial Meetings,” these online chat story meetings are open to the public and hosted on Digital Journal.

“Every news organization has story meetings,” said Chris Hogg, CEO of Digital Journal. “But traditionally they happen behind closed doors, with a selected group of individuals deciding what everyone should be reading. We want to change that to see how editorial direction will shift by opening up these meetings to the public. Starting this month, our Global Editorial Meetings will allow everyone to share details on what kind of stories we should be covering, and what stories are going unnoticed in the press.”

As a hybrid news network that combines professional journalists with citizen journalists and bloggers, Digital Journal has always taken a forward-thinking approach to journalism. The company has successfully crowdsourced thousands of story ideas from a large and growing contributor base and held liveblog workshops on journalistic practices. With Global Editorial Meetings, Digital Journal is going one step further to open up these meetings to give an editorial voice to literally everyone.

In the Global Editorial Meetings, Digital Journal staff members and editors will chat live with readers, journalists, bloggers, photographers and passionate news junkies about important stories and topics from their city, province/state or country.

Conversation will focus on multiple geographies and news verticals, and particular attention will be focused on stories the public believes are being under-reported.

After these Global Editorial Meetings are complete, Digital Journal will use feedback and input to assign stories to thousands of Digital Journalists around the world. The company will use its Assignments technology to create, track and organize a massive editorial project to provide the public with content it wants.

The first Global Editorial Meeting will take place on July 11 at 9 a.m. (Eastern time), and the second will happen July 21 at 2 p.m. (Eastern time). A third Global Editorial Meeting will take place on July 28 at 8 p.m. (Eastern time). The live chat conversations will use Cover It Live and anyone can participate.

To participate in a chat, visit the Digital Journal Global Editorial Meetings group and click on the blog post for the day(s) you wish to attend. You can set a reminder for yourself on the embedded chat widget inside each post.

“Our goal is to get our finger on the pulse of the world,” said David Silverberg, Managing Editor of Digital Journal. “Combining the public’s voice with the Digital Journal platform to create, assign and publish content is a really powerful marriage. We hope to be able to get a much better sense of what people find important, and then deliver that information to Digital Journalists who can make sure those voices are being heard by providing coverage of all those topics.”

“Digital Journal is recognized as a pioneer in the news industry for bringing in everyday people as reporters,” said Hogg. “We want to continue to lead by example, and so we’re opening up our newsrooms and giving the public a forum in which they can be heard.”

Advice column: Is citizen journalism a reaction to biased reporting and infotainment?

Mar 16, 2011 // by admin // Blog // 120 Comments

Citizen Journalism

We’ve introduced a new advice column featuring questions and answers relating to journalism, new media, user-generated content, local news, and anything else we cover in our blog or get asked about. If you have a question for a future column, please contact us.

Question: Is journalism shifting back to the people (bloggers/Internet denizens)? It seems [to me] that people may be getting frustrated with how the news is being obviously spun or being sold as infotainment. Or is it just becoming more obvious?

– Trent Wilkie in Edmonton, Alberta

Answer: Thanks for the question Trent, and you certainly picked a topic that could easily be debated for hours.

We think it’s important to note balance, or how news is presented, varies widely from city to city, outlet to outlet, country to country. While there are certainly a number of people who feel their news is biased or lacking in substance, we want to be sure to distinguish there are a number of differences depending who you read for news or even what you consider to be news in the first place. Not all news media are going the route of pushing celebrity gossip or political spin so we wouldn’t apply that blanket statement to all media.

With that caveat intro, it’s also difficult to say definitely if journalism is returning to The People. It’s really not a new trend.

Citizen journalism

Citizen journalists and bloggers have long been reporting the news from their communities, even before CNN’s iReport or OhMyNews in South Korea began.

In the 1960s especially, people reported on government strong-arm tactics via underground newspapers and magazines, often unsupported by mainstream media. Furthermore, people wrote accounts on bulletin boards before they could get their own blogs. In this sense, citizen journalism is not new.

You’re correct in assuming the trend toward user-generated content in news is becoming more obvious (Disclosure: our sister site, Digital Journal, is a user-generated media network). Many news outlets are looking at ways to complement their coverage with reports from their audience. How many times have we seen our local broadcast ask us to submit photos and stories from this or that event/crisis? In the past, those user-generated reports were slapped with an “amateur footage” label, but we see that less often as media organizations attempt to fold their audience into their newsroom to varying degrees.

We’re now in the age of the “audience formerly known as the people,” as media critic Jay Rosen once put it.

We always advise media outlets to not just talk to their fans, but engage them in the media process. The result is a large pool of sources, more content and a highly engaged readership that has a reason to regularly return to their specific media outlet. Also, we’ve seen how bloggers and citizen journalists are winning credit for digging up stories that fall through the cracks, no matter where they post the news.

Bias, infotainment and spin

Regarding your point on “infotainment,” we definitely do hear a lot from people who are frustrated with the trend. We heard heard many people they are no longer following their favourite media outlet simply because of this cheapening of news.

That said, it also depends on what medium we’re talking about. On the Web, readers can pick and choose what they want to consume; in print they can thumb through a magazine or newspaper to skip over content that isn’t of interest (even though Justin Bieber might dominate the front page instead of an important story from the Middle East); but on television and radio the listener/viewer must follow along with the format chosen by line-up editors and producers. Infotainment plays a different role in different mediums, but live-broadcast mediums could arguably be a more frustrating user experience in this case because the news consumer has no choice but to sit through and watch or listen even if the content is not of interest.

In our experience talking with news consumers, we find more people are turning to the Web to get their daily digest of news because they can filter content (infotainment or otherwise) very quickly. In fact, these days more people get their news from the Web than traditional printed sources.

When it comes to “spin” in news, we also think this really depends who you watch and where you live. Anecdotally speaking, we hear about spin and bias in reporting most often from Americans who say politicization and polarization has trickled into news lineups.

The topic of bias in journalism is as old as the craft itself, but we think the trend of including more opinionated news as part of a daily news offering is emerging because people do actually want to consume news that falls in-line with their interests or political beliefs. The Web is helping people find those specialized news outlets, too.

If you look at American programs and personalities such as Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann or Bill Maher (to name just a few), their opinionated voices have been added to the daily news lineup to offer audiences something other than hard news reporting. These shows have been given more exposure through networks because people do in fact tune-in and watch. Just because they’re on the air, however, doesn’t mean news is becoming more biased or politicized. They’re just shows that are part of the line-up and viewers know what to expect when they tune in. If they want hard news journalism, news organizations have countless other programs that cover that.

Today, no matter what type of news is being delivered (hard news, opinion, infotainment, bias or one-sided political Op-Eds), the simple fact is that there are a lot of choices for consumers and they can go anywhere to consume news or information that matters to them. When news junkies get frustrated by the production by their once-favourite news outlet, they turn elsewhere. It’s that simple.

- Future of Media editorial team

[Photo credit: Quinn Dombrowski]