Seth Godin, whose work inspires the heck out of me, had a recent blog post about audience.

He poses a list of questions for marketers, about how to make focused change by first determining who exactly you are trying to reach.

If you can’t answer this specifically, do not proceed to the rest. By who, I mean, “give me a name.” Or, if you can’t give me a name, then a persona, a tribe, a spot in the hierarchy, a set of people who share particular worldviews.

It reminds me of conversations we’ve been having in my newsroom with reporters: Who’s your audience? Where are they already talking? How can you reach them? What do you hope your story will accomplish? What can the audience do with your story, or in response to it? (Here’s a post I wrote recently about those questions.)

Seth has defined marketing as “the art of telling a story that resonates with your audience and then spreads,” and after listening to a recent interview he did with the show “On Being,” my view of marketing has expanded substantially. (On that show, he talked about it as trying to get noticed.)

Don’t journalists want their work to get noticed? Don’t most of us believe the work we do matters, in ways big and small?

After his list of questions to ask about who your product/message is intended for, Seth closes with this:

This was originally published on the Reynolds Journalism Institute blog.

When it comes to the relationship between a news organization and its community, most of us would do well to pay more attention to small-town newsrooms.

These are folks who have:
— a well-established standing as the go-to place for news
— a solid relationship with the people they serve
— a market share that would make bigger operations salivate

It is with that in mind that I prepared to do a workshop last week with members of the Missouri Press Association. The daylong seminar, hosted at RJI, also brought in high school and middle school journalism teachers, who were in town as part of an ASNE training program.

The topic of the workshop was social media, but I’ll embrace that term only if we define it loosely, as media designed to be social. Designed to be acted on, contributed to, talked about and passed along. And these ideas are not at all new to community news, which is often designed to be stuck to the fridge or mailed to the grandparents.

The part that’s new is figuring out how the well-established, social relationship between newspaper and community translates to the digital age. As Dave Marner, managing editor of the Gasconade County Republican, talked to me about last year, what does it mean to fill community scrapbooks these days?

My research into how Missouri’s community newspapers are making the transition to the digital world led me to discover one of my all-time favorite newspaper Facebook pages. Allow me to introduce you to the Houston Herald, which takes the news directly to its community in a way that respects readers’ time and makes it easy to be in the know.

The Herald is a weekly newspaper in south central Missouri, in a community of just under 2,000 and with a print circulation of 4,000. The paper’s Facebook page, which launched in 2008, has 2,500 likes.

Now that’s penetration.

Continue reading “Newspaper Facebook post serves as town megaphone” →

Interested in taking J4700/7700, Participatory Journalism? I have a few spots left for Spring 2012. Here’s what you need to know.

As a student in this class, you’d join the staff of the Columbia Missourian, as part of the community outreach team. Exactly what that means will be determined by us, as we go along. We’ll do a lot of strategizing, experimenting and assessing what works. You’d be assigned about eight hours each week to spend in the newsroom, immersing yourself in what’s going on there and bringing the community into the news as much as you can. You’d also be responsible for following through on whatever came up on your shifts, and time outside those shifts would sometimes be required.

I firmly believe that injecting a focus on the audience into traditional journalism is key to its survival, and the community outreach team is about how to find the audience, invite them to interact with stories, capture and value the conversations they’re having (with us and with each other) and look for ways to collaborate with them to do better journalism.
Continue reading “Join the Participatory Journalism party, as part of the Missourian’s community outreach team” →

I took my first graduate class in spring 2005, started a master’s degree in earnest in 2007, and have been enrolled just about every semester since.

Seven years’ gestation.

Sort of like childbirth, I knew at the beginning that if I focused on the scary stuff at the end, I just might not make it. So I started off with stuff I knew I’d have fun with and tried not to think about how I’d ever make time to write a thesis.

No one moment during the nine classes I took seems all that difficult. But collectively, I spent a lot of hours reading and writing. And then came the thesis. And sort of like childbirth, there’s no way to skirt around that scary stuff at the end. The only way to the other side is straight through the pain. And in this case, no drugs can help.

I successfully defended my thesis on Thursday, so I’m officially on the other side, looking back at the pain. I’m not sure when I’ve felt such relief. Unlike after the birth of my two sons, I don’t have euphoria to distract me from the bad parts. Just relief. And a master’s degree. And a 5-year-old son who says I should be called Headmaster from here on out. I’ll take it.

Here’s what the dedication page of my thesis says:

To my husband and two sons, who have tolerated years upon years of multitasking.

