Jenna Johnson's Ten Things She Learned That Media Can Do

The first part of Washington Post White House reporter Jenna Johnson's keynote address at the Alaska Press Conference was a quick review of what she said at yesterday's talk about the campaign. But at the end she offered a list of things she learned that media can do to improve things.  Below is my rough transcript of what she listed.


War on the media has tempered a little a bit.  What can the media learn from this and do our jobs better?  Polls show Americans don’t trust the media.  We have to work on this.  I have ideas, but no answers - here's a list of things I learned things media can do
1.  Transparency - giving readers as much raw info as we can - links to reports, if you do a high profile interview put the video on line and transcribe it.  David Farenthold at the Post got a Pulitzer Prize for reports on Trump’s charitable donations - called around asking orgs about getting charity from Trump - tweeted and asked.  Went to Trump clubs, crowd sourcing.
Sopan Deb - took phenomenal notes at rallies, transcribed the best and tweeted the candidate’s words.  
2.  Power of simple questions.  Easiest most obvious questions are the most important to ask, and if they don’t respond, it means they’re hiding something.  So you have to keep asking.  Trump attacked federal judge because his parents were from Mexico.  (Reporter) ???? had a list of questions and went to ask, but ended up asking the same question over and over.  We don’t because it’s part of being respectful, but we've gotta keep asking.
3.  Stop playing the game to get access.  Need to realize you want sources in the administration, but you can’t be too cozy.  They’re giving you info they want out there.  It’s ok to be on their bad side.  Looking at what’s out there and connecting the dots.  People start coming to you with info.
4.  Stay out of the office and talk to people.  Need to be out there talking to people.  And listen to criticism when you get it.  We get a lot of nasty comments, ok to ignore it.  But if someone seriously reaches out to you about what you reported.
5.  Need for explaining.  Need to be better to explain complex material.  Lots of tools - tweeting, answering, engaging, graphics great way to present info.  Here are people with ties to Russia and connections, etc.  Here are all of Trump’s promises to people.  Made a list.  282 promises. (You can see it here.)

6.  Facts really matter.  Learned this week chatting with you here in Alaska that Trump wasn’t the first to lie to your face, that Alaskans have been doing it for years.  Now more than ever we need to call out the lies, do fact checks.
7.  Treat politicians like humans.  Foreign leaders and their staffs have been studying Trump for months.  A lot of evidence has been his books.  His children, like his daughter who teaches her daughter Mandarin.  How do they handle conflicts?  How do they act when they are exhausted?  I felt I had to capture the rally for my readers.  I’d stay up to 3am writing a narrative about the rally - here’s what he said, here’s the reaction  Best Mannheim, Indiana - nine sentence critique ??? Clinton - took Trump 25 minutes to read the statement because he went on tangent after tangent saying Clinton was crazy, to poll watcher, etc.  He couldn’t stick to the script.  This is what really happened.  Writing what you saw
8.  Connecting what’s happening nationally to local communities.  How will Trump’s budget cuts to the community.  Write about it now, what people need to know.
9.  Have a good support system.  Job can be hard.  Conferences are good ways to find fellow reporters where you can get good advice.
10.  Read as much as you can - all sides New Yorker to Breitbart.  Get story ideas from all over.

Conclusion
No better time to be a journalist.  People are more stirred up than ever.  People say, don’t talk to me I don’t know anything about politics.  But then they know all the Trump appointments.  Historic times, people really interested in what’s happening

The executive editor of The Washington Post Martin Baron said the Post reporters would do what they always have done and offered five words to describe what Washington Post journalists need to follow in how they report:

• Honorably,
• Honestly
• Accurate,
• Unflinchingly
• Energetically

There's a good Q&A going on now, but I can only do so much?

Ann Gerhart "The dry business of government, which is different from politics, has important real world impacts" at AK Press Club

Gerhart is an engaging speaker, warm and caring.  She's offered to help folks while she's here.  But for me, the stuff she's talking about is the stuff I know best.  I spent my professional career teaching public administration so when she says,

"The dry business of government, which is different from politics, has important real world impacts"

Ann Gerhart Washington Post

that's like the A, B, C's for me.  But it is important because it's not obvious to the public or to many reporters.  I've got extensive mental notes for posts I want to do on the idea of Government Isn't The
Enemy, Because There Is No Government.

That would branch off into:

1. There are thousands of governments - from the federal government, to the state governments, to the local governments, and all sorts of water and road and other districts.  So there is no monolithic "Government."  And I've pointed out that when you lose your bags (or to be more current, when you're dragged off a plane) at United Airlines, you don't say, "Business is the enemy."  But people do say "Government is the enemy"  if they have a problem with any individual employee of any branch of government, rather than citing that specific agency.  
2. That there's politics and there's government.  Politics are the people who write the laws and all they need to get their jobs is 50% of the vote.  That can happen to someone who has lots of experience and the best of intentions who runs a great campaign.  It can also happen to someone whose backed with lots of money and knows little except what his funders tell him.  Government is made up of people who get their positions by being qualified and competing for their jobs based on merit.  (Yes, I know it doesn't always happen perfectly, but we're all imperfect human beings.  At least government has a lot more transparency than business, so governments can be held accountable.  And yes, there's a hybrid of these two - the top level policy appointments of the newly elected executive.  They usually need legislative approval.  This works when there are healthy oppositions and reasonable politicians who are working for the public good and not some rote ideology.)

Gerhart did make this second point, and it's important.  And she also emphasized the importance of relationships. First, knowing the relationships among politicians and between politicians and those trying to influence them.  Second, relationships are important for politicians to get good legislation written and passed, so the government can implement it.  

What she's talking about is important to me, but not new.

Now she's talking about reaching out to non-voters.  "I don't think there is another side to 'everyone needs to vote.'"  Of course there are.  There are situations where the elections are rigged and not voting makes an important statement about the illegitimacy of the election and the government.  One could even argue that having Trump win was the emergency that Americans needed to understand how important government is and their participation is.  I'm not making that argument, but I wouldn't simply dismiss it.

Gerhart started out saying that when she started at the Washington Post she knew nothing about politics.  An early job was to write a political gossip column - who was partying who whom, etc.  That's when she said that relationships are important.  And I agree.  It was her fear that she'd mix up an R or a D behind someone's name in the column, that got her more into politics.  The things she's saying about getting to non-voters (as candidates and more in this talk as journalists) is right on the mark.  But she really had nothing more than platitudes about how to go about doing this.

