Get it right or pay the price

One thing that the online world had done to journalism is make it much easier to share our mistakes with the globe. Previously if a paper made a mistake in a print story and was found out, a correction was printed the following day and that was often the end of it.

No longer do we enjoy such anonymity.

Case in Point: The Tale of 30,000 pigs.

Early this the The Bulletin in Rockhampton ran this story both in print and online

The story focused on a comment from a farmer to a journalist that he had lost 30,000 pigs into the Dawson River during January's floods. Unfortunately the journalist failed to probe the incident more thoroughly and later found out the farmer had actually lost "30 sows and pigs" down the river rather than 30,000. It seems neither sub-editors or chief editors felt the detail needed to be checked either leading to the embarrassing faux-paux.

Needless to say the paper printed a correction the next day but has been the butt of many jokes online thanks to the power of online communication.

Media Watch enjoyed the mistake.

But they were not alone, Huffington Post  had a laugh at the Bully's expense as did a multitude of bloggers across the globe.

The correction even got a mention in  media release from the Queensland Premier Anna Bligh.

The moral of the story, and I'll quote Johnathan Holmes of Media Watch, "If a number seems really and truly amazing that's probably because it's wrong".

Part two of the moral, in my own words, "there is nowhere to hide from your mistakes in an online world."

Am I captain James Cook or what?

A key to any productive webpage is ease of navigation. For news sites this is potentially more critical because of the stiff competition for readership. I decided to view a number of webages and compare how easy it was to find some of the things that I regularly look for when visiting a news webpage.

I chose to look at what I thought would be news leaders in Australia, Britain and USA. I have limited it to a leading broadcaster and newspaper in each location.

The contenders are:

Australia: ABC and The Australian
Britain: BBC and The Times
USA: CNN and New York Times

In the online world all news organisations are equal. Or at least, they start that way. Consumers may originally gravitate towards trusted brands but will quickly shift focus if those sites are hard to navigate.

The newspaper sites are a prime example of a confused understanding of an online presence translating to a difficult to navigate page. The New York Times site is perhaps the best example. It lays out with the traditional print masthead but fails to adopt simple principles of online navigation such as easily understandable and accessible tabs across the top of the home page. While The Times and to a lesser extent The Australian also maintain the traditional print mastheads, they at least have attempted to help the viewer by adopting fairly simplest tab systems on the home page. All three sites though lack a dynamic or interactive feel that offers viewers a point of difference to competitors.

Conversely, the broadcaster sites are instantly more dynamic. They embrace the multimedia nature of the online environment by using more colour and video content on the home page. The ABC site is probably the most simplistic in its layout but the pop-up menus that appear when you hover over the top tabs make it very easy to find your preferred path. BBC and CNN could take a leaf from the ABC site by adding this function to their simplistic top tabs.

RSS feeds are something I look for on all news sites and these sites vary wildly in their access to RSS.

ABC: Very poor in my opinion, not accessible on the home page at all. You need to navigate through the news tab first then scroll to the bottom of the page where the RSS symbol is still not present. 2/10
BBC: Much better than the ABC, still not present on the BBC home page but due to the scope of the organisation that's acceptable. Thankfully when going to the news homepage it is instantly noticeable at the top right hand side of the page clearly marked with the RSS icon. 7/10
CNN: Has the RSS feed on the home page but you need to scroll to the bottom of the page and have a magnifying glass to find it. 4/10
New York Times: Again the feed is at the bottom of the page but at least had the easily recognisable symbol. The site has missed a clear opportunity to place it next to the Twitter and Facebook icons on the top right of the page. 6/10
The Times: See CNN description 4/10
The Australian: A bit of a strange one here. It sits about 2/3rds of the way down the page on the right hand side. They have gone to extreme lengths to offer 12 separate feeds on the home page. In my opinion it's over the top and positioned strangely. Users look at the top then tend to scroll to the bottom so may miss it all together. The inclusion of 12 feeds suggest it's important so why not put a single icon at the top right of the page and people could choose the feeds from a dedicated page. 5/10 (mostly for effort).

Pay radio???

Pay television is a stable in today's media landscape but there has been very little discussion about online pay walls for broadcast content. A local case in point is the radio coverage of AFL football in Australia. Until 2010, fans outside of Victoria could live stream football commentary via the webpage of the broadcasting radio station. This essentially allows a global audience to access a local product and in turn contributes to growing the game and game revenues.

The decision by the AFL in 2011 to construct pay walls in front of this coverage is an interesting development. All traffic attempting to access live streaming of commentary online is now redirected to the "AFL Match Centre" where content is then available under a user pays system. Previously users could access the broadcasters webpage and live stream the same content local audiences were listening to via their radio: SEN or ABC Grandstand. Now users find a continual loop message redirecting them to the Match Centre site.

