From CIO: Excerpt with SM reporting example

Interesting excerpt from CIO.com:

How the Cloud Changed World's Oldest Newspaper

It supports the way the Telegraph's business is changing. Wright described how one of the Telegraph's reporters, who was preparing a review of a digital camera, began by posting a picture of the box the device arrived in. Over the course of a couple of weeks, she posted updates of her progress in evaluating the camera, with lots of photos and comments about her experience getting up to speed with it. By the time her final review was written, she had created a group of followers looking forward to the piece. This kind of engagement is the hallmark of social media, and community involvement is the sine qua non of the business environment of the future. Applications that make it easy to publish and support rich involvement via comments and online video help the Telegraph play in the changing world of media, content, and community engagement.

 

Speech notes: Social media at the Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times has been publishing a newspaper since 1881. Let me just let that time frame sink in a bit. Since Dec. 4, 1881, The Times has published every day. For 129 years.

Quick and dirty math: That's more than 45,000 days in a row. Quite a remarkable winning streak.

Much has changed for journalists in the 129 years since. Our front pages are a lot more colorful these days.

(slide of current front page).

And that's just for starters. The changes in the print journalism industry are well documented. The rise of the internet, coupled with a drastic reduction in our print distribution rates ...

have us searching for answers.

One of our strategies has been to look for ways to improve efficiency.

So a year and a half ago we merged our print and online newsrooms. Now our coverage on the web and in the print version is managed by the same people.

And that has changed the way we operate. We used to *only* have two deadlines a day, around 3 p.m. for the features sections, and 11 p.m. for news.

We still have those deadlines, but have added rolling deadlines whenever news breaks -- all day and night.

(slide of 24hr newsroom)

We are doing it with a smaller staff; but it's a more nimble operation. And our metrics folks tell us that more people are reading our journalism than ever. Overwhelming majority of our traffic comes from direct and search engine traffic.

But it's clear that the ground it still shifting underneath us.

And we can't sit back and assume people will continue to type latimes.com into their browsers or even from search engines.

Not when they are spending more and more time on Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks. Not when Nielsen's reporting like it did this week that 22% of all time spent online is on social networks.

So about two years ago we dove in, setting up accounts in just about every social networks you could imagine. Ms. Walter from Intel said earlier, we got a bit distracted by ALL the next shiny objects.

(unhub slides)

And really who knows what might break out of the pack tomorrow.

(woof slide)

So we are reassessing and are in the process of honing it down. Twitter and Facebook.
(Twitter landing slide)
 
We have more than 70 plus official twitter accounts and hundreds of individual accounts.
more than 500,000 followers total, but none greater than the 66,000 on our main @latimes twitter account

And nearly 50 facebook fan pages, with about 50,000 fans, 15,000 on our main Los Angeles Times page

Some are currated by editors, some are fed by RSS feeds, some are a combination.
We are in the process of trying to come up with the best recipe, prioritizing, strategizing and working out ways to measure success on these platforms.
Suveyed our newsroom for  twitter accounts: and about 230 of our 500 plus newsroom staffers had twitter accounts.
Starting an education process to bring along the rest of the people ... and help people with accounts be more active. Creating basic How to Twitter for the Times explainers for those who need it.
We do have quite a few savvy Pioneers in the newsroom. Polled some of our most active social media users, asking for success stories. Here are some examples.
--Ultimate news tip service, California staff has gotten social media tips that have produced at least a dozen front page stories in the last year

--michelle obama  Someone tweeted after seeing her at Pink's. We called the hot dog stand -- and yes, she had been there. (eating a mild polish sausage w/ grilled onions and jalapenos). 

--From one of our columnists: I find Twitter more useful and informative than email. Email is jammed w spam and 98 percent I toss but Twitter following the right people I get lots of tips, info and impt links.

--From one of our business reporters: I'm followed by many industry sources and executives and my tweets and their tweets (geez, I hate that word), has led to stories and better relationships. Even just tweeting about sporting events I'm watching has brought me closer to some sources who have the same interests.find out more quickly when scooped

--personal engagement most effective. Just like in real life, building trusting relationships with sources. Mark Horvath example
--great success with our Festival of Books twitter account. Really became a phenom last year, started using the hashtag #LATfob and carried over.
We are also trying to improve reader engagement on our own site.
A couple quick examples:
--Neighborhood pages, give people in LA County the opportunity to explore our maps and share information about the places they live
--More live chats on our Readers Representative Journal blog.
Basically we are trying to make the best use of all the tools available -- both on and off our site -- to negotiate these uncertain times.

It's heartening to know that story is a story no matter the delivery method. And some things never change.

For instance:
Check out on of the top headlines in that first Times print edition on Dec. 4, 1881. Not hard to imagine this as a tweet.

A Vial of Vitriol

An unknown scoundrel hurls it on a crowd

The Fiery Fluid Burns Men, Women and Children -- A Fiendish Crime at a Carnival in Philadelphia.