As I'm listening and typing here, I'm wondering if I should even post this.  Her talk is good and she talks really well.  She's like an experienced older sister sharing her wisdom that has taken her years to acquire.  Her topic, though, is an area that I have expertise on.  (Most sessions look more at the journalism aspects that I don't know as well.)  And so I'm sucked in to reacting to some of what she's saying.

Looking around we have some key Alaskan political writers in the room.  Nathaniel Herz who is the ADN's legislative reporter is here and Dermot Cole has just asked about how to write about complicated budget issues.  And her answers are good.  She even said, "I don't know how to answer that.  We have to solve that problem every day, how to write about this in a way that is fresh every day."  And she acknowledged that sometimes what people prevent from happening is more important than getting something done.  That's a hard story to write.

She's talking about remembering the underlying conversation, rather than the specifics of the debate.  This is critical, it's what I try to do all the time.  I do like her and what she's saying.  This is really a conversation in a bar more than a conference presentation.  It's not organized with points she wants to make.  But rather it's sincere and as she talks and people ask questions, important ideas come up and are shared.

She's talking about two women in a bar who live nearby each other and seem the same, but it turns out they had totally different ideas.  It's about, she's saying, after all, who we want to be and how we want to get there.

I do want to talk to her during the break.

AK Press Club - What Do Media Folks Talk About At Their Conferences?

It's getting late, but I have some pictures and notes about the panels I went to today.

I'll just do them in chronological order.  I already posted about Matt Pearl's discussion on how to put together a video story.

Then came Matt number two - Matt Eich, a photographer who shared his photos that have been put into book form.  His projects are ambitious.  He finds interesting people and gets permission to hang out with them over a long period of time taking pictures.  You can see the albums on his website at the links below, including a better version of the picture on the right (it's in Carry Me Ohio).

THE INVISIBLE YOKE

• Carry Me Ohio
• Sin and Salvation in Baptist Town
• The Seven Cities
• We, the Free

It's Matt's head in the lower right of the photo, sticking up out of his computer.  I had a little trouble balancing the brightness of the screen so you can see the photo and the darkness of the room so you can get a sense of that too.

I had some trouble understanding Matt over the sound system so I missed a lot of the explanations of the photos, but this is serious photography and commitment.

Then I went looking for the Hearken Meet-up, but ended up in another session in the old TV studio on campus that had a video connection called "Smart, effective and ethical audience interaction."  The program says "Join presenters from the West Region of the Associated Press for best practices to apply your journalistic ethics in the world of social media."  While I was there the discussion was focused on how to find stories and contact people using Facebook.

But I really wanted to hear the Hearken meet-up talk.  It said it was about a way for radio folks to connect better with their audience.
It turns out to be an online system for getting suggestions from listeners for story ideas and there's a way for all the listeners to vote on the suggestions.  The idea is to engage the audience more.  It also costs stations and this was a sales pitch.  But it was an interesting discussion of one attempt to connect more to listeners.  Below is Steve Heimel talking with Hearken's Ellen Mayer on the right.

After lunch I listened to Jenna Johnson with moderator Liz Ruskin.  Johnson is a reporter for the Washington Post and followed the Trump campaign.  I've got lots of notes from that discussion, but given I'm trying to get all these in before I go to bed, I'll just offer a few things I found interesting.
Johnson said that she was curious about some of the off-the-beaten-campaign-path cities that Trump was speaking at so she used census data to come up with profiles of the places.  They were all well under the average US income, education, and employment levels.

Jenna Johnson and Liz Ruskin

At one point in the campaign, reporters had to get tickets and wait in line like everyone else.  No one from the campaign came around - as they did with other campaigns - and gathered voter data or offered water (it was hot) or even apologies for the inconveniences.  But she said the Trump supporters didn't seem to mind.  And she came to value these situations where she could get a more visceral sense of the people there and could slowly reveal herself and get interviews.

Johnson said that one good thing about the campaign was that you need it would end on a certain date.  But then Trump was elected and she ended up in the White House press.  Some asked if things gotten less hectic.  In the video below she answers:




Someone asked if Trump voters had  simmered down a bit.
Johnson said they had.  Once Trump won, they won.  Before that, they were angry at media.  Once election over it was cool.  They don’t have to fight you any more.  They had their victory.

There was lots more, but time to move on.





NPR reporter Kirk Siegler's topic was "making news stories pop.'  I liked Siegler's laid back style, which goes along with his rural beat.  There was nothing slick about him.  He came across as genuine.  Some of the points he made about getting good stories included:

• A strong character, and the example stories he played did all have strong characters

Kirk Siegler

• Tension - competing values or loyalties
• Knowing the point of your story
• Take your listener on a journey - he gave an example of walking from one end of a wildfire zone to the other, stopping along the way to make comments on talk to someone
• Immediately after the interview, jot down notes - "what is the most important thing she said?" What are some of the interesting takeaways you want to remember?  Write it down right away.
• Find a local guide.  A fixer.  When you're going to a place you don't know for a short time, you should contact someone who can then lead you to others.  Do this before you get there.

[UPDATE June 27, 2017: The Alaska Press Club has put Kirk's talk up on Soundcloud. You can now hear it all.
You can hear several other talks from the conference here.]

OK, that's a very abbreviated view of what I took in today.  These conferences always give me things to think about, new ways to do things, a checklist for how I do things, and sometimes confirmation that I'm doing things right.  

AK Press Club - Matt Pearl On Creating A Video Story

I'm at the Alaska Press Club listening to Atlanta television (WXIA)  journalist Matt Pearl talking about how to put together a video story. One story was about an autistic high school student who comes into his own as manager of the high school football team and the story was about the night he got to play in a game and make a touch down,  He went through the logistics of getting out to the town three hours from Atlanta, how he connected with the kid's mom and gathered a lot of different kinds of shots so he could tell the story with some real context.

Pearl strongly emphasized the need to think hard about why the story is important.  He used his story about the Cleveland Cavaliers victory parade in Cleveland and how he got up at 5am to get establishing sunrise shots of Cleveland, then how he took wide shots to establish the setting for the viewers so they get a sense of where they are when they see the close ups.  He even demonstrated this by taking an audience member and walking around the room to show how he'd get shots from different angles.

