The Top Party School

This week's assignment for multimedia journalism class was evaluating an audio-story from The American Life, a weekly public radio show broadcast. I chose the story #1 titled "Party School," which the explanation says: "What's it like to be at the country's top party school?" 

It is the story about Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) that awarded as the top party school in America by The Princeton Review. The 69-minute story breaks into four sections of different settings, plus one prologue.

The story uses many natural sounds as illustration. Like in Act One, it pictures the campus situation with the sound of students chattering, or someone kicked the trash bin. The nat also appeared everywhere, like the audience cheering when university president's speech, or university band performance. In Act Four, they got the sound of a giant gong.

This story has deep investigation into the party topic. The reporters got many sources to be quoted, from students, staffs, and university president, residents around the campus, police officer, to delivery pizza driver.

This audio story is interesting. I like how they capture the life of American students in American school and the issues along with it: partying and drinking. The conversations sound so natural and real (like when they interviewed a drunk-birthday-girl).

If I could do an audio story, it would be about a campus activity. Last week I wrote about ESL Talk Time program, for college newspaper. I think it will be interesting to report their situations and interview the ESL learners of using this program. The natural sound would be the chit-chat (with different accents), the games that they play or the movie that they watch. 

Think Before You Tweets

"Use your head before using your thumbs.”

That was the message from David Sheets, sports news editor of St. Louis Dispatch at the session “Think Before You Tweet: Editing Yourself” in Society of Professional Journalist conference is Kansas City, MO, April 9.

I’ve been willing to blog about this material since last week but just got sidetracked by one thing or another. Apparently, the class assignment about Twitter brings me back to the topic.

According to Sheets, technology helps us to be socializing. “All of us are social animal,” he said.

The use of social media is a phenomenon right now. A person do Twitter for himself/herself also very often become the social media specialist for his/her company and organization account. Consequently, be careful; know who you are online and where you are online.  

Here’s the example. In February 2011, American Red Cross made accidental tweet in their account @RedCross:

"Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head's Midas Touch beer... when we drink we do it right #gettingslizzerd

Seemed like that was meant to come from a personal account.

An hour later, Red Cross acknowledged their mistake and made a statement:

"We've deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we've confiscated the keys."

Sheets said, with social networking, the world is our oyster. “Small things can leave a big impression.”

How important Twitter for the community is also detected by the government. Last year NPR published that “The Library of Congress is Archiving Your Tweets.”

So, to avoid looking silly in Twitter, Sheets suggested this steps:

• Soften down your temper. Don’t tweet when you’re angry. Because when a person gets angry, his/her ability to reason is impaired. So consider your mood before tweeting.

• Know the relevant background information about your subject before tweeting about it. Get your facts straight and be able to answer “Who cares?” and “So what?” (and of course, the five basic W’s and H).

Sheets said, with blogging and social media, journalists can seep their opinion into their reporting. But remember; still do research before post it.

• Use your intuition. It’s a sense of sense; if you think what you’re doing is wrong, go with the feeling. Do not risk posting anything that may be misinterpreted.

It’s related to how many media right now are quoting celebrity tweets as a quote. Verifying and confirming is the best way to avoid libel/insult/threat.

• Nuance, means pay attention to grammar and spelling. Minimize potential errors by reading posts out loud or having someone else read them. “Delete immediately if you find mistake,” said Sheets.

• Last one, is the self-Kontrol, means control the burning urge to hit “Send” button until you’re certain you’ve accomplished all the tasks mentioned above.

Sheets also gave some tweet-tips for journalist. He said journalist should be original, avoid merely repeating what others say. Also, check your distribution setting; be certain your tweets are going to the proper audience.

Twitter for Journalist? Why Not!

Twitter is a micro-blogging application; unlike blog that usually consists of article that length in many words, Twitter restricts the user to write no more than 140 characters to be displayed on their page. It’s even more less compare with SMS that can be filled with 160 characters. 

Twitter can be used as a source to discover what is happening right now. For journalist, I think Twitter can teach how to write short, publicize our writing and get information from other sources.

In 140 characters, user should be able to convey messages with a material that can be understood by the followers. Writing in a shorter sentence is important (especially for online-media journalists). The shorter the sentence is the easier the reader to understand it, but of course there must be informative elements in our tweet; at least ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘when’.

One of the functions of social networking is to get more echoing voice. Through Twitter, journalists can disseminate his writings, or photos and videos in the form of links. Our workpiece will spread out quickly when more Twitter users retweet (RT) our tweet. It's easy, instant, and free publication.

In Twitterland, journalists also can obtain information in real time from people anywhere. Users can immediately report information they have. They can tell about an accident, floods, weather, or whatever they experienced.

I remember one case in Indonesia few months ago. There was a clash between two mass organizations in the suburb area of Jakarta. Some of witnesses posted the situation on Twitter, along with the picture, and tag (mention) some of the journalists, news agency, and even politicians. The media covered the case after that and the case became trending topic in Twitter for couple hours. 

However, it's a big no to just grab raw materials from our newsfeed. The tweets need confirmation and multiple recheck before we decide to report and inform the news.

I Follow You

This week in Multimedia Journalism class, students are recommended to join Twitter and follow at least three people that look interesting. I've been joining Twitter for almost two years and already followed the news organization accounts like Reuters, Huffington Post, and some of Indonesian news channel. But to follow the journalists in Twitter, especially U.S journalists, is a new thing for me. So I opened the MuckRack, website that compiled journalists' tweets, and started to follow:

- Katie Couric (@katiecouric), anchor in CBS News

- Cara Parks (@caraparks), world editor in Huffington Post

- Courtney Hazlett (@courtneyatmsnbc), pop-culture correspondent for MSNBC

After following them for a few days, I figured out some interesting points. First, they didn’t always tweet about their work or journalism-news-related. Sometimes they put their thoughts or their agenda for a day, like Couric informed her appearance in Today Show, or Hazlett that expressed her feelings about American Idol elimination (well, she’s a pop-culture writer, so I think the opinion is still part of her job).

To tweet about news, Couric, Parks, and Hazlett put links for article, videos, and pictures. They also re-tweet information they got from other twitter accounts to their followers, and used hashtags for different topics. The frequency of their tweets are varying; one day they could post three until five various tweets, and on other day could only one tweet. 

Each of the account has numerous followers. Couric has the largest amount with more than 180,000 people following her, Hazlett has 8,000 followers, and Parks "only" has 800 followers. I think it's because the two first people are well-known by public based on their appearance on television.

The "Big Blog" review

I read the Big Blog from Seattle PI (http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/).  

According to the blog, they’re “covering Seattle news, weather, arts and conversation, along with a grab bag of stuff that's just plain interesting.” The Big Blog is one of the staff’s blogs and it seems that some staff wrote for the contents.

The writers posted not only one story, but almost ten posts per day so they very up-to-date and, I think, is very productive. Each story categorized in some sections, such as: Science, Tech, From the Internet, Fun, or even Just plain weird; that literally contains odd news or videos.

In my opinion, this blog is interesting because the stories are soft-news and fun. They also add video or image that support the content.  The contents are related to local area (Seattle) so it helps the community to connect what’s happen in the city. People can also give comment so it becomes more interactive.