Facebook is slowly starting to roll out its long-awaited new comment system. TechCrunch covered this in some detail by showing off the new system and even installing it on their site so people could use it at the bottom of the story.

It’s an interesting system that uses Facebook Connect to link content off of Facebook with discussion on Facebook. When someone comments on the TechCrunch post, it posts the comment on the bottom of the story. No biggie, we’ve seen that before. But the comment also then goes to the commenter’s Facebook wall, consisting of a post of the original link as well as the person’s comment underneath. Any further comments on that new wall post then go on Facebook as well as on the TechCrunch post.

Essentially it’s a way of having discussion in two places at once. Better, the comments on the original story are threaded, so it’s not confusing to follow along and any follow up comments on or off Facebook are made in context. Read more

Next in occasional series of posts for J198. Gives you a window on my methods, ideally.

We’re entering the second phase of this class. Some of you are still getting caught up on Phase 1, but I’m moving forward. Now we’re going to draw that explicit line between information and community, and we’re going to put it to work for us.

I just posted a few things on Twitter using #J198 …. three posts with recommendations for local people and news sources to follow. If you’re not following these people, this is a good start. But it’s not the end. Look through their lists. Ask THEM who else locally is interesting.

Step one is building the network. Most of you have been doing a great job with it. At this point you should have around 120-150 people you’re following, so if your Twtter grade isn’t full credit that could be a main reason. As I said in class, you should be devoting the next couple weeks to adding a lot of local folks.

Why? Because step two is what we’re going to focus on now: using the network. This is what we’ve been building toward. Follow those folks, and ask them questions. Not just about people to follow, but also what stories they want to see covered. But don’t just ask. LISTEN. The beauty of Twitter when you have that network going is it’s like a news feed for conversation. You get a slice of what people in the area are talking about, and this can lead to new or different story ideas. For a journalist, this is gold.

Does this take time? Totally. Consider this research, just as you’d use Google for a story. But instead of searching web pages, you’re searching conversation. You need to make time for this, check in every so often and see what people are talking about. This might require reorienting your Web use, or installing a mobile app on your phone or iPod. Something. But this needs to be more of a priority for some of you.

Things I’ve learned in the past week on Twitter just from building a network: an explosion in Allentown, my school taxes are going up, there’s a cool festival happening this weekend that I want to attend, a restaurant I like is closing. And that’s just scratching the surface. When you’ve built that network right, you’ve built a community of information. You learn stuff. You become a better citizen. And in the process, you become a better journalist.

These are all things I want to see. About half of the class, I would surmise, is not spending enough time absorbing the wealth of information on Twitter, focusing on their network, or adding their own value to the community they are building. It’s a requirement for this course not just to get a good grade but to succeed with the material and truly grasp what we’re doing. I’ve been spending the first few weeks setting up tent poles, in a way. Your social media work is not the objective of this class – it’s the foundation for everything we’re doing from here on out. If you’re behind, time to start immersing yourself in it.

As a group you’ve had some discussions about your final project. I want a short writeup  on your group blog (2-3 paragraphs) about what you are broadly considering doing, due by Friday at 5 p.m. Only need one post. From there you’ll be asking the community about your story idea, but for now I want your topic idea.

This past weekend I got to take in my first Online News Association 2010 conference. I debated going at all for a long time because, as someone who has never attended, I didn’t know whether it could live up to its high cost. I’m glad I went though because it was productive and engaging in a way I don’t usually find at my academic conferences.

I should have known, but any doubt was wiped away Jane McDonnel’s opening remarks: “Welcome to the conference where journalism doesn’t know it’s supposed to be dead.”

This introduction summed up my experience, for the most part. There was a hopeful vibe to this place from people of all walks. Educators who are enthusiastic about training the next evolution of students, practitioners who are putting their interactive skills to good use, and the dreamers who are constantly working on giving us something better. The message, it seems, was this: We’re remaking the industry with new media, but if the industry wants to stay married to intransigence then forget them because we got this.

That innovative spirit, heavy on the kind of boldness that appears to be hubris to outsiders, is a refreshing thing to see. There are days where I want to see the legacy folks evolve and incorporate the radically awesome new ventures in digimedia, and there are days I want to blow it all up and let the brilliant new media folks remake it all. I came away from ONA10 focused on the happy medium, but it’s good to know that the innovators got this if it’s needed. Read more

This is something of a brain dump post, as I am working on some ideas. I’ve been having conversations with some folks about a new journalism startup we’re hoping to launch sometime in the next year and am running into culture issues. One of them is the problem of how we classify the journalist.

We’ve been having this “are bloggers journalists?” argument for a few years now, and frankly I am sick of it. It doesn’t matter other than in the bounds of legality, and to be honest I don’t care. I don’t need a label to succeed. But that’s an industry-side fight that I’m all too willing to ignore, because the people who naysay the loudest often are the ones with turf to protect. If I was interested in protecting turf, I would have gone into landscaping.

There’s a flip side that does matter, though, because it affects how we remake this whole enterprise. It’s coming from average folks, those “people formerly known as the audience” who have a hard time revising their own definition. They’re people who see the problems with big corporate media and are more than happy for a new era where journalism comes from within rather than from the top down, which is great. But their conception of “journalist” and “journalism” is just as rooted in the old ways, which means they’re judging the new journalist with standards made for the days of top-down media flow. I find this unfair, and actually something of a threat to journalists seeking to do things a new way because it’s only going to encourage them to retrench into hierarchy – a bad deal for everyone.

Generally speaking, their notion of these terms is rooted in the sham myths by which journalists have operated for decades: objectivity, detachment, perpetual accuracy. They don’t account for the fact we’ve evolved, that we now know that objectivity and complete suppression of bias are a pipe dream more than a reality, and that it’s impossible for journalists to get it right all the time. To be fair, journalism as an industry has shilled these myths as a way of trying to control the conversation about why journalism matters, so it’s not like these user views come from nowhere. Read more

This semester we took something of a leap when we introduced J198 here at Lehigh. As students in our department you’ve always had the journalism focus as part of your studies. The only thing that was narrow was the platforms you learned about: writing, photography, maybe some online work here and there.

This semester we learned (in the words of Cassie) everything. Yeah, we learned video. And photos. And . And blogging. And Web building. And maps. And a little Gowalla. And SEO. And podcasting. But there’s a common thread there. We used it to build something greater than the whole, and that something was the story. If there’s one lesson I want you all to take away from this course it’s something Steph said during her group’s presentation: When we learn the technology to the point where operating the equipment is second-hand, you realize something: It’s always about the story. Always.

You learned a lot about technology and networks this semester, and that kind of information will be vital. But now that you’re at the end of the term, zoom out and see the big picture. See how this all works together. For example, we didn’t use Twitter because it is all-important. We used it to build up networks and relationships with people, to listen to them in shaping stories and work with them to promote the work you did. We used it to get information and push information.

And it works. For example, Google and what do you get at the top of your search hits? Why, the very site put together by Andrew, Lauren, and Ope. Why is this? Because it was set for SEO, it had a clear title that was reflected in the URL, and it was sold in social media by both you and your followers. In other words, “everything.” All of it was pointed toward benefiting from Google’s system of rewarding clicks over big media brands. Read more