This talk inspired me to take some video, but I can't edit it while I'm here at the talk, so maybe I'll get to put some up later. [Later: the video wasn't good enough to use.] I'm thinking about how I use video which is different from what he's describing.  But I can use words and other pictures to do some of the story, but without having to make the video the whole story.

The key point I got was that you have to go the extra mile to make the story more than just out of context images.

Oh, and he's also the author of The Solo Video Journalist.

Pictures From An Alaska Press Club Conference

To add a bit of drama to this meeting, you might want to imagine the strains of Mussorgsky's suite.  Here's some help if you can't.










Clifford Levy, NY Times Pulitzer Prize winner, giving the keynote where he discussed how the Times is dealing with the move from print to online presence - the experimenting, what's worked, what hasn't.














The Press Club's Saturday morning business meeting.

[click on any of the images to enlarge and focus]

Board nominees:

Erin Lee Carr, Friday morning, on making dark documentaries, from identifying subjects, getting their confidence, and finding money.  

Levy, LA Times Puliter Prize winner Kim Murphy, and ADN's David Hulen on story building in the digital age.

The Washington Post's Audience  Enhancement director discussing Facebook's algorithm and Snapchat.

















Former ADN editor, UAF Snedden Chair Richard Murphy, and UAA Atwood Chair Julia O'Malley talk about story telling and Pulitzer prizes.

Lisa Demer's panel of Alaskan media folks who have done cross platform collaborations.








The AP's Northwest Regional Media Director Jim Pollock, West Region Director Jim Clarke, and Alaska/Hawaii News Editor Mark Thiessen.

As I look through my photos, I realize that this time I didn't really take out my camera except in the sessions.  While I had my pocket Powershot, I also had the bigger camera and the Powershot images no longer seem adequate.  But the Powershot is much easier to pull out and use.

How Does Facebook Algorithm Work? Ryan Kellett At AK Press Club - Wow! [Updated]

[Sunday April 24, 2016:  I've gone through and edited this a little, added some links.]

There are sessions that complain about how hard life is to be a journalist today, and there are sessions that look ahead and give tons of information on what's happening and how to get in on it.  This was the latter.  These are my running notes, so read with care.  But there was lots of great content on FB and some on Snapchat.

Ryan's presentation yesterday was also great - there's a bit of video on that post.

People at FB probably don't understand the algorithm completely.

News Feed was main product.  Now Messenger.  Is News Feed still relevant?

Cover

• Algorithms 
• How Facebook puts you to work "texting" content on you
• Why do people Share?
• Snapchat

Landscape before Algorithms?

How organized before algorithms?  

Pages - most important, chronological  

FB reverse chronology  - Twitter feed continues this way. though Twitter is tweaking.

Algorithms to solve problem:  Too much content

But they're not neutral.  

Instagram just went through this.  70% of posts you don't see because in reverse chronology.  

Filtering is the purpose.  

People placed value judgment on what is worthwhile and what is not worthwhile.  That's the scary part of the algorithm.  Value judgment of what is important.

That's what journalists questions.  Who decides what's important?  Keep this all in mind.

How does FB put together the News Feed?  Testing.  And users are the lab rat.  

Small group of people.  WP posts something on page.  First second published tested against small audience.  A tiny percent.  Then the next group.  Then the second group.  (did it over or under perform baseline?)  If over performs, then to the next round of people.  At some point it stops over performing.  

You have 4 millions fans, 4 million did not see the post in the first minute.  Larger and larger groups may see it over time.

What's the value of a like, share, comment, click?

Or open or play (video).  Most people think, that my like is the same value of everyone else's like.  But that's not so.  "If I only I can get enough likes."  No. Algorithm weighs different users differently. If someone likes every post and never shares, that counts as nothing or less.  But if she shares after never sharing, then it's a huge value boost.  Because she rarely shares.  Comments etc.  

User B:  Only clicks or watches videos.  Again, if does something they don't normally do, it gets more weight.  

User C:  Comments on everything.  Sometimes shares.  

Q:  If person has lots of friends, do they have more weight?

A:  Probably, lots of things go into algorithm.

Q:  Does watching an automatic video count?   

A:  Yes.  If you have regular link, test how long the user spent over at the story.  Way to calculate the value of the story = time spent away from FB.  

Google does click through and checks out the link.  Video - ten minute video.  

No one thing on the algorithm, it looks at many different things.

Q:  Sort of a private social credit score for individuals.  

A:  Yes, but they would never admit an individual score.  

Play the game - ways to game the system.  Think about the value of your like clicks.  Robert Gobel  [Scoble - I should have known better because I posted about his book Naked Conversations back in 2006] thinking about ways to manipulate the algorithm  [go to this link! it's amazing] for your personal advantage.  

Q:  How do ad clicks affect things?  They would be more valuable to FB?

A:  I don't know exactly  Value of the ad can be different for different parts of the screen.  Some ads need clicks, others just impressions.  Whether you should pay for distribution is question for journalists.  50% is paid social media.  

350 BC  - New Yorkier Maria Konnikova - about 2011 best job on describing world we live in.  Aristotle wanted to know what would make speech persuasive and memorable.    three principles:  ethos, pathos, and logos.  Content should have an ethical appeal, an emotional appeal, or a logical appeal . . .

Formulating stories 

Why do people share?

We want to feel smart and for others to perceive us as smart and helpful, so we craft our online image accordingly 

Lists:  Practical Value, Memory Trigger

Social currency:  LOLcats  - you want to be on the inside, 'we get it"

I see it as a batting average."  Jonah Berger says:  " No one is going to hit a home run every time, but it you understand the science of hitting your batting average goes up.  

Lots of reasons why succeed or fail, but need to be improving batting average over time.  The algorithm will kill you cause you don't know what it does.

Jonah Berger and Aristotle quotes from this New Yorker article by Maria Konnikova:

Viral headlines.   New Yorker:  Six things that make stories go viral will amaze and maybe infuriate you.  Maria Konnikova   Jan 121, 2014   MUST READ

Q:  What about stuff that makes you feel good?  

A:  Yes!  We have Inspired Life blog.  I was skeptical, but it really works

Mistrust of media.  Generally part of journalism, but not everything.  

