BeatBlogging to connect with communities

I'm listening to Pat Thornton's interview with the Trib's Dan Honigman, the man behind Colonel Tribune (and a cool dude to boot), and he's talking about the importance of linking to connect people. And I realized that I didn't even blog about my interview with Pat. He talked to me and LJWorld.com's Jonathan Kealing a few weeks ago, and talked to us individually about the beat blogging going on at the Journal-World.

The news organization is doing a lot in terms of micro-reporting in order to a) expand coverage of Lawrence and b) further connect with our readers -- and beyond. Personally, I found writing my blog, Schoolhouse Talk, to be a great experience. How else would I report so much on mock elections at Free State High School?

Now I'm working the overnight shift (and anticipating not getting any sleep today...body clock is adjusting), and I'm hoping to install a graveyard shift blog. It would be great fodder for stories like this, that hold probably a limited interest for most of LJWorld's readers. Think a blotter/marketplace of random ideas. Who knows? It might be fun.

But, to be honest, Schoolhouse Talk has had limited success. Perhaps for two reasons. First, we don't update it enough. We're still trying to figure out what kind of news is blog-worthy. In a market like Lawrence, most school news is big enough for a full story, and we don't want to blog about the lunch menu at the high schools.

Second, I wonder if our audience is blog-savvy. Do they see blogs as a snark market, full of opinion? Do they take our blogs seriously? We've certainly had some success with story leads coming out of the blogs, and some of them, like our KU blog, do quite well. The opportunity is there...buffering, I guess.

Our audience knows a heck of a lot more about Lawrence than we do...we take that seriously...and we can use blogs, as an informal reporting base, to learn more from them. Now we just need to start talking back and forth.

War, wind farms, Obama and MTV: Street Team '08 concludes

I posted my final video for MTV News' (EMMY AWARD-WINNING!) Choose or Lose Street Team '08, a Knight Foundation initiative that used 51 citizen journalists (hate that term) to cover the youth movement during the election.

This project was rewarding, though sometimes frustrating. But looking back on it, it provided me with skills, insight and ideas that I never had before. I can edit a video like a whiz, our Election Day-tweets were posted on Times' Square HD board and I interviewed Ralph Nader. Pretty cool.

Here are some highlights, in no particular order:

• I saw Barack Obama speak three times, including his first (and only) visit to Kansas, the state where his mother was from. Also twice in Kansas City, including a rally with 75,000 people, where I got patted down by Secret Service.
• I embedded with the 1st Infantry Division's Dagger Brigade, as they trained to go to Iraq at Fort Irwin, Calif. I saw first-hand how our troops train for war, reported from the back of a Humvee and had front row seats to some intense combat simulation. I was also invited to embed with them in Iraq, but that looks unlikely.
• Great interview with author Tom Frank, who wrote "What's the Matter with Kansas?" and "The Wrecking Crew." Tom, if you're reading, I'll buy you a beer next time you're in Lawrence.
  
• Ralph Nader came to Lawrence to speak. I didn't do a story on him for MTV, but I got to interview him for LJWorld.com's Schoolhouse Talk blog.
• My MTV blog, Making Kansas Count, was named one of the state's top political blogs by The Washington Post's Chris Cilizza.
• I contributed an article on guerilla journalism to Harvard University's Nieman Reports.
• I met tons of exciting, engaged young people who are working hard (on both sides of the aisle) to make Kansas a better place. Most impressive, I think, are the kids at Greensburg High School, who are rebuilding their town as America's first all-green city.
• Daily Kos linked to a story I did on State Sen. Donald Betts, who was running for Congress at age 30. He, however, got smoked in the general election.

So it's been a long, crazy 11 months. Many thanks to MTV for choosing me to report on Kansas, and major props to my fellow Street Teamers, who were a source of support (both technically and emotionally).

Twitterank: A case study in familiarity

My new position at the Journal-World means I got home at 6:15 a.m. and slept to about 4. Just like college.

But that meant I missed out of a lot Twitter chatter, which I've apparently become addicted to. A popular topic on the Twitter boards today was a thing called Twitterank, which purportedly rates your popularity on the micro-blogging site.

Turns out, it might be a phishing scam, stealing your password and distributing content under your username.

I was typing in my Twitter ID to see what this thing is when I read a note saying it's a scam. (PS: Nobody's totally sure yet, but there have been reports of phishing after folks logged on to the site, which asks for your ID and password)

Why would anyone be that eager to share their password with an unknown third-party site? Is it vanity? Or just a familiarity with a community that is by and large congenial, helpful and eager to share information?

I would never give out my SSN or bank account number to a strange third party, but I find myself doling out my Twitter password to a variety of sites to a) see what they are and b) further navigate the social web.

While these tools are utterly cool (if not unpractical for most daily uses), it begs a bigger question about how we use the social web. It's a pretty well-established fact that many parents are wary of their kids using MySpace and Facebook, lest predators view their information and photos. So why are we adults, who should know better, so keen to give out private information?

Stranger danger, right?

I drank the Twitter Kool-Aid

Damn. Damndamndamn. Against every instinct in my body, counter to the feeling of revulsion and rebellion I felt towards Twitter when I first tried to figure out what the hell it was all about a year ago, I find myself checking it multiple times a day, tweeting during work and following random people.

So far it has not benefited me professionally, it's generated no more than a few hits on my MTV videos, but damn if it isn't kind of addictive. This really isn't what I need while working in a newsroom.

I've actually decided to engulf myself in social media for the time-being. I've started using Digg and I'm going to venture into other methods of communication to see if they can boost my MTV views...not out of ego, but of curiosity. And a bit of ego. But mostly curiosity.

But I WILL NOT be found on Second Life. That is one thing I just don't get.