I spent Friday at an all-day conference hosted by Investigative Reporters and Editors organization. Unlike many conferences, where the final speaker cannot come soon enough, this conference ended too soon. The 50 or so people got all sorts of tips help dig deeper in stories and learn from the best.
I found these speakers very encouraging:
T. Christian Miller, ProPublica: He had an interesting take on FOIA requests, along with how to organize complicated stories.
Tisha Thompson, Fox5 News, Washington, D.C.: She talked about her love of documents to make stories stand out from competitors.
Alison Young, USA Today: The former Atlanta reporter, she talked about working hard to get interviews by working from outside the circle of decision makers for a story to gather more information before approaching folks on the inside.
I’ll be posting more links from the conference in the days ahead. I want to figure out how I can use the ideas for The Jefferson Park Hub.
Marketing my 10-month-old online news magazine is my weakest link. I’d rather focus energies on story ideas, not tooting my horn. But I know that isn’t enough. People won’t come to The Jefferson Park Hub if they don’t know about it.
My online news magazine/newspaper was recently promoted in the neighborhood newsletter, The Grapevine. You can read it at the organization’s website here. I noted the date of the publication on my Google Analytics account. I am curious to see if the site sees an uptick in the number of viewers.
Another opportunity to get the word out is I plan on being a a regular contributor the quarterly newsletter. It’ll be a reprint of a past feature with a notice of where it came from. That’ll be a lazy way to get my site in front of the 1,000 people on the circ list.
I’ve posted a question on LinkedIn looking for other marketing techniques. I’ll follow up with any ideas that are floated.
I used my Flip camera, used the option to make a still photo to break up the player and her ball tricks and then cropped it to have the voice over. It provides a little more depth to just the written story. (I’ll link to that when it’s online.)
It’s true that reporters don’t write for judges, but it’s nice to be recognized.
A project I worked on was recognized with the second place award for multimedia presentation at the national Catholic Press Association. I traveled to New Orleans for the annual convention. While there, I was asked to make a presentation to Catholic Relief Services and during the convention to about 15 other journalists
I am working on another post for my ongoing series “In Person” a one on one interview with interesting people. I add multimedia to the posting by including the recording of the interview.
The interview was done on an outside patio at a pizza shop. I set my digital voice recorder on the lowest level but it still picked up nearby diners talking and laughing. That’ll make the sound editing a little trickier.
I use the free program Audacity for my editing. But I have some time to play around so I think I’ll be trying to work with Apple’s Garage Band.
It’s one thing to approach people to interview and drop the name of a well-known publication. It’s no great insight that working for an established news organization opens doors. A start-up neighborhood news blog doesn’t have much swagger.
Poynter Online columnist Damon Kiesow wrote about this at the website when he interviewed Jim MacMillan. He had a great lede: “Hi, my name is Jim. I’m from the Internet.”
Recently, I attended a local government expo where staff at the city of East Point, Ga., where I write my hyperlocal blog, showcased their services. And although I’ve been writing and reporting since the early 1990s, it gave me pause as I walked up to strangers and tell them I write for the a blog called The Jefferson Park Hub and would like to take up their time.
Maybe it’s the term blog that makes my stomach queasy. It lacks oomph. It seems so juvenile, like I am a school-aged kid scribbling my crushes in an online diary.