FB Tips

Repurposing content:  Why the URL matters on Facebook.  Role of recycling stories on FB.  Algorithm looks at URL, FB recognizes you've done this once  If do it again, oh, I've seen it and it gets downlinked.  (specific url, not the generic url of your website, but the specific article or post)

Q:  Autopost or manually do it?

A:  People would say FB wants people to do it manually.  All my tweets to FB automatically, two things against you.  1)  Tweet language doesn't translate to FB 2) Auto feed is Twitter, not the best.  But Wordpress better probably.  

Testing yourself with guide.  

How often should I post?  - No one answer.  Overall, more.  FB has told news orgs:  post more.  I tend to test how much is right.  Let's start with baseline and add 5% for two weeks.  # of posts can be tested because it's in your control.  Newer products, volume seems better.  I'm in the 30minute to an hour camp.  Huff post did every 7 minutes, NPR every 3 hours.

What type of posts?  Links and video now.  Great photos ok, on every day, links and video.  BUT this changes regularly.  FB live is new product.  Major thing they are pushing.  Paying some publishers to produce FB live for FB.  [Also see this link for live video to FB and Twitter.]

Should you post other people's content?  Someone else posting Wash Post. I checked, why would they push our content?  It was mainly parenting posts, home and gardening posts.  Looking at what is doing well for other pages.  Already know it's a good post.  

Q:  how exactly do you do your testing of whether things work, like how often to post?  

A:  Number of likes, shares.  I look at referrals coming in from FB.  

Q:  Change headlines for FB?

A:  We did in past, but lots of work.  Taught reporters to write better headlines from the beginning.  WP style has some weird things - Florida is FLA, which makes no sense on FB.  

Paying for distribution?  I don't do this, but I can talk to you about this later.  A lot of people work on paid social side.  Gone from "don't love it" but have become more accepting, as way to build certain communities, or verticals.  

A Great Facebook Post

Obama meets most powerful 2 year old.    

Great headline, short, Small curiosity gap.  

A clear and compelling image, maybe obscured

Clear invitation to click - curiosity gap headline, mentioning, but gap between what is there and what is on the other side of the link:  "here are the ways your city has eased up your parking rules."  What are they?

Text that serves up an expected emotion   - something that is fun, light, you want to click to participate and celebrate with everyone else.  

Q:  Text elements of FB post?  How do they need to work together.  See Obama Prince Image.

Title

Description

Image

OG code terms, you can use whatever you want.  

click bate - headline is like a product, always deliver on that product.  We cannot oversell a headline.  

Answer has to be in top of the story.  

MOVING ON TO SNAPCHAT

Snapchat wants to rule the world.  

Tier 1  FB, Twitter, Snapchat

Tier 2  Most everything else

3 major parts:

1.  Chat - messaging chat can type and video messages one to one or group

2. Story - totally different product, even tho same app, they see three parts, live stories, 

3. Discover - brands, super produced products

Settings - lots open and say, "what is going on?"

Drag Ion down

Added Me

Add Friends

My Friends

Add by username is simplest.  By snapcode interesting.  Boo-R code (ghost)

Stories - swipe left 

Chat  - swipe right

Why do things disappear? - 24 hour limit for stories.  People want to appear smart.  Something disappears is powerful, not preserved for ever.  Crazy weird on the fly.  Not forever.  

Lowering barriers to perfection.  See Instagram

What bad User Interface (UI) does for Snapchat.  - If you know how to use it, you're cool.  

No search, no share = discoverability nightmare  - need to know specific username

"Secret" features

Stories - once familiar with the elements.  Telling stories using regular snap stories.  

Average regular snap story.  India recognizes transgender status - pictures, first holy dip from WP

Example 2:  Seed vault - steps in pictures from outside, going down, there (capacity for 2.5 million)

Some accounts to follow - 

examples:  Washingtonpost (well, it's Ryan's company so he has to put it here)

ajenews,  thenytimes

local news:  the.oregonian

funny:  theflama, lacma (Los Angeles County Museum of Art artworks set to rap)

#brands:  everlane, tacobell

personalities:  juistinkan, snapatunde,  arnoldschnitzel

reporter:  djbdca

[I was going to put links here, but I'm not a Snapchat user, and as Ryan said, finding actual accounts is hard, intentionally, so people who can do it can feel like cool insiders.   I'm obviously not 'cool' in Snapchat's world.]

Ryan Kellett, Wash Post, What Works With on Online Readers

I'm at the Alaska Press Club annual conference - where I generally get out of my lone blogger cocoon, get stretched a bit, and once and a while get confirmation I'm doing some of the right things.

Ryan Kellett, the Audience and Engagement Editor at the Washington Post, got me stretching.  His talk was highly focused on the technical aspects I've stopped paying enough attention to.  It's the stuff about how to get people to pay attention, keeping audience, links, and other ways to engage the online reader.

This is a quick and dirty post, but I think the video will give you more of a sense of Ryan than a long outline of his talk.
 
So here's a brief overview he gave at the beginning and the video is below:

• Who’s coming to my website? 
•  How are they getting there 
• Mobile Moble. Mobile. Mobile, Desktop 
• What are you doing to serve your most loyal readers? First-timers? 
• Article as a homepage 
• What are you asking the reader for? 
• How does your story look when prompted off-site? (This one he's going to cover at a different session.

As a blogger who doesn't have ads and doesn't really need to worry about traffic, it is good for me to hear about these things.  Of course, I pay attention to traffic, but it doesn't drive me.  I get to write what's interesting to me, but I'd like as many others who might share those interests to be able to find me easily.  So this got me to thinking about how to do that without spending too much time.  Ryan gave me lots to think about.  He's a dynamic speaker, so I thought it would be good to give you a bit of video from his presentation.

I Don't Believe In Contests, But . . .

Today was supposed to be the deadline for submitting material to the Alaska Press Club Annual Contest.  These are awards the organization gives out to its members every year.  There are lots and lots of categories and not too much about how they are judged.  My understanding is that the submissions are sent out to judges out of state - a different judge for each category - and they decide.

Each submission costs $15 to send in by the early deadline and $20 by the late deadline.  Today was the early deadline, but I got an email saying it was extended until tomorrow.  The fees, from what I can tell, help pay for the Press Club, which puts on an annual conference that has pretty interesting speakers from around the country and beyond.  I've done a few posts from the conferences over the last couple of years.

