3rd lecture to MA students at City University

1. Paul Bradshaw
City University, UK
Publisher, Online Journalism Blog
Founder, Help Me Investigate.com
Why social capital is the
currency of the web
(and how to start investing)

2. “If you enter the jobs market without
one, no matter how good your
degree, you’re increasingly likely to
lose out to people who better present
all they can do, and have the
experience of creating and curating
their own site.”
Neil McIntosh, The Guardian (now at WSJ). See also: http://bit.ly/dA6KEj

3. But first: Do me a favour.
No, really.

4. Blogging = sharing

7. “This is the number one asset of the news
organization: stored trust, reputational capital. Any
competent journalist knows how to benefit from
that: your calls get returned… like magic! But as to
how that capital is created, or the transaction of
trust that involves people and their connection to
the news, the professional journalist is minimally
involved.
"We start telling students in graduate school they
won’t “have” credibility unless they meet
professional standards and obey the rules, but this
tends to be interpreted as: “if we obey the rules of
journalism, and meet the standards of our peers,
then we have credibility.” And that is not true.
Jay Rosen, http://archive.pressthink.org/2005/01/21/berk_essy.html

8. “(Your peers may have the wrong standards.) If it
were true, having a wall of journalism prizes would
be equivalent to having the public’s trust.
"John Hiler observed: “For bloggers, it’s all about
trust too: except weblogs are starting from zero,
building their reputations from the ground up. Blog
responsibly, and you’ll build a reputation for being a
trusted news source. Don’t, and you won’t have a
reputation to worry about.”
Jay Rosen, http://archive.pressthink.org/2005/01/21/berk_essy.html

9. “Here is one advantage bloggers have in the
struggle for reputation— for the user’s trust. They
are closer to the transaction where trust gets built
up on the Web. There’s a big difference between
tapping a built-up asset, like the St. Pete Times
“brand,” and creating it from scratch. Bloggers are
“building their reputations from the ground up,” as
Hiler said, and to do this they have to focus on
users. They have to be in dialogue. They have to
point to others and say: listen to him! The
connection between what they do and whether they
are trusted is much alive and apparent. In
journalism that connection has been harder to find
lately. Journalists don’t know much about it. They
do know their rules, though..”
Jay Rosen, http://archive.pressthink.org/2005/01/21/berk_essy.html

10. Editorial advantages
Commercial advantages
Professional advantages

11. Conversational
Incomplete
Informal

12. Leave your virtual office.
Comment. Meet.

13. Behind the scenes
Running story
Niche blog

14. A platform for what your
community wants to do.

15. Blog
Vlog
Podcast
Photoblog
Moblog
Liveblog
Linkblog
Tumblelog
Microblogging

16. 10 ideas for blog posts
1. Respond
2. Interview
3. Event
4. Question
5. Fight
6. Reflect
7. Visual
8. List
9. How-to
10.Guest post

17. "We can fact check your ass."

18. SMO:
(Social Media Optimisation)

22. 75% of online news consumers get
news from links in emails & social
sites. 52% share links via social
media (Pew)
Of those who use social sites, 49%
used Facebook for news. 20% used
Twitter. (Ken Doctor)
Bit.ly links driving 2bn visits per
month
WSJ – 7% from social sites; El
Universal (Mexico City) – 15%
Nieman Reports

23. “[Some editors] encourage – in some
cases, even mandate – that reporters
and writers promote their stories
(and themselves) routinely through
social media.”
Ken Doctor, Nieman Reports

24. • Social valuable
• Financially valuable
• Emotionally valuable
• Unique? First? Connected?
What is worth sharing?

28. A website is not a
distribution
strategy

29. link

31. Lab
1. Identify potential sources online
2. Make contact and meet
3. Blog your whole process – piece by
piece. Not a finished narrative.

32. Links
OnlineJournalismClasses.tumblr.com
Delicious.com/paulb/cityoj03
OnlineJournalismBlog.com