INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON ONLINE JOURNALISM 2013The best journalism conference in the world. Really.

ENGAGEMENT

Don’t mistake loyalty for deep engagement. They are not the same! Just because a user comes back to your site several times a month, doesn't mean they're talking to you, about you, spending a lot of time on site.

Tell your viewers HOW the they have contributed to your coverage or social conversation. That increases their trust in you. It shows you see your audience as equals and important to the conversation.

Thank your viewers for re-tweeting your content.

STRENGTHENING JOURNALISM IN AN ERA OF DIGITAL DISRUPTION We must recognize there are fundamental physics going

on in our industry. High market share sites separate their Web team’s

physical location, sales team, content, product team, and they have a separate management structure

Historical data dictates that a disruptive business (example: Web) starts outside the core, established business (TV).

As time goes on, the disruptive business encompasses the established one

Online will and is encompassing all other forms of media and creates new growth, but the established businesses are blind to that

Journalism is on the brink of a GROWTH opportunity, but journalists too often focus on what has been LOST by the digital revolution.

GOOD NEWS!

There IS a path to survival.

Focus our resources and efforts. We must decide what we want to be the best in the world at, and create that type of content really, really well.

Have the rigor to decide what we're going to be good at, then set up a Web-only team for that content because it makes the entire journalistic product stronger

Example: No one is coming to our websites for sports news. They have ESPN.com for that. So what ARE they coming for? Focus your efforts there.

WE MUST ALSO…

Find the conversation people are already having and put your content into that flow. Be mindful of trending topics and stack your

newscasts and create Web stories accordingly To find that conversation, you must first know

what you are good at/want to be good at so you know where to look for the conversation.

STRATEGIES FOR THE NEW MEDIA ECOSYSTEM How do we attract and audience? The user looks at you to fulfill a job in

their life. Think about what job we are trying to do. Entertain? Inform? Focus on searchable, shareable (a la BuzzFeed) content instead of

waiting for people to come to your homepage. “Supper hour news” is no more. We have two different cultures:

Broadcast and Web. Instead of capturing the living room, we now need to capture the

bedroom (people with tablets in bed!) Fail fast, fail cheaply. Create prototypes. There's too much scolding in

this industry. If you try something and it fails, just move on! Diversify your sources of revenue = start or purchase new businesses. Separate news and Web into two different entities. Separation gives you

the freedom to try new things; separate budgets. Separation is also great for the newsroom culture because when the Web wins awards for its own work, it'll get the TV people's attention and admiration. However being separate doesn't mean being strangers to each other; news still needs to think about where they’re publishing. Must think “digital first.” You need someone to work as a "bridge" between the two “worlds.”

PROFOUND THOUGHTS FROM ANDY CARVINSENIOR STRATEGIST AT NPR/SOCIAL MEDIA MASTER EXTRAORDINAIRETRANSCRIPT OF HIS TALK: HTTP://WWW.ANDYCARVIN.COM/?P=1773

Errors have always been a part of journalism but corrections are more recent.

How often do we all post a report without a second or third source to back it up? Social media now requires you to work even more rapidly than before.

Social media makes an obvious target for blame. Never before have we been able to spread misinformation so rapidly. It's never been easier to spread rumors. Before, you'd hear the rumors, but you could scrutinize them and leave them out of that story before it went to print/on air. That era is over. Today everyone has a device in their pocket that can send information.

SO WHAT SHOULD WE IN THE MEDIA DO NOW THAT THE PUBLIC CAN INFORM EACH OTHER?

We need to get back to the core of journalism. Rethink what it means to inform the public. To create a more informed public means to help people understand, not telling them what to think.

For instance, help the public understand what it means to “confirm” something. The public doesn't understand journalists’ jargon.

We can no longer afford to underplay the public's role in helping tell a story.

BRILLIANT IDEA

Perhaps we can use social media to SLOW the news cycle, not just to send out rapid breaking news headlines or asking for pictures from the public. Journalists can use it to actively address rumors and challenge them. It should be ok to tell the public what we do and do not know.

Use social media as a collaborative newsroom. Twitter is 99.999 percent noise. It's journalists’

job to sort through the .001 percent. We have the ability to put things in their proper context and more accurately interpret that noise.