I'm leary, though of these kinds of contests.  Do they really mean anything?  I submitted stuff for a couple of categories a few years ago in the hopes that there weren't many bloggers who would submit and if I won, I could then point to my Press Club award as some sort of independent evaluation that the blog was not just one of the thousands of Alaska blogs.  I even won a couple of awards which served my purpose.  The next year all my submissions were lost.  I got a refund eventually.  Last year I got a couple more awards - in the best news and current events blog category and in the best commentary blog category.  I even got an award in the arts reporting, which wasn't restricted to blogs.

I have continued to participate in the contest because I find it useful to go through a year's worth of posts and assess how well I did.  Are there posts I'm proud enough to submit?  Reviewing them makes me proud sometimes and often makes me cringe.

So I'm hoping to have a list of posts to send in tomorrow for the best news and current events blogs category again.  And also maybe a couple of other categories.  Looking through the list of categories, it appears they've combined the news blog and commentary blog and added a 'best feature blog' category.  I've been trying to review the year's worth of posts, and I have some long lists of potential ones to submit, but I'm glad for the extra day.  But winnowing them down to about ten to package together is hard.

I was trying to get posts that I thought were good and important.  But as I made a last sweep through Blogspot's back pages that shows number of hits and comments, I was surprised by which posts had the most hits.

Comments about computer problems score high.   I don't get that many hits.  It's hard to say because the two different measures I use differ wildly.  Statcounter says I average about 9000 page views a month or 300 a day.  GoogleAnalytics gives me about 1500 - 2000 page views a day.  That's a big gap.  Of course, those hits aren't all for the current day's post.  There are over 5000 posts in the archives and google send people into those older posts.

My hypothesis about the relatively low number of comments is that my writing is usually not confrontative or inflammatory.  It's more calm and reasoned.  People don't feel compelled to disagree or correct errors.  Another possible explanation is that many posts are so long and complicated that people never get to the comment button.  But I get enough feedback from folks that the people who matter in particular issues do read what I write about those issues.

So, this list is much longer than I can offer the Press Club, and these aren't necessarily my favorite posts, though some are.  They're just the posts with the greatest number of hits (from Blogspot.)  I'm putting the number of hits and comments next to them.  If there's only one number, it's the number of hits and there were no comments.

Here are posts that the most readers saw.

Sitemeter Out of Control  -  2374 hits  24 comments
http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2015/06/sitemeter-out-of-control.html

Happy Thanksgiving Political Correctness  1648    I do think this is an important post.  I was very surprised to see it had gotten so many hits.

Selma's Garbage Bag Problem  -  1156  6   Again, surprised about this.  This is not a very important post, though it does fit the 'how do you know what you know?' theme of the blog.

Famous People Born In 1915 - It Was A Very Good Year  -  1117   -  This is an interesting post and it makes sense that lots of people got here.  There was a follow-up post or two.

The Impact of Modern Day Shaming - 784  14   - Not a bad post, it looks at how people judging others on the internet can really disrupt others' lives.  A little herd mentality.  Another ways of knowing post.

Hello Statcounter Goodbye Sitementer - 567  -  This is a followup to Sitemeter Out of Control.

Why I Live Here - Quill Bailey and Rachel Barton Pine, and Eduard Zilberkant Play Down The Street - 507 4   I really like that this one did well.

Would More Women Police Officers Reduce Police Violence?    - 496  A solid post.  One I'm considering for my list for the Press Club.

Soon I'll do the posts that I liked the post.

Ethical Issues Rasied By Electronic Media - Part 2

At the Alaska Press Club Conference two weeks ago, I hosted a breakout session to talk about ethical issues raised by electronic media.  I did a brief post outlining the issues I had in mind before we met.  The breakout session was small.  It was during lunch and the other session was on the open meetings law.  I'm going to jot down my notes here before I forget them. 

We had a diverse group - a small town online newspaper publisher, a free lance photographer, a blogger (me), and two broadcast folks.

We started with me giving an overview of the topic and then we added some other interesting twists.

The basic issue is how is/will the nature of electronic media open new and troubling issues?  And how should we address them?

1.  Changing History

Here are a few issues we discussed here:

A.     Changing Names of News Outlets.  The previous post began with my concern that an Anchorage Daily News article I found from 2011, was under the banner of Alaska Dispatch News.  The Dispatch didn't buy the Daily News until 2014.  While on the surface, not a significant issue, it symbolizes the problem of retroactively changing things.

Rather than leave pre-Dispatch articles under a Daily News banner, it now looks like the Dispatch has always been the paper in Anchorage.  With fewer and fewer libraries keeping hard copies of newspapers and journals, we are vulnerable to having the past altered like this.   For historians and other academics citing sources based on changed names of newspapers, there will be lots of errors and misleading historical references.  People will think, from the website and the citations based on it, that the Dispatch has been around for much longer than it has.  And the Anchorage Daily News' existence will be extinguished.  That does change the history of Anchorage and of the evolution of media in Alaska.

B.  The Potential Loss of Archives.  Steve Heimal related in our session how tapes of his shows had been given to the state archives (I think that was where), but they had given them to someplace else.  He was scrambling to find out where they ended up and if they would be publicly available or even survive at all.  Of course, the internet makes preserving audio archives far easier and more accessible to the public than what existed before.  But what gets saved and what disappears?  This brought up the question,  "What happens if the Dispatch goes belly-up and doesn't sell, who would keep up the website?  With libraries cutting costs by going digital, all the history recorded in the newspaper would vanish.

C.  Simply Changing History.  Once a newspaper is printed and ends up in the library's archives, it's preserved.  Someone could steal it or cut out parts, but a reader would know something was missing.  With online archives, what's to stop someone from going back and changing the story?  It could be to make the author look better (such as getting rid of a prediction that turned out wrong).  It could also involve getting rid of other news that  over time has become politically or economically compromising.   The recent Anchorage mayoral election involved two audio tapes that were alluded to but 'missing' and then appeared in ways that were intended to hurt opposition candidates. Web-caching exists, but doesn't seem to be universal, and many people don't know how to use it. 

