Sona Patel » social media

Intersect and the social web

Sona — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 04:15:21 +0000

Yesterday, Washington Post Social Media Producer Katie Rogers talked to Kiplinger Fellows about Intersect, a tool that lets you chart stories at the intersection of time and place.

The Post teamed up with Intersect to collect reports from the Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert rallies on Oct. 30, 2010.

Now, the Post is using it again, this time for Recession Road, a project by Post photographer Michael S. Williamson to show the effects of the recession across America. The post is asking readers across America to submit their photos to a map using Intersect and #RecessionRoad.

Katie said The Post recently launched the project and will begin promoting it shortly. “Visually, it’s a really amazing tool.”

DocumentCloud

Sona — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 02:39:13 +0000

We just finished up Day 5 at the Kiplinger Program. Today, Lauren Keane, digital innovations editor for investigative and data projects at The Washington Post talked about DocumentCloud, a web-based service that allows documents to be uploaded, edited and displayed on a website via an embeddable widget. I can think of at least three reasons why this is good for the web.

1) using DocumentCloud adds more context to a story DocumentCloud allows the author to make comments throughout the document(s). In other words, you’re not just linking to a bunch of documents, leaving the reader to find nuggets of useful information. Instead, you’re highlighting portions of the documents that contain useful information and pointing them out to the reader.

2) It’s embeddable You’re not giving a reason for a reader to leave your site.

3) Mobile Put a QR code in the paper that links to a DocumentCloud (Note: I’ve never seen this in action, but it could be cool experiment.)

What do you think about DocumentCloud?

Here are some examples of news organizations that have used DocumentCloud

USA Today: When standardized test scores soared in D.C., were the gains real?
BY: Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello

The Los Angeles Times’ Data Desk

The Commercial Appeal (Memphis): Ernest Withers Exposed
BY: Marc Perrusquia
Grant Smith, data reporter

Responding to reader criticism on the social web

Sona — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 21:16:53 +0000

It’s Day 4 of the Kiplinger Fellowship and we’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about social networks, particularly Twitter and Facebook. But aside from just using them for crowdsourcing, finding sources and story tips, we’re being told to use them as a conversation tool. We hear over and over again that social networks shouldn’t be a used as a broadcast tool or a glorified RSS feed. So true. There are also ways you can use it to help increase transparency.

A couple weeks ago the @seattletimes received a few tweets from followers asking why we cover University of Washington sports more than Washington State University. I’ve seen similar criticism before on Twitter and Facebook. I showed the tweets to our sports editor and asked him to respond. He wrote a great response, which I posted on the Seattle Times Sports Facebook page. I @ replied the three folks who tweeted us just a couple days before. And I tweeted it on the @SeaTimesSports account.

One of our goals is to create conversation and engagement around our content. This is one way to get that conversation going. I hope to come up with new ways to respond to reader criticism and talk to our readers, especially those who make an effort to reach out to us on the social web. This might not be the perfect way, but it’s a step, I think.

How are other news organizations trying to increase transparency?

2011 Kiplinger Fellowship

Sona — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:00:02 +0000

In less than one week I’ll be at Ohio State University as a 2011 Kiplinger Fellow.
I’m so excited for this amazing opportunity. The program directors told me during one of my fellowship interviews that they received 598 applications from more than 56 countries. I’m now one of 23 mid-career journalists who will take part in the three-month program, which also happens to be the first social media fellowship for journalists. After we return to our respective newsrooms, we’ll participate in 3 months of follow-up training via webinar.
I’m excited for a few reasons. First, I’m getting the opportunity to leave the newsroom to just LEARN. There’s nothing more satisfying then learning how other journalists put into practice the necessary skills to succeed in using social networking tools in everyday reporting. But the main reason I’m excited is the diversity of the group. We’ve got beat reporters from AP and social media/engagement editors from FRONTLINE and WaPo. Many of the journalists in the program already use social media in their reporting, so I’m eager to learn how they balance it with the pressure of daily deadlines, investigative projects and more.
I’m going to try to blog my way through the week, so stay tuned for updates! I’ll definitely be tweeting, so follow me @sona23 and the #KipCamp hashtag. A shout out to my colleagues at seattletimes.com for holding down the social media fort while I’m gone.

Hello, Ohio!

CoverItLive, Twitter, and the State of the Union Address

Sona — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:01:40 +0000

A couple weeks ago, our Assistant Editorial Page Editor Kate Riley and I talked about ways to increase the online presence of @SeaTimesOpinion, the Twitter account for The Seattle Times’ Opinion section. Of course, establishing dialogue, a unique voice and engaging your audience on your social media space(s) were chief among the list of things to try. But getting started on that route takes an overall shift in mindset. Shepherding your social media accounts takes time and spaces such as Twitter and Facebook only work as strong reporting tools if you spend time managing your account. When reporters ask how they’re supposed to juggle reporting and using social media, I always tell them that they should find some way to work it into their daily workflow, like responding to e-mails and listening to voicemails. That advice doesn’t always work, however, leaving some journalists unconvinced. The best way is learning by doing. Sometimes it takes an event, project or even breaking news, to show others that social media can be used as a powerful reporting tool that can engage your audience.

I thought the best way for push ourselves off the ground with @SeaTimesOpinion would be to host a live Twitter chat via CoverItLive. Kate had the idea of getting together opinion writers from The Times, the Kansas City Star and a Scripps newspaper in Central Florida as a way to bring in voices from a variety of political backgrounds. The result: 12 Twitter-folk across three states.

The idea of inviting newspapers across the country was to encourage diverse voices and bring in an equally diverse audience. So we got editorial page editors from each of the newspapers along with guest writers from each region. The guest writers include the President-Designate of the Florida Senate and other elected officials at the state and local level. We’ll also have bloggers and freelance writers. En toto, about 4 from each state.

During the address, people will have the opportunity to participate via Cover It Live on seattletimes.com, kcstar.com, and tcpalm.com. We’ll be pulling in tweets from our writers and those in the Twittersphere using the hashtag #OPEDSOTU. Our tweeps will be talking amongst themselves, answering questions and responding to other tweeps’ comments about the speech — and politics in general. I’m not sure how much I want to direct the conversation, but I will be throwing in ideas every so often to possibly stimulate discussion.

I’m looking forward to the experiment and am hoping that we get a lot of participating. Be on the lookout for #OPEDSOTU and please … join in on the discussion!

What do you think about this project? Have you tried something similar at your news organization? As always, tips and suggestions are greatly appreciated!