RESPONSIVE DESIGN

Responsive design is a way of making the Web work. It's not a content strategy.

Mobile is an idea, not a specific size. It's not a cell phone or an iPad. It could be huge! We don't know how people are going to access our content in the future.

Ads are complimentary to a website. We need them to work with us, not against us.

Thus, more communication between Web teams and sales teams is needed. With responsive sites, problems with ads only get worse unless you’re communicating.

WHAT DOES RESPONSIVE DESIGN LOOK LIKE? Responsive design isn't just about ad width. It

includes other parts of the users' experience = what time of day are they coming to our site? What if we had a day vs. night version of the site? What about a user’s location? What about a site that responds based on stories users have seen/interacted with? What are our viewers reading or sharing? What are they talking about/ commenting on? Respond to those things.

When a user looks at our site at 5 p.m., what happens if an important story has already fallen off the page? The site needs to adapt to what the user needs to see.

MORE ON ADS…

Keep in mind people on a fast, business Internet network aren't always the people accessing your site. Consider users' bandwidth when designing ads/your site.

Build tolerant ads - flexible width is better than heights.

We should spend more time to make ad concepts as good as our content - advertising is really our business.

There's room for someone to own the advertising space today, like back in "Mad Men" days when ads were essentially art. Let’s get creative!

THE POST-INDUSTRIAL PRESENTEMILY BELL - COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, FORMER DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL CONTENT FOR THE GUARDIAN

The Industrial Age of journalism is drawing to a close.

We're seeing movement away from the packaged journalist. We had been training journalists for predictable jobs, but now training needs to focus on skill sets.

A deepening of technical skills and specialized areas will be critical. (Data skills, statistical literacy, technical literacy/basic knowledge of code, etc.)

JOURNALISTS NEED TO…(ACCORDING TO EMILY BELL)

Be transparent in how you construct your stories and arrive at your conclusions. You need to do your work in public and interact with citizens.

Be self-organizing and collaborative. Unfortunately, the competing nature of employers stops collaborations among journalists with common interests.

Become better, faster. Use real-time storytelling.

Extra tidbit from Bell: The U.S. tends to think news has to make a profit to be good, but the rest of the world doesn't see it that way.

MOBILE, MOBILE, MOBILE

Chris Courtney - mobile product manager for Tribune Company (Chicago Tribune) Strategy is never 100% - assume you're doing it

wrong. Apps are tricks. They’re the last thing you need.

You need to get to your customers as quickly as possible.

Find your customers and talk to them! Don't build anything until you know who that customer is!

"The suits" fear you'll hurt the brand with experiments. They only want to release something that's perfect. Then don't use your brand name. Do your research at Starbucks.

Go do things that will help people, solve problems.

MORE MOBILE

David Ho - editor of mobile, tablets, and emerging technology at The Wall Street Journal Tips for mobile engagement:

Tip 1: Do not annoy. It is SO easy to make people mad on a mobile device. Be careful about the thing you think is really, really cool. It's probably only cool once.Tip 2: Listen to your readers and respond accordingly.Tip 3: Make it an experience. News apps need to “sing.” They need to be as beautiful as the stories they deliver. We need to make it worth our users' time.Tip 4: Beware of phrases like "click here." The mouse is dead! You now have voice recognition and touch screens. Users who see "click here" on your touch-screen device are insulted.

AND STILL MORE MOBILE Joey Marburger - mobile design director at

Washington Post SIMPLIFY!!! It's his mantra (and also Apple's). You're competing for people's time, so you don't want

anything to be taxing. Let’s create experiences that are worth people’s time. Speed leads to satisfaction. People remember if something took a lot of time.

Good apps in his opinion:- Summly - simple design, focuses on content- FourSquare started out very simple and clean and slowly did progressive enhancements to keep their users happy- Rise - an alarm clock, cool, simple design. You want to wake up and be happy. Very gesture-based (you can shake it and it snoozes)

User experience: 37 % think mobile sites are difficult to navigate (which can translate to thousands of people in your user base. Not a number to be overlooked)

Responsive Web design is not a mobile strategy.

THE END!