D.  Editing Mistakes.   The Alaska Press Club contest rules say:

"All entries must be submitted as they were published or broadcast."

I know on my blog I can easily go back and make whatever changes I want.  And after talking to others, both bloggers and traditional media, it's clear they do too.  But there don't seem to be any clear rules for how to do this, no common guidelines for what is reasonable and what's not.  It doesn't make sense to me to leave up typos or even graceless prose when I can easily fix them.  So I've come up with my own rules.  Transparency is the underlying principle:  If people know about the changes, what was erased and what was added, then it's ok.

Rule 1:  If it is a minor grammatical or spelling correction that doesn't affect the content, then I can change it and not mark the change.  In the session someone mentioned a time factor - you can fix it within the first 24 hours that way.  He said that was practice at his station, but not a written policy. Not marking the change isn't intended to hide it, but it just gets messy with a lot of little notes about this and that.
Rule 2:  If the change is substantive, then I have to strikeout the old  [and bracket the new].  I try to note when the update was made, but I haven't been consistent unless I'm adding totally new information.   Changes can come from comments to the post, new developments, or just rereading a post and realizing there is an error.

Again, transparency is critical - letting the reader know what you are doing, and if it's not obvious, why. 

2.  Other Issues

We had a photographer in our session and he raised the issues of digital doctoring of photos.  Photographers have always enhanced their pictures in the dark room, but new technologies allow for making it possible to blatantly lie with photos.  Again, I try to always mention when a picture has been changed - more than cropping, contrast, and exposure.  And if I significantly change the look with contrast or exposure I'll mention that too.  But when I mentioned I've added someone to a picture - just to get them all in - the group was pretty down on that.  Even when I said I tell readers exactly what I've done and why.  (I think I may have done it once. Not even sure of that.)  And I've taken to posting pictures that are chopped up with some aspects more prominently featured. Often these are nature pictures.  For example see the last picture on this post.  No one is being fooled here.  The photographer in our group cited a well known (he said, I didn't know him) photographer who basically said that with current technology making it easier for everyone to take technically great pictures, it was necessary for 'photographers' to go further, to enhance the craft.  I think I'm in that camp, but again, transparency is required. 

Recommendations

These are a few things our session thought the Alaska Press Club should consider.

1.  Check out what others are doing on this. People I've talked to say things are changing so fast they haven't developed policies. For example,  Management of Electronic and Digital Media  By Alan Albarran has a section on ethics, but it doesn't seem to deal specifically with these issues.  It's more general and follows a legal ethics model of defining obligations to different constituencies. But I'm sure someone, somewhere is addressing this.  I just haven't found it or talked to anyone else up on these issues. 

2.  Change the Alaska Press Club contest rules to reflect the reality of online media being changed.  For example - what is the original story at the Alaska Dispatch News?  The first go at the story online.  The printed version that comes out later?  The updated online stories which get edited as the story unfolds?  I'm sure the rules were written before this was common.  It's time to revise the rules to reflect reality and have everyone competing by the same rules.

3.  Consider developing standards for archiving the news.  What kinds of protections can be put in place to prevent changes in old stories and to alert readers to the changes when they happen?  For example, I think the Alaska Dispatch News should either revert old Anchorage Daily News heading on stories or at the very least have a prominent note that says, "This was published originally in the Anchorage Daily News."

When I search journals through the library online indexes, I usually get - it seems - to the original website of the journal.  Separate backup sites or other ways of story data should be found.  This one is bigger than just the Alaska Press Club.

4.  Develop standards for changing stories after the fact and supporting efforts to preserving original work as it was published.  How and when is it ok to do this?  How should readers be notified?  Are there time limits? 

For preserving the original work, Web-caching already exists, but I'm not sure how comprehensive or organized it is.

That's all I have for now on this - some notes. 

Alaska Press Club Conference Ends Saturday Sunset

Susitna was silhouetted by the sunset as we left the Awards Dinner for the Press Club.  Steve Heimel got honored with a first amendment award and gave a passionate speech about the need to fight constantly to keep the first amendment.

Vera Starbard, and her husband Joe, two of our table mates, took home several awards for First Alaskans Magazine.  She's also written a play - Our Voices Will Be Heard -that's scheduled to be performed in Anchorage next January.  Lisa Phu and Matt Miller from KTOO were also at our table and also got awards. 



There's so much to write about the conference.  I have lots of notes, but didn't have time to do anything with them.  I went to four sessions on data journalism - using data sets to find trends and ways to graphically display them.




I'll try to write more about them, but meanwhile, here's a picture of Andy Eschbacher during his presentation on data mapping.  He works for CartoDB with offices in Madrid and Brooklyn.  They have software for combining data and maps, including a free level, and I intend to try my hand at their tutorials to see if I can get to a point where I can use this.













And then there's the log guy who I met at the last session.  He's from Kentucky, I think he said, visiting a friend in Alaska, and he carries this log around a lot.  There was something about being good when he works with kids.  (I can hear some of the presenters asking, "But where's the rest of the story, you're leaving us hanging  . ."  I think some mysteries are good, and all the readers can create their own story about the log guy. 



What Do I Know?  got some recognition at the dinner - two second places.  One for Best Current Events/News Blog and and another for Best Commentary Blog.  There was also a third place in Arts Reporting Print/Online small organization.  That was for a my Q&A page for the Anchorage International Film Festival.      It's nice to know that others think this little blog is doing some things right.  Thank you Alaska Press Club. 

The Press Club's Facebook page says all the rewards will be posted at their website on Monday.  And the Twitter hashtag #AlaskaPressClub already has a lot of pictures of awards up.
[Update May 3:  Here's the whole spreadsheet of the winners at the Alaska Press Club site]

Ethics On The Fly

[From Alaska Press Club session - these are rough notes, missed a lot, but it will give you a sense of the session.  Too much happening to do more.  Lots of good discussion.]

Presenters
Jacqui Banaszynski

Lanpher and Banaszynski

Katherine Lanpher

Ethical Responsibilities of an Editor?

Editor and reporter not different - emphasis different.  Reporter more in the field and with resources.  Relationship fraught with conflict - obligation to sources, don't want to lose them, cutting deals with them.

Sports beat reporter didn't do serious sports investigation reports.

Editor's responsibility - ask all the right questions, protect reporters and company.  Both have responsibility to craft.  Pressure points - want to protect reporter, but have bigger responsibilities.