To my grandfather, Donald Mathis, who is no stranger to fancy degrees, for telling me that a master’s degree is no big deal and that I should go for it.

To my colleagues at the Columbia Missourian, who inspire me daily.

To my first bosses in journalism, Sara Quinn and Janet Coats, for mentoring me and exposing me to what creativity, optimism and a sense of purpose looked like in a newsroom, and for setting the bar high.

And to my college newspaper adviser at the University of Oklahoma, Jack Willis, who quietly held me to the highest of standards, and who asked me when I was 21 if I was sure I didn’t want to stick around and get a master’s degree.

So, can anyone recommend a hobby?

I’ve been to three sessions so far at South by Southwest that had as part of their summaries something about measurement in social media. It’s a big theme (for me, but also, it seems, for a lot of people) this year.

I was disappointed in the first two, which seemed happy to stay on the level of “there’s no one good solution.” Of course there’s no one good solution, and of course you should tailor what you measure to your specific goals and strategies. But I don’t want to talk about that for an hour. There’s a nice quick recap of one of those sessions here.

I hit gold, however, with the third. “Analytics and Social Tools in Practice” was presented by Chris Traganos, a web developer at Harvard, and Sean M. Brown, online manager for the MIT Sloan Management Review.

Continue reading “Social media metrics: No magic answer, but useful tips” →

Why aren’t some journalists easier to get in touch with?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot this year, as I’ve spent time trying to find email addresses or phone numbers for journalists I want to interview about engagement. In several cases, I’ve had to rely on asking friends and colleagues for help in reaching people directly. It’s frustrating for me as a professional journalist. What if I were a reader with a news tip?

Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune wrote about this a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve returned to it to mull it over. Here’s part of what he said:

… given the promise and potential of the Internet — hyperconnectivity, easy and direct person-to-person access in a densely networked environment — it should be as easy for each newsroom as …
1. Go to the media outlet’s homepage.
2. Click on the “contact” or “directory” link.
3. Cut and paste the list.
Of course any of you who have ever tried to reach a reporter or editor directly know that it’s almost never that easy.

He’s right, in theory. But the issue isn’t black or white.

Continue reading “Can our readers find us? Do we want them to?” →

I’ve found myself this week telling several people about one of the most enlightening experiences of my fellowship, and I realized I hadn’t yet written about it.

I spent a day in the fall with Dave Marner, managing editor at the Gasconade County Republican, a weekly newspaper south and east of Missouri’s capital.

I’ve never worked for a community newspaper, and I went to see Dave because I wanted a crash course in the role a paper can play in a small town. Dave gave me that and much more, and I’ve found myself turning to him since our visit to give me a dose of reality.

Continue reading “What I’m learning from a community newspaper editor” →

As journalists, many of us like to think of ourselves as being in the community business. We serve communities with information.

I’ve been talking to folks who come at this idea of community from other angles. Today, that road led me to Steve Jeanetta, who is on the community development faculty here at the University of Missouri Extension. I learned so much from Steve, and I’m thrilled that he’s agreed to be part of our conversations at the Engagement Metric, a workshop here at RJI May 4-5. Join us if you can!

Steve teaches his students to constantly question what their role is in working with communities. Are they experts? Impartial facilitators? Advocates? Trusted resources? Or just community members? As I listened to him talk, I was thinking about all the ways journalists seek to be both observers and participants in their communities, and how uncomfortable we get sometimes when those lines blur.

Continue reading “The role of journalists: Lessons from community development” →

Yesterday, I wrote about NPR’s listener community and wisdom from Andy Carvin. This is part 2 of my NPR chats.

National Public Radio’s Bob Boilen has been talking directly to his listeners since the late ’80s, when he answered by hand the mail he got at All Things Considered. Then and now, he wants to hear what’s working, what’s annoying and what ideas listeners have. Now, as the host of All Songs Considered, he says his work days still almost always include direct interaction with listeners, and he can’t imagine that not being the case.

These days, his responses to listeners often serve to personalize what would otherwise feel like communication with a brand, not an individual. Bob says writers and commenters don’t seem to expect their comments or emails to be read, much less responded to, as evidenced by a frequent rude, impulsive tone. “When I do write them back, it’s somewhat disarming,” Bob says. “They call me an idiot, then the idiot writes them back. That’s wonderful!”

Continue reading “Being an authentic person: Talking engagement with NPR’s Bob Boilen” →