Add an eventSessions at SXSW Interactive 2011 of type Core Conversation about Journalism
Friday 11th March 2011
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Are We Not Men? Reaching New American Dads
Men's media has changed tremendously - almost as much as men and dads have. Today's dads are active in every aspect of the household, from parenting to chores, and yet, they are largely overlooked as readers and consumers.
New American Dads are thirsty for knowledge and a community that speaks their common language - that of the real man. The new language of men helps Jacks of all trades learn how to be better at all of them, retain their essential masculinity and perform well in a new paradigm of family, work and self. Traditional media outlets - those that espouse the virtues of supposedly manly interests ($10,000 suits, rare scotch and women, women, women) are missing an opportunity to serve this emerging male marked.
In order to speak 'Dad,' media must speak to the realities of his life, his priorities, responsibilities, aspirations and, above all else, be useful. The growing online media directed at the New American Dad understands that service journalism - that which seeks to inform as well as entertain - is the next evolution in the daddy blogger.
Blogs have their place, but in order to effect change in men's media, online resources must engage the reader in a conversation, one in which the consumer walks away feeling better informed than they had before engaging the site.
Service journalism - how-tos, how it works and best-of lists - have practical applications in readers' lives, thus engendering loyalty and creating conversations with a long overlooked population, while developing an audience for whom older media models based on supposed aspiration and stereotype have little meaningful impact.
Speak to dads in their language, encourage them to speak back, teach them something they can use and entertain them - this is the next evolution of men's media.
LEVEL: Beginner
Sunday 13th March 2011
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The Death of the Death of Longform Journalism
by Evan Ratliff and Max Linsky
The web was supposed to kill longform journalism, relegate it to a slow demise in the pasture of print. The stories were just too long, conventional wisdom held. The web was about the efficient delivery of information—who had time to read 5,000 words on a browser, let alone pay for the privilege?
Longform journalism was going to die. And it almost did.
But the combination of elegant mobile devices and innovative apps has proven that the audience for longform journalism still exists—and has the potential to grow. Turns out, the problem wasn’t that the stories were too long. People love stories! The problem was that nobody had spent much time thinking about how best, for readers, to present and distribute them digitally.
At the same moment that many publishers were being forced to give up on the feasibility of longform work, readers were finally given the tools to read pieces when, how, and where they wanted to.
This panel will discuss: what those tools are, how they’re being used, how some publishers are taking advantage of them, how other publishers are failing to take advantage of them, how the digital reading experience will continue to evolve, why journalists will always be the core audience for longform journalism, the iPad and the Kindle, Instapaper and Readability, and whether or not anyone is making any money from this stuff.
This panel will not discuss: the upside of paginating long stories.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Do Tablets Dream of Electric News?
by Jennifer Brook and Erin Sparling
News organizations are investing a lot of faith and hope into news apps for tablets. Although they have embraced the iPad in different ways, similar design, product, and user experience problems have surfaced. What strategies must be applied to craft design experiences that are more illustrious than the browser? Through taming APIs, feeds, and algorithms, can they entice readers, seasoned and new to make an app a part of their daily news consumption ritual? With stakeholders from both the print and digital world, how do teams surface, manage, and design for divergent expectations? We have made it through the launch, and subsequent updates to, the first news iPad apps and will discuss design considerations and constraints we’ve encountered through this process.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Investigative Tweeting? Secrets of the New Interactive Reporting
How did a nonprofit news operation scoop the New York Times and Washington Post in breaking news and on-the-ground photos and video of the BP oil spill catastrophe? And why did drive-by readers suddenly become community evangelists for this coverage, spreading the word about reporters' Twitter feeds, supporting investigations financially, and going vigilante on rude website commenters? We'll tell you step by step how Mother Jones magazine did it and how you can replicate our wild success. We'll also talk about how a print-media stalwart can transform itself into a nimble 24/7 news operation, and why social media is God's gift to journalism. Bring your ideas, this will be an interactive session: We'll highlight 5 other under-the-radar media experiments and why they worked, 10 practical tips media professionals need to learn from Silicon Valley, and work with interested audience members in a (gentle) experimental pitch slam.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Why Journalists Need to Think Like Geeks
by Blake Eskin
Many print journalists, even those who resisted change, are trying to embrace the digital future. Twenty-year veterans take