I believe this decision raises interesting questions about content that is essentially free to some consumers and charged to others based on the distribution platform. Whether this is legal or not I'll leave to others to decide but I think it highlights the evolutionary nature of the online environment. There is one thing I'm sure about. The AFL is a trailblazer in the sports administration field in Australia so it's only a matter of time until NRL and Rugby fans will have dig deep to listen to their favourite games as well.

Note: links will illustrate my point during live coverage times of AFL games.

Where do I start

Social media has changed communication for many people in many different ways. As previously discussed, journalists can use the medium to hunt for stories and or have stories come to them via a social media platform. One unique way it can be used is as what I would describe as a fishing net. Let me explain. You have a story idea but it is fairly random and you need to find some interesting talent that fit the bill for the angle you are looking for. Enter social media. I'll use a recent story idea at a QT editorial meeting as an example.

The idea was to do a local story on the highly popular family stickers that are appearing on many cars across the country. The editor though wanted to find an unusual family with many stickers for a large blended family rather than Mum/Dad and 2 kids. Not knowing how to efficiently go about finding such a family the journalist posted requests on the newspapers Facebook page and within minutes the responses flooded in. Included in the Facebook responses was this one; "I have 2 gay dads... 4 kids... 2 dogs.. A fish.. A turtle.. And a lizard.. On both cars... We are so proud of our mixed family xo.

Enough said. Social media to the rescue. A source was found and the story is well underway.

Many more ways to tell an online story

A key feature of online news is links to additional content. Functional and relevant links can add to the quality of the story being told whereas irrelevant links, particularly those that direct you outside the primary site, can encourage a user to search elsewhere for their news content.

A case in point is the current coverage of the Daniel Morcombe case.

Couriermail.com.au provides regularly updated text stories as the story unfolds. In addition they provide links to video content and photographic slide-shows. The video content is Sky News stories of the same event but tells the story differently through the use of pictures. Importantly the links do not direct you outside the Courier Mail's primary website but instead embeds the video content into it's webpages. From a navigation point of view the website uses a "related coverage" fact box to the side of the main story rather than embedded hyperlinks. This allows the reader to read the main text story without interruption and then chose to view the additional content if they so choose.

ABC.net.au is also providing coverage of the unfolding event. In many ways the style is similar to that of the Courier Mail. ABC also uses "related stories" links in lieu of embedded links. Both sites provide a small version of a Google Map within the stories to give the reader additional information directly relevant to the story. This means there is no need to leave the primary news site to view a map. Readers are offered the option of enlarging the map, however when you choose this option you are then directed outside the original site to Google Maps.

In essence both sites provide regularly updated content on a story that people are following closely and the additional multimedia content on both sites is relevant and adds to the story.

Social Media as source material

I was fascinated to read the Walkely feature on RSS feeds. While I've heard of RSS before I didn't understand what it was or how powerful a tool it can be. I think the line that suggested RSS is "the most important tool at a reporter’s disposal", peaked my interest more than any other. It gave me an insight into how to filter through the enormous volume of online content to find what I may need to be a better reporter.

As I begin work next week at the Queensland Times I will be setting up my RSS feed to focus on issues and keywords in the Ipswich region and tagging them to the local area. I'm confident this engagement with social media will provide leads for good stories that otherwise may remain hidden.

Personally a tool like RSS will make me far more engaged with all social media and online news content. The stumbling block for many people is the time commitment required to trawl through masses of irrelevant information in search of that gem of information that may lead to a new angle or new story.

Of course this discovery will help with my recent commitment to Twitter. I hope that I will now be able to focus on specific subject matter at different times to ensure I have access to the most up to date information possible.

To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question!

So perhaps it's time to embrace Twitter. I've had my account for quite a while now but to be fair I've found it more of a time waster than a resource. While I have found useful information from a variety of sources, I feel you would need to be on it virtually 24/7 to get any real value from it. The problem as I see it, is that the useful information is that which is immediate. So unless you are checking you feed at ten minute intervals then you will miss most of that information. As time goes on we are expected to embrace more and more devices and technologies and frankly I just don't have the time to bother.

So I've decided to try to use my mobile twitter application on a more regular basis to see whether or not it really enhances my information gathering ability.

I'll also keep my twitter page open at all times while online. I think in this realm it's a much more useful tool because you can flick back and forth to it with less interruption to other tasks.

So time will tell. At least for now it is TIME TO TWEET!