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On Journalism, Values, Porn, World Peace and the Borg; a #WJCHAT Discussion

Above, Saleem Khan. I think.

My recent posts about planning for the world after Facebook led the awesome folks at #wjchat to invite me to host a discussion on the topic Wednesday on Twitter. I love #wjchat; it attracts smart, forward-thinking journalists who are interested in talking about the future of our industry.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to attend much in the past few years. #wjchat is held at 5 p.m. PST, which was around the same time I typically started driving home from San Francisco when I worked at KQED. As a result, I often had to say goodbye after the opening discussion and Q1.

Thankfully, my five-hour round-trip daily commute to San Francisco ended two months ago when I started working at News10 in Sacramento (although I still really miss public media.) I now have more time to participate in professional events, and I was really excited by the opportunity to host #wjchat on Wednesday.

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Creating a Strategy for the World After Facebook

Is your news organization ready to react if Facebook fails? Photo by Loco Steve/Flickr.

This post is adapted from a discussion I started this morning with some of my colleagues at Gannett about planning for a post-Facebook world. The discussion was sparked by “The great defriending of Facebook,” a post by Keith Morris on The Daily Dot.

Morris’ post was one of several I’ve read in the past two years that have predicted the demise of Facebook. The argument typically goes something like this:

Facebook has changed something.

Everyone hates that change.

So everyone is going to abandon Facebook.

While that obviously hasn’t happened yet, there are reasons to be concerned about Facebook’s future. As Morris notes, recent changes to the Facebook newsfeed have created a messy user experience that’s ripe for spam. And messy user experiences have led to the demise of other social networks. Remember this?

Some MySpace users loved the Tinkerbell GIF, which became very popular on the network just before its demise. That GIF and other sparkly images created a loud, messy experience on MySpace that sent many users looking for a cleaner social network.

They went to Facebook.

Now, as Morris notes, changes to the Facebook newsfeed are allowing “content spammers” like Dresses and Shut Up I’m Still Talking to create a mess out of that network’s user experience. If users begin leaving as a result, it might cost news organizations a significant amount of online traffic. Facebook continues to be one of the top referrers to many news organization websites, and it’s a vital tool for reaching online communities with news content. As an online and social media editor, I’m tasked in part with creating strategies to reach those communities. That means I spend much of my time thinking about best practices for Facebook and working to maximize engagement around content on our Facebook page. I want them coming from Facebook to our site, where they can see the ads that financially support our organization.

Morris’ post made me realize I need to start creating a strategy for a post-Facebook world. If users begin to flee Facebook, I need to be ready to reach them with our content on other platforms.

Here are my odds on what platforms will be best for reaching users in a post-Facebook world:

Email: even. Email continues to drive a significant amount of traffic and move users to action. It was key to the president’s re-election. Still, few news organizations have explored using it in the same matter as the president’s data team. It’s worth exploring.

Text messages and non-Facebook mobile apps and web: 2 to 1. Facebook’s user experience problems are most evident on its mobile app, which has become almost unusable. Meanwhile, some news organizations have seen their mobile traffic double in recent years. years. The number of consumers who own smartphones also continues to grow. News organizations might do a better job reaching these consumers with targeted text message strategies and by exploring ways to ensure their content is shared over multiple apps.

Twitter: 15 to 1. Twitter is a great platform for discussion and engagement. It has a young audience and an excellent mobile experience. Its ability to drive traffic, however, is questionable. Twitter typically isn’t among the top referrers to most news websites. Still, Twitter has value in reaching influencers whose can link to news content on their websites and help drive significant traffic.

Google+: 30 to 1. Is Google+ a social network or isn’t it? Google says it’s not; instead, they describe Plus as the social backbone for all their products. I’m not really sure what that means, and I don’t think users understand it either. Google will need to do a better job of clearly expressing the value of plus if it wants to be a force in the post-Facebook world.

LinkedIn: 50 to 1. LinkedIn has made several changes in recent years in an effort to become more than just a place to post your resume. Still, like Google+, it needs to work on expanding its brand. 

Have you started planning a post-Facebook strategy? Where will you be focusing your efforts?

Who Actually Uses Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram and Other Social Networks?

Photo by English106/Flickr.

Well, if you’re reading this, you’re probably among the 6 percent of total Internet users who using Tumblr. That number comes from a Pew Internet and American Life project report that’s titled “A demographic portrait of users of various social media services - 2012.” The report popped up on Tumblr during the Tumblr-Yahoo! hullabaloo this morning, and it includes some useful info.

The percentage of Internet users who use Twitter? 16 percent.

Pinterest: 15 percent.

Instagram: 13 percent.

Facebook: 67 percent.

Read the report here, and follow Pew Internet on Tumblr.

Ask a Grown Journalist: Why Do You Do What You Do?

This Tumblr user responded to my “Ask a Grown Journalist” post with three great questions. Unfortunately, it has been a bit hectic in the news business recently, so I haven’t been able to answer until now. Let’s start with the big question:

What makes you keep doing what you do? For context, you should understand that I didn’t always want to pursue a career in journalism. I didn’t work on my high school or college newspapers, and I never really had the desire to be the next Bob Woodward. When I was in high school, I told my mom I wanted to write fiction.

“You can’t make any money in that,” she said. “What about journalism?”

That was in the mid-1990s, when the news industry was still humming along and relatively flush with cash. (Of course, the professional journalists reading this are probably looking at their pay stubs and shaking their heads in response to my mom’s comment about money. And it’s interesting to note that my parents later paid for my sister’s degree in creative writing. But that’s a topic to discuss with my therapist.) It was relatively easy to get a job at a newspaper at the time. Within two weeks of graduation I had my first gig - I covered county government at the 20,000-circulation, six-day Findlay Courier in Ohio. It was a great place to work. The staff was a mix of long-time journalists willing to share their experiences in the field and young journalists excited to be in a newsroom. I found that every day brought new challenges and new topics to write about, and Findlay’s small, close-knit population made it easy to see the impact of my work.

When the job began to seem routine, I moved onto another news organization and beat, then another. In 2005 I came to California to cover music and entertainment for the 50,000-circulation Record newspaper in Stockton. That’s where I first learned about social media, as I found bands were sharing information about upcoming shows and their latest releases on MySpace. I wanted to design a MySpace page that would serve as a hub of information for local musicians, so I learned how to code (using the book “Spring into HTML and CSS,” which I highly recommend). That led me to create 209Vibe and it started me on a path to a career in online journalism.

The Internet continues to offer exciting challenges and opportunities for journalists. It seems like I learn about a new or innovative way to tell a story or engage users every day. I love building on those innovations and helping create projects that keep my news organization relevant to its community.

I won’t make a fortune doing it, despite what my mom may have thought when she first offered me career advice years ago. But I’ve always loved the fact that my job offers daily opportunities to do something different and creative. That’s what keeps me working in journalism.

I’ll respond to the other two “Ask a Grown Journalist” questions later this week. If you have a question for a grown journalist, leave a comment on this post and I’ll try and get back to you.