Didn't think we had ethical quandaries, but, yes, off course.

Free lance reporting - consequences.  Al Jazeera has three reporters in Egyptian prison.  Responsibility for safety.  James Foley, Danny Pearl - doing one dumb thing.  Not run dangerous stuff, then others will follow.  If someone takes him hostage, we can't send in rescue.  

Bring back to other end of the spectrum.  Every decision journalist makes is an ethical one.  Who to talk to who not to talk to.  Using one word versus another can be an ethical decision.

Take for granted, fair and ethical, get all sides of the story.  So why do we take police report, maybe talk to victim, but who are we missing?  We do that all over, don't talk to the suspects.

Reporter versus Editor - back to Rolling Stone - we could talk for days.  Huge cohort adamant that reporter should never write again.   She was a freelancer.  She didn't have regular benefits, salary,  . . .

But she still shouldn't have done what she did.

Decision that might be ethical in one situation isn't in another. 

Margaret Sullivan - interface between NY Times and public.

Ethics at a small time publication.

My other half is journalist.  Got fired when economy went bad.  60 year old white guy, unemployed.  Invented his own job.  Funky little fabulous newspaper.  I was invited to big fancy lunch for politician.
You can't go.
I have to.
You can't go to fundraiser, you're a journalist, unless you go to Republican fund raisers.
Publisher, me, had a long discussion with the editor (me), and the publisher won.

New Yorker Piece - Rachel Aviv  - small town newspaper reporting New Town B - editor is a philosopher.  Made decision how they were going to serve their community after watching how the national media covered things.  Consciously decided to do news that would help the community - never mention the name of the massacre.

Ethics is not something you have, rather something you do.  Values is something you have. 

 Discussion of small time publisher going to fund raiser.
Won't vote in primaries - if have to register for a party.  
I don't want anyone to think they know where I am politically and how that would affect my writing. 
This is changing with your generation - they see and question the false neutrality of the press.  Say, wouldn't it be better to be open where we stand on things.  And that raises interesting territory.  Where do you draw the line?  Yes I'm going to be involved in my community and civic life, but will do with with certain guidelines. 
I assume if you go to Occupy Wall Street, you're going to cover it.  My boss, a Brit, at the Guardian, it was policy that you went to the protest.  We've had heated words because we have a South African . . . 

Things got more into advocacy - sending a gay reporter to cover the Obergefell case in the Supreme Court.  There was a long discussion about whether transparency is enough to overcome people's bias.  Early AIDS writing was done by gay press, because they knew what was happening.  What about covering the opening of a new store owned by reporter's sister, who is the only reporter in a small town.  Response:  Disclose the relationship.

Off the record.  Don't assume people use it the same way.  Be clear what that person means.  Public officials owe people information, even private officials in some cases, probably shouldn't let them go off the record.  Exploratory interview - still trying to figure out what the story is.  "I'm still trying to decide if there is a story about how public records.   .  I need help figuring whether there is a story."

"Why don't we try it on the record.  How much can you tell me on the record?"

Different with public officials who know how to dance and private citizens who don't usually deal with the press, need time to explain. 

Moved to small town, people weren't used to reporters reporting everything.  Set up one-on-one meetings with officials and talked about the public meetings law and my roll and how we could get along - and that helped a lot. 

Where Are The Most Diverse US Census Tracts? - Chad Farrel at Press Club

Anchorage Press Club conference - Saturday morning panel that I attended. [Paraphrasing what he said quickly, read with caution.]

Starting with Sarah Palin's 2008 comment that Alaska is a microcosm of America which got a lot of flack, including Frank Rich.  Farrel showed up in Alaska to teach sociology and has found that, in fact, the US Census Bureau's 'broad, admittedly crude' categories of ethnicity, that Palin was actually accurate on this one.

• White
• Black/African American
• Latino/HispanicAsian and Pacific Islander
• Alaska Native/American Indian
• Biracial/Multiracial

These broad categories miss a lot of the diversity that exists in each category.

Also show the socially constructed nature of race, why I use "Ethno-racial" diversity.

Formula - you could do this analysis with income, age, occupational diversity etc.  Not
just racial.

Get statistics that are intuitive to normal folks.  You get:

1.  Number of groups present in an area
2.  Size relative to one another

Imagine three neighborhoods.
1.  All white (not many left in US)  - no ethno-racial diversity
2.  Mixed, but 99% white - still more diverse than #1
3.  Mixed, all equal sized - high level of diversity

This index takes this factors into account - from 0 - 100.

0 =  just one group
100 = all six groups the same size

And inbetween, lots of variation.

How diverse is Alaska compared to rest of US?


Frank Rich was right in terms of Blacks and Hispanics, but he left out our Native population and bi-racial, multi-racial identity.

Alaska is 5th behind Hawaii, California, Nevada, and New York.  73 72 69 66.3  66.1

Multiple pathways to scoring high.   Where does Alaska rank?

photo

Compared to US as a whole, Alaska ranks a little higher.  Big surge after 1990 - first year Census allowed people to check more than one box.  Resulted in the surge.


Moving to Anchorage

San Francisco (#2 - 77) more diverse than Anchorage. (#30 - 64)

Anchorage (#30) more diverse than Seattle (#43)

Q:  What about military?
A:  Plays a big role.  Military the most diverse social institutions in the country.

More diverse than most Western cities and US.  Gap is widening in 2010 Census from 2000. 

Moving into diversity within the groups.

American Community Survey - Census data collected between the decennial years.  Doesn't count everyone, but one question allows person to identify 'ancestry or ethnic origin' with examples.

Farrel too all the groups with more than 1000 for Anchorage - pooled from five year chunk, bigger sample size.   image

Some people put down "American."  Discussions in my class whether American can be an ethnic group.  (Largest proportion of Americans in Southern states.)

Q:  Yupik didn't hit 1000?
A:  No, but a lot of people didn't fill out the question.

Q:  Did this include Matsu?
A:  Not this one, but the previous data did, which brings the diversity down.

Q:  Sense that Yupik population equals the Athabascan?
A:  Can't really speculate.  Will say ethnic identity is fluid.

Linguistic Diversisty
Anchorage School District 95 different langauges spoken at home.


UAA - lots of student diversity

Why is Anchorage so diverse?  Characteristics of diverse metropolitan areas.  (Not necessarily causes, housing could be consequence.)

Coastal/Border state  √
Large population
Renter households  √
Military presence  √
Immigrant gateway
Immigrant outpost  √
Youthful population  √

Click to enlarge

Guiding Questions:

Neighborhoods - census tracts (not necessarily neighborhoods - about 4000 population)
Use census tracts as a proxy.  Track 11    - cluster of Mountain View, 6, 9.01 (merril field) and 8.01  (Wonder Park).

Three most diverse tracts in US.  The one thing that makes them diverse in Anchorage is the Native population.

Further down the list - most tracts in Anchorage have higher than US average diversity.

High Schools

Parent asked if East High was, based on the tracts diversity, the most diverse high schools.
18,000 public high schools - East, Bartlett, West high schools most diverse in US.
Anchorage high schools more than double diversity of average high school.

Q:  Why higher diversity in high schools than tracts?
A:  1.  immigrants tend to be younger and of child bearing age.

Q:  Schools more diverse because of less residential segregation?
A:  There is segregation, but less than other metro areas in US.  Did study on exposure to diversity by whites and Anchorage is higher.

Next steps:

1.  What are the consequences of diversity?  Can't get at that just with the numbers.  But intergroup contact theory covers this.  Lots of lit.  Exposure to diversity tends to increase tolerance for out groups.  Reduces reliance of stereotypes and prejudice.  Can see individual variations which undermines stereotypes.
2.  How do residents experience and negotiate diversity in their daily lives?   # 1 works if social-economic groups, in the same school class.  Integrated or diverse group working toward the same goal.  Benefit of contact.

But, if inequality layered on top of diversity?  Groups competing for scarce resources - who gets the soccer field at the park?

I've given top down view, but we experience diversity on the ground, and that's where the media comes in.  Journalists have a unique skill set to dig up these stories and how we're negotiating diversity in our daily lives.  We're at the forefront of that trend in the US (increasing diversity).  How we negotiate that trend has implications for the rest of the US. 

DATA, DATA, DATA - Finding and Using and Giving Meaning to Data Available Online from Chrys Wu

 Rough notes, as she said it.  Take this with a big grain of salt.  But there's lots of good info and links in here for using data that's out there. (This was a really good, content rich session.)

Chrys Wu - What to think about when you're thinking about DATA

About me:  

DataKind - using data to advance the public good.  In New York, but you can volunteer around the world.

Altered Oceans - project won the Pulitzer Prize (Note:  I didn't win the prize, just worked on it.)

About You:

Work for NYTimes, Developer Advocate
but lots of other roles before in different organizations.

Election Map, Interactive graphics, technology group - about 300 people considered developers, make it possible for people coming to the website or thru mobile phone.

I'm a little bit of glue and little bit of grease.  Help others get their work done.

My role to solve problems and help people.

Collecting Data
People should know what data is out there.  Where get it.
I work with National pubs, for regional, wait til !&A

Govt. agencies - FRED -  Make friend your friend - terrific trove of economic data
GeoFred - maps
AlFred - archive of economic data -- code for 0380 for Alaska  will pinpoint Alaska
Get exel add-in

US Census Data - PUMS - public use microdata and IPUMS

Gives a lot of insight into what's happening in Alaska.  PUMS what feds are supplying, a sample pad, understand trends in household.
IPUMS - U of Minn. -






National Conference of STate Legislatures - tracks legislation


NGOS

World Bank - lots of data, particularly on poverty, also good tumblr account


The Internet Archive - SF, Friday around noon - they serve a free lunch and talk about the Internet Archive

Collect tv advertising campaigns, old newspapers, etc. 


Draw from your own well∫

Set up your own data base, 

Cleaning Data

Tabula - how to use - cracks pdfs.

School of Data -

Open/Refine (now googleRefine) can deal with >1 million records
Tutorials for Open/Refine - Github

David Huynh Full Tutorial (2009- still relevant)

Gotchas -
typos,
disambiguation (making sure these john smiths are the same or not, which Manhattan, etc)

Excel limits - watch for files with exactly
1,048,576
65,536
32,000
means they ran out because they exceeded the limits - more data, have to go back and get it.  Get on phone and talk to people.


QUESTIONS
Q:  How do you clean it, who is smarter?
A:  Call them and discuss it - they like to be alerted.  Pro-publica, data store
they've chosen not to charge for cleaned data from FOIA searches.

Q:  Have you used Gap Minder?  Plug data in and create a movable graphic.
A:  One shortcoming - doesn't allow you to do annotations  - Hans Rosling -

Q:  How village people in Anchorage maintain connections to villages through food - getting village food to urban areas - how might you approach that from a data perspective? Fish and Game doesn't break things out by indigineous groups and non-
A:  Find other overlapping data - can you use place? 

Q:  How do you vet sites?
A:  Generally look at the organizations collecting the data.  Talk directly to the source of first level collection - NGO's, Govt, even campaign reporting.  Pols have to report to agencies.  Even Pro-publica, need to check it out.  The Sunlight Foundation - they're trustworthy - take govt data and make it more usable.
Who entity is, what they're collecting, and the methodology.  Watch out for orgs that take data from different sources and try to mesh it.

Q:  Good tools or sites for government contracts?
A:  USA Spending.gov (from audience)

Q:  Who reviews - like peer review - your stuff?
A:  Times - trust our reporters.  Editors job to check and challenge the reporter.  For those who 'are' the newsroom, constantly check yourself.  I talked to a lot of experts, friends in academia and check with them.

Two ways to look for numbers:

1.  Look for outliers - what's this weird thing?
2.  Look for the numbers that don't change while everything else is changing?  Journalists trained to look for the movement, but maybe the thing that doesn't change is the real story.
3.  Comparisons - how it looks compared to other states?

Amanda Cox  - statistician for NYTimes, worked at Bureau of Labor Statistics - has a fan club of colleagues who love her.  She's spectacular.  Thinks creatively.

Q:  Find what others have done?
A:  IRE - Investigative Reporters and Editors - search  - they will come and train you free.

Q:  Work at museum and we have a big archive we'd like to share.
A:  Digital?  Look at models:
NY Public Library David Reardon
Google
British Library Photostream


Quartz