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Republic ignites innovative thinking Who would ever think that stealing ideas would lead to more ideas? Employees of The Arizona Republic held their first Ignite Republic Media event Wednesday, July 22 in downtown Phoenix. According to The Arizona Republic’s Allisence Chang, the Ignite concept originated in Portland. Phoenix stole the idea, then the Republic stole it. “And we hope someone steals the idea from us, so that the fire keeps spreading,” said Chang. The Ignite concept has spread to cities like New York City, Denver, Boston and Orlando.
The purpose of Ignite is to share what people are passionate about, learn about new things and make connections. Its initiative is to spark engagement and innovation through building workplace community. The Ignite experience brings together a group of speakers who each present 20 PowerPoint slides that automatically rotate every 15 seconds. According to IgnitePhoenix.org, it is “a rapid-fire experience that aims to inspire, educate, and entertain”. A few weeks beforehand, a call for submissions was sent out. Everyone in the company
Hundreds of Gannett employees attended the Ignite Republic Media event.
JULY 2009
was invited to submit a topic that they wanted to talk passionately about. Ten dynamic presentations were selected. The fast pace of Ignite keeps boredom at bay and gives people the opportunity to speak about what interests them empowered both the speakers and the audience to think beyond the status quo. If you only had five minutes on stage to talk about what you’re passionate about, what would you say? Speakers at Ignite Republic Media had no shortage of things to talk about: the importance of community service, marrying social media with advertising, using wikis in the workplace. With titles like “From Dock to Driveway: How the newspaper gets to the customer”, and “What Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones and Van Halen can teach you about headlines”, speakers kept the audience entertained and informed. Jeff Moriarty, co-founder of Ignite Phoenix, helped bring the Ignite concept to The Arizona Republic. “The point of Ignite is to break down barriers,” Moriarty said. “Ignite is an engine for innovation.” “I’m happy to see we have people inside the building who can think outside the box. It’s comforting,” said Robin Phillips. After attending an Ignite Phoenix event, Andrew Long brought the idea to a newsroom innovation group, and then he, Phillips and Chang, along with Chris George, continued on page 2
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Classifieds scam alert
We have been made aware of a new phone scam occurring in a few markets. Late Monday afternoon, The News-Enterprise, Elizabethtown, Ky. was made aware of an attempted phone scam involving classified advertising customers of the newspaper. Several classified customers reported being contacted by telephone by individuals falsely identifying themselves as an employee of the advertising department. The customers were informed by the caller that a payment problem had occurred with their advertisement appearing in the newspaper. The caller then asked for the customers’ credit card number or their checking account transaction routing number.
We suggest that you run a notice similar to the one below in a prominent location of the main body of the paper, the classified section AND also online as quickly as possible. “We would like to inform you, as our readers and classified advertisers, of these attempted scam calls. Local police have been informed of the fraudulent calls. If you have recently placed a classified advertisement in the newspaper and receive a call as described above, please do not provide any credit card or banking information to the caller. Contact the newspaper at {insert phone number] for verification of any payment problem or to report the scam attempt.
Cronkite School to host 2010 CAR Conference
Join IRE and NICAR in Phoenix for the 2010 Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference. The annual event, which offers hands-on training, panels on the latest trends and insight into cutting-edge developments, will be hosted by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University from March 11-14. The 2010 CAR Conference will give you the tools you need to dig deeper into stories and give readers, viewers and your online audience the information they’re demanding. It will offer something for everyone, from beginners to those with years of experience. The training provided at the conference helps journalists stay ahead in a competitive environment and will give you skills employers are looking for. Registration and hotel information will be posted at http://www.ire.org, closer to the event date.
Ignite Republic Media continued from page 1 approached management with the idea of starting Ignite Republic Media. In addition to creating a learning environment, management hoped the event would help foster idea exchange and boost morale. According to Kevin Dawson, who helped put on the event, “The point is to connect people and ideas. We’re all a big circle.” “The spirit of community is what Ignite is all about,” said Moriarty. Attendance was voluntary. More than 300 Republic employees, including reporters, advertising representative, accounting clerks, circulation and people from almost every department attended or watched remotely via a broadcast on the company’s intranet. According to Long, “Innovation can be taught.” He said, “We can’t sit in our cubicles and innovate alone. We must seek diversity. Get out of the newsroom. Talk to different people.” Chang says she is thankful that the Republic “understands how important it is to have passion in the workplace.” She said the event went so well that they plan to hold another one in three or four months. “I hope it’s an indication of exciting stuff to come,” said George.
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SPJ’s ‘After Deadline’ meets tomorrow
It all begins at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, July 30. Join the Valley of the Sun Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and AZMediaBuzz for this month’s exciting After Deadline mixer. The month’s guest speakers are from the City of Tempe: Communication and Media Relations Director Nikki Ripley and Community Development Marketing Specialist Kristina Baxter; and from the private sector: Doron Krinetz, principal of Graphique Communications Design. The topic is the innovative use and growing importance of social media in city government and private industry. Enjoy drinks (on you) and appetizers (sponsored by SPJ Phoenix) at Sidebar, 1514 N. 7th Ave, 2nd Floor (above Starbucks), Phoenix. Centrally located, it was voted one of the Top 10 coolest places by Phoenix Magazine with great drink specials and plenty of parking.
Cronkite New Media Academy launches second session The Cronkite New Media Academy is a special program for adults who want to understand how communication is changing and how to set up and maintain a fully functional, multimedia-rich Web site. Demand for the first academy, held in the summer of 2009, was so great that the academy filled and a waiting list was established. A second academy is planned for Sept. 12 through Nov. 14. The academy is held at the Cronkite School’s new state-of-the-art building in downtown Phoenix. It consists of 10 full days of training and is held on consecutive Saturdays. Class size is limited to 20. Participants learn how to design and develop a Web site, how to effectively present and edit photos for the Web, how to use social networking tools, how to create Web-based graphics, how to do podcasting and audio slideshows, and how to edit and use video on the Web. At the end of the program, participants have fully developed Web sites suitable for professional or personal use. All sessions are taught by trained Cronkite School professionals in small digital media labs, with an emphasis on practical hands-on training. The cost for the full 10 days of training is $2,000. A 10 percent discount is available for ANA members, ASU employees, alumni and students. Individuals who want to attend part, but not all, of the academy may do so at a reduced price. Registration is online at http://cronkite.asu.edu/newmedia.
Cronkite New Media Academy Saturdays kick-start your launch your Sept 12-Nov 14 Web site own business 8 a.m.-5 p.m. advance your Register now career
new media For more information or to register: cronkite.asu.edu/newmedia You do not need to be a registered ASU student to attend the New Media Academy.
555 N. Central Ave. Phoenix, Ariz. 85004-1248 602.496.555 cronkite.asu.edu/newmedia
July 2009 ■ ANAgrams
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The new (lower) cost of news Wayne MacPhail MediaShift What does journalism cost? That’s a question that’s being batted around a lot lately as the economic case for and against traditional newsrooms gets made in the press, on the web, and certainly across well-polished boardroom tables. In an article on J-Source, Kirk LaPointe, managing editor of the Vancouver Sun, argued that when the cost of news is sliced and diced a lot of pricey items like infrastructure, IT, HR, salespeoples’ salaries, legal fees, marketing, etc. aren’t tossed into the mix. He’s right, running a regular old-school newsroom is expensive and goes far beyond journalists’ pay envelopes. The Globe and Mail’s cleaning staff wages, for example, are probably the same as the salaries of everybody at This Magazine, twice over. Spelling Out the Low End But, to me, LaPointe isn’t making a case for how expensive news gathering must be. He’s just itemizing the upper limit. So, to balance that model out, let’s examine the low end: Rabble.ca. I’m on the board of Rabble and get to see the balance sheets, which I will share with you now. Last year Rabble ran its entire national news operation on a budget of $203,140.41. That’s all in: salaries, travel, marketing, IT, redesign -- the whole frugal ball of wax. The nine folks who get paid most often get paid for just one day of work per week. They all get the same salary, from editor to podcast network producer to publisher. And, they all work a ridiculous number of volunteer hours
and, more often, days per week. Many more folks across Canada volunteer serious time each week posting to blogs, consulting, doing graphic design or the hundreds of other tasks that make an online news site tick, day after day, year after year. All that effort doesn’t get counted in the balance sheet. If it did, it would be under the tab marked “Gift Economy” or perhaps the one marked “Cognitive Surplus.” Neither of those categories, I’d wager, appear on the spreadsheet LaPointe used to calculate the costs of doing the news business in the old school way. It is clear that the model outlined by LaPointe is failing and is not sustainable -- for all sorts of reasons, only some of which reside with the newsrooms themselves. A centralized, non-virtual newsroom with infrastructure, delivery and production costs isn’t cutting it in many markets. It just can’t generate the kinds of return on investment shareholders want to see these days.
It’s also clear that the Rabble.ca model isn’t sustainable, or, at least, fair and scalable. Staff and volunteers contribute willingly to the gift economy that makes rabble run. But, that is a fragile well to drink from for a sustained period, especially during an economic drought. And, while we have depended upon the kindness of nonstrangers, the gift/ reward ratio needs to tilt a little more in their favor. Finding the Sweet Spot So, there are sustainability issues on both ends of the economic scale: traditional newsrooms at one extreme, Rabble-style models at the other. But I’d argue the sweet spot, that marvellous, magical mix of altruism, recognition, ego-satisfaction and cash-for-effort that can sustain a news venture is much closer to the Rabble side of the spectrum. So, if you want to find a model for a workable future news organization, it’s probably in our neck of the woods. And, I think it’s going to be far easier for Rabble and its supporters (and future supporters) to slide Rabble up the scale a bit towards the sweet spot than it will be for newspapers with all their baggage to become frictionless enough to slide down. I don’t argue with LaPointe’s view of the true cost of traditional newsrooms. But, there is a big difcontinued on page 5
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The cost of news continued from page 4 ference between what news has cost and what news has to cost. And, biased though I am, I think Rabble and other news organizations that depend on the power of the crowd and the gifts of the like-minded and which have harnessed and focused the renewable energy of concerned citizens are closer to a modern media model than anything else I’ve seen. I think we need to think about news the way some of us have come to think about produce. We should grow our own and think local. We should cover ourselves, take civic responsibility to inform ourselves and our neighbors and not depend on large, expensive and unwieldy newsrooms to do it for us. Many of them have clanked and bellowed ungently into their good nights. That doesn’t mean we should undervalue, or ignore the experience and expertise that goes into longer form, longer-to-do investigative journalism. Far from it. Part of the additional funding news sites like Rabble need should be earmarked to hire shop-worn journalists to do what they do best. But, there is a lot of day-to-day journalism we can all participate in. This is the media age of the small and agile. We’re cheap, but, goddammit, we’re worth it.
1,000 publishers join fair syndication consortium Jennifer Saba Editor & Publisher More than 1,000 publishers including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Dallas Morning News have signed on to participate in the Fair Syndication Consortium, a model built to help publishers receive compensation for their content. Additionally, AdBrite, an online marketplace to buy and sell advertising, has agreed to work with the consortium to help partners monetize content. Attributor, which tracks content across the Web, launched the Fair Syndication Consortium in April 2009. The charter members of the alliance include Thomson Reuters, Huffington Post, Politico, and Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
The other content providers that have joined the group: The Boston Globe, Community News Holdings, Conde Nast, Gawker, Lee Enterprises, Magazine Publishers of America, Media News Group, Morris Communications, McClatchy, News Canada, Newsweek, E.W. Scripps, A.H. Belo, and The Oklahoman. The membership represents more than 50 percent of the top U.S. newspaper publishers the release said. “The Fair Syndication usage model is an important step forward in creating a thriving and sustainable commercial environment for our news agency and Reuters publishing businesses, as
well as our peers in the publishing world,” Chris Ahearn, president of media at Thomson Reuters, said in a statement. The Fair Syndication Consortium strategy is to track sites that swipe and re-use content from the original creators. The Consortium would then contact the site as well as the networks serving ads for compensation. Said Iggy Fanlo, CEO of AdBrite in a statement: “We see the Fair Syndication Consortium as an opportunity to increase monetization for original content while providing our publishers with an opportunity to leverage premium content of their sites.”
Remind your readers!
Together, Arizona’s newspapers and the free Web site www.PublicNoticeAds.com offer our state’s citizens the widest possible access to public notices. In print and online, Arizonans have access to the important community information they need.
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July 2009 ■ ANAgrams
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Seven reasons you need a Facebook Business Page Mike Mueller AreWeConnected.com Facebook allows for custom creation of fabulous pages. They (Facebook) call them Fan Pages but really they are Business Pages. Instead of “Friends” your Page collects “Fans”. Hey, I’m not a big Fan of the term either. What can a Facebook Business Page do? Almost anything. The best analogy is that a Facebook Business Page is a website/blog within Facebook. One of the most important things about a Page is that it separates your Personal (family, friends, church, and old girlfriends from 20 years ago) from your Professional Persona of today. Fans of your page do not see the Church BBQ pictures. The only Politics, Sex and Religion they’ll see is what you chose to share with them. You still can have personality (and should). Yes, you can get a custom vanity URL for your Page if you have 100 Fans. You do not need to have 100 fans to create a page. Here are seven reasons why your business needs a Facebook page. 1. Pages allow a business to “Publish to the Stream” (this shows up on your fans homepage) 2. Pages allow a business to engage fans with Rich Media (video, pictures, events)
RENAISSANCE RIVERVIEW PLAZA HOTEL Educational Sessions Three Preconvention Workshops Great Idea Exchange Six Roundtables-repeated Opening Breakfast/Keynote Speaker Eight Educational Sessions Twelve Community Building Symposium papers
Networking and Social Events Opening Reception in Exhibit Hall USS Alabama Tours and Seafood Feast Trade Show with the latest and greatest NNAF Silent Auction Awards Luncheon Toast to the Winners
For more information or program updates visit www.nna.org or call () - Pub Aux 1-4 Ad 1.indd 1
3. Pages let a business analyze how fans are interacting with the Insights Dashboard (FB has deep analytics) 4. Pages let a business increase SEO (pages show up in higher Google keyword searches) 5. Pages allow you to run highly targeted demographic ads to attract only those that are relevant to your business. 6. Pages allow you to arrange Tabs in the order you like (with the exception of the Wall and Info) 7. Pages allow you to force a particular tab to open first for new visitors. Example: You can have a tab that introduces your team, your area, or your company. There’s just one more thing… It’s easy to create a Page on Facebook. It’s easy to draw people to the page. What isn’t easy is to keep them there. You need to have compelling content. If your page has just the “Wall”, “Info” and other stock tabs – your new found Fans will be out of there before the page loads! It’s easy to automate new inflow of content. You can bring in blog posts, Tweets, Flickr, most anything and do so automatically.
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ANAgrams ■ July 2009
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AP lays groundwork for content protection Kenneth Li Financial Times The Associated Press, one of the world’s largest news wires, took a decisive step to protect its content on Thursday by approving construction of a system that will tag and track all its content across the internet. The content registry system is a first step in a strategy announced in April to stop text, pictures and videos from proliferating across the internet without permission or pay. “This is about what content providers must do in the digital era,” Tom Curley, AP chief executive and a former publisher of Gannett’s USA Today, told the Financial Times. “That starts with doing a much better job of protecting the content we create.” Bloggers and news aggregators are likely to be enraged. At present they do not pay to use extracts of news agencies’ content. They believe they are within their rights under “fair use” laws that also permit limited use of copyrighted material without consent for artists and the news media. AP’s move comes as newspapers across the US are investigating ways to charge for online content amid a crushing decline in advertising revenue, which once subsidised free material. Tighter controls on how news content is spread online will be part of AP’s negotiations when contracts with portals owned by Google and Yahoo expire this year, Mr Curley said. “Virtually all the contracts are up at year end. How and where we do business is very much under discussion.” AP, Thomson Reuters and other news agencies have begun working with third-party content identification
firms such as Attributor to track the flow of their material across blogs, websites and aggregators. Mr. Curley said AP’s system enabled more effective identification and tracking of content. The company will employ a “microformat” for news that registers identifying information and terms of use for every piece of content distributed by the agency. The content will also contain a “beacon” that will notify AP how it is being used online. The format has been endorsed by the Media Standards Trust, a nonprofit research and development organization based in London. AP, which is owned by a consortium of 1,500 US newspapers, will begin testing the registry by November and offer a service to member publishers by the first half of next year. AP has invested $55m to develop the core technologies and will spend a further $10m on other projects.
Upcoming education opportunities
Western Classified Advertising Association has released the program for its annual sales conference, Sept. 13-16 in Las Vegas. This year’s program and the networking experience make the event a valuable consideration for classified and online-revenue executives. “It’s not your grandmother’s classified association,” says Rebecca Bradner, WCAA president and Classified Advertising Director at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Seminar sessions will include innovation and technology, partnerships and revenue sharing, audience-based selling, and advertiser retention. “This is the only place where classified and online folks can brainstorm together in-person this year”, she said. Ensuring relevance and value was key in their planning. “Attendees will go back to their organizations ready to implement revenue generating programs. This conference is not about theory, it’s about making the cash registers ring again”. The $375 fee for the conference includes WCAA membership renewal, meals and social events. For information visit www.wcaa.info.
Education is at your fingertips! See a list of all webinars and events on our Web site:
www.ananews.com/calendar
July 2009 ■ ANAgrams
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TweetMart: Classifieds for & from Twitter Jolie O’Dell ReadWriteWeb A project that’s been available to the public for just two months, TweetMart allows users to see items for sale and jobs in a Twitter-friendly format. Its cofounders “felt there needed to be a drop dead simple way to integrate a classifieds site with Twitter,” according to the site. Listings can be created on the site, although many are culled from Twitter posts, as well. Quick, simple, and free, TweetMart is still in the early stages of development but presents a great deal of potential for organizing the user-to-user - or even B2C - commercial use of Twitter. Co-founder Will Kern wrote us today to explain how the site started and how it works. “The product launched with just the ability to list and tweet items for sale, but I quickly followed that up with the ability for recruiters and employers to post and tweet jobs,”
he said. “I quickly recognized a huge potential in aggregating items being tweeted for sale on Twitter and jobs being posted on Twitter. I quickly followed that up with a release that pinged the Twitter search API and aggregated all items listed for sale and jobs being posted.” Kern also told us that the most recent releases of the app included OAuth support and the addition of “on sale” tweets. In concept, the site is similar to iList Micro, a Twitter-oriented subdomain of iList that launched earlier this year. Although listings can be spam-heavy in highly competitive areas such as real estate or content-light for categories such as art or event tickets, one can imagine that as Tweetmart’s search of Twitter’s unwitting classifieds improves, so will the site’s content and usefulness.
Create quality audio slideshows in just minutes Kevin Slimp Institute of Newspaper Technology kevin@kevinslimp.com
It
was about two years ago when Rob Heller mentioned that we should start offering Soundslides classes at the Institute of Newspaper Technology. He explained that it was the easiest way to get a high quality audio slideshow online with minimal effort. Not long afterwards, I was having lunch with a couple of newspaper Web gurus when the topic of Soundslides came up again. Sure enough, they said it was the only way they created audio slideshows for their Web sites. Soon afterwards, we started offering Soundslides classes at the Institute and they were a big hit. Everyone seemed surprised at how easy it was to create an audio slideshow for a newspaper Web site. So now, almost two years later, it seems like a good time to kick the tires and take the latest version of Soundslides for a ride around the block. First, some background information. Joe Weiss - whose resume includes stints as interactive producer at The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., Director of Photography at The Herald-Sun in Durham, N.C., and multimedia producer at MSNBC.com - first began creating audio slideshows in 1992.
Working in Flash, Weiss would go through the painstaking process of creating audio slideshows. Over time, he created a utility that automated much of the Flash programming. It took more than two years, but Soundslides was born in 1995. At first, Soundslides was Mac compatible only, but recent versions are available on both the Mac and PC platforms. In a nutshell, Soundslides is a simple application that allows you to take photos and audio and put them together into a Flash slideshow that can be placed on your newspaper Web site. Soundslides doesn’t edit photos or create audio. It simply takes folders of photos and mp3 (audio) files and merges them together with excellent results. After opening Soundslides for the first time, I created my first audio slideshow in less than twenty minutes. And that included creating the audio for the slideshow. As mentioned, Soundslides doesn’t edit photos or audio, so that’s done in advance. Audio can come from any source that can be converted to mp3, a popular digital audio format. This includes most audio that would be recorded from a digital audio recorder or recorded on a computer. It’s important to remember that the length of the audio slideshow is determined by the length of audio. Using the software couldn’t be much simpler. Upon starting the application, the user is instructed to
A few spaces remain for Institute of Newspaper Technology Event Many of you know that Kevin directs a training program for newspaper designers, publishers and I.T. related staff called the Institute of Newspaper Technology. Registrations for the October 15-17, 2009 session have been arriving from all over North America. Classes topics include InDesign, scripting, photo editing, video production for Web sites, Flash, Illustrator, InCopy, Adobe Bridge, digital photography, audio slideshow creation, fonts, editing photos in camera raw, Photoshop, font management and more. Basic and advanced classes are offered. For more information, visit
newspaperinstitute.com.
Soundslides makes creating audio slideshows for newspaper Web sites a snap.
select a folder. Jpeg (photo) files in the designated folder are distributed throughout the slideshow. Next the user is prompted to select a sound (mp3) file. In a matter of seconds, Soundslides imports the audio and opens the slideshow.At this point, the user could simply export the audio slideshow and upload the resulting folder of files to a Web site. However, there’s a lot more that can be done in Soundslides. Timing can be altered to allow more time for some photos and less for others. Templates can be selected with different background colors, fonts and layout options. Photos can be moved, added and deleted. After all changes have been made, the audio slideshow never changes. Once you’re happy with your results, click on the “Export” button and a folder of files is created that can be uploaded “as is” to a Web site. After creating a link on a Web page, the resulting audio slideshow will appear on its own page in your Internet browser. For users wishing to build a slideshow directly onto a Web page, Soundslides provides a method for creating custom code that can be used on most Web sites. Mine worked perfectly. To see the results, visit kevinslimp.com and watch the slideshow on the right sidebar. Soundslides comes in two flavors. The $39 (US) version does everything I’ve described. Soundslides Plus ($69) adds: - pan & zoom (aka “ken burns” effect) - the ability to use lower thirds - full-screen playback mode - the ability to create slide shows without audio Sure, you could create audio slideshows in iMovie, Vegas or another video editing application.
But it’s so much easier in Soundslides. For more information, visit soundslides.com.
The Photoshop Manual You’ve Been Looking For I was perusing the Graphic Design section at a bookstore a few weeks ago, looking in particular for a book related to iMovie ‘09. I found a great book by David Pogue and Aaron Miller titled iMovie ‘09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual (Pogue Press/O’Reilly, 2009). This led me down the shelf to several “Missing Manuals” from O’Reilly. The one that grabbed my attention was Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual (Pogue Press/O’Reilly, 2009), by Lesa Snider. This might be the best Photoshop book I’ve read. And I’ve read a lot of them. What impressed me most is the attention to detail and colorful illustrations. The book lists for $50 (US/ CAN) and is available from most major bookstores and online at missingmanuals.com.
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Social media: Baby steps for news organizations Michele McLellan Knight Digital Media Center I’ve been going to school on social media for a while now and I’ve concluded it represents a revolution on in communication that no journalist or news organization can afford to ignore. Specific platforms of social media may come and go, but it’s hard to imagine the public will turn away from the underlying practices—and benefits—of being able to share widely and freely online. I want journalism and journalists to be a big part of that communication ecosystem. So here are my three suggestions for journalists and news organizations that want to get started: 1. Try it. Start with the easy one: Facebook. Set up an account, search out some friends and family members and link up with them. Search groups that reflect your interests. Start posting once a day. Share links to interesting articles. Ask friends to comment. Comment on posts by your friends and group members. Devote 10 minutes a day to this for several weeks. Start up a Twitter account and repeat these steps. Above all, resist the urge to create a litany of reasons you don’t like Facebook, or Twitter or any other network you join. You are not the point. Understanding how social media works is Job 1. Just talking about it or dissing it won’t get you there. 2. Watch how other people use social networks. What are people sharing and how do they share it? Links, observations, questions, photos? Don’t look at social media through the eyes of the journalist (“What can it do for me?”) Focus on how people communi-
cate with each other. Check out people who have a large number of followers on Twitter - How do they write and what do they offer that appeals to you? Learn as much as you can about how people in your community use social media: Use search and check out sites such as PlaceBlogger to identify social media leaders and connect with them. As people around you (neighbors, students, young people in your newsroom) how they use social media. Start thinking about how the news you produce might improve their experience (which is different from trying to get them to read your news). 3. Be strategic. There’s no point in being on all the networks all the time. Figure out a strategy, try it out and stick with it long enough to figure out whether it works and learn from your mistakes if it doesn’t. Hing: If you want to drive traffic for a certain subject on your site, Twitter will be a better tool than Facebook. A final note: Don’t expect to get revenue from social media, at least not right away. Social media is about community and conversation. It provides valuable tools for news organizations and news entreprenuers who want to increase their connections to community. It is those connections that may eventually yield revenue, from advertisers who want to speak to those communities, from services the news organization discovers those communities want, and from loyalty that will help keep the users coming back.
ANA JobBank
ADVERTISING DIRECTOR. The Arizona Capitol Times, the award-winning weekly newspaper serving the Capitol community in Phoenix, seeks an Advertising Director to join our team. The ad director is responsible for display and classified sales for the newspaper, special publications, focus sections and several web sites. In addition, you will assist in the sales of sponsorships for events. The ad director hires, coaches, trains and manages sales personnel, establishes strategic plans for the growth of advertising revenues, increases market share, generates ideas to create new sales opportunities and leads the overall sales effort. Email cover letter, references and resume to ginger.lamb@azcapitoltimes.com.
Search job listings and resources on our Web site:
www.ananews.com/jobbank
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Twitter: Quality vs Quantity They don’t want the spam. They have their friends and/or accounts that they consider interesting and it doesn’t matter what else is happening outside of their hand-picked, privileged group. They are Twitter purists. They are correct. “What’s the point if nobody’s listening?” – The other side of the coin is interesting. Many look at Twitter as a tool to spread their wisdom, post their links, and see what the masses are saying at any given moment in time. They know that it is easy JD Rucker to grow on Twitter by following random or targeted individuals, unfollowing those Soshable.com who don’t follow them back after a certain The debate has been raging since period of time, and then starting the process over. They want to be seen, heard, before Barack Obama or Ashton Kutcher had even heard of Twitter. Is addressed, engaged, and clicked on by as it better to join the “race for size” on many people as possible. They are the Twitter profile builders. Twitter or is quality of engagement They, too, are correct. the goal? How can this be? How can Quality and “Twitter is not a popularity conQuantity have equality in the debate? test” – There are millions of people, It’s time for tough answers. At this especially many of the early adopters of the platform, who follow 50, 100, point, the question changes from “Quality vs. Quantity” to “What do you want Twitter even a few hundred other users. It to do for you?” doesn’t matter if 500 people follow Regardless of what you want to do with them or 500,000 people follow them Twitter, pick one side or the other. Trying – they are interested in seeing what certain people are tweeting and that’s to stay on the fence will hamper the whole wonderful Twitter experience. about it. They don’t want the noise.
Contact ANA Staff Executive Director Paula Casey............... Ext. 102 p.casey@ananews.com Communications Mgr. Perri Collins............... Ext. 110 p.collins@ananews.com Accounting Assistant Liisa Straub................ Ext. 105 l.straub@ananews.com Media Buyer Cindy Meaux............. Ext. 112 c.meaux@ananews.com Network Ad MGR. Sharon Schwartz....... Ext. 108 s.schwartz@ananews.com Network Sales Rep. Don Ullmann............. Ext. 111 d.ullmann@ananews.com
2008-2009 ANA/Ad Services Board of Directors President Dick Larson, Western News&Info, Inc. One-Year Dir./Daily First Vice President Teri Hayt, Arizona Daily Star Two-Year Dir./At-large Second Vice President Ginger Lamb, Arizona Capitol Times Two-Year Dir./Non-Daily Third Vice President Don Rowley, Arizona Daily Sun Two-Year Dir./Daily Secretary/Treasurer Rick Schneider, Eastern Arizona Courier One-Year Dir./Non-Daily
Events Calendar August 20, 2009 ANA Board of Directors conference call August 20-22, 2009 Capitolbeat conference, Indianapolis August 27-30, 2009 SPJ 100th National Convention, Indianapolis September 13-16, 2009 Western Classified Advertising Association, Las Vegas September 22-25, 2009 SNA/Inland Press Fall Conference, Kansas City September 23-26, 2009 NNA Annual Convention & Trade Show, Mobile, AL October 10, 2009 ANA Annual Meeting and Fall Convention, Cronkite School, ASU, Phoenix November 12, 2009 Mississippi Advertising Contest Judging - Volunteers needed, Phoenix
STAY in touch with ANA on the Web! Facebook: www.facebook.com/group.php ?gid=30800632683
Directors Tom Arviso, Navajo Times Two-Year Director/Non-Daily
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com /photos/ananewsflash
Nicole Carroll, The Arizona Republic Two-Year Director/Daily
MySpace: www.myspace.com/ananews
Pam Miller, The Verde Independent Two-Year Dir./At-large John Naughton, Payson Roundup One-Year Dir./Non-Daily
Twitter: twitter.com/ananewsflash YouTube: youtube.com/ananewsflash
Open One-Year Dir./Daily Pam Mox, Green Valley News and Sun Past President
ANAgrams is an official publication of the Arizona Newspapers Association 1001 N. Central Ave., Suite 670 Phoenix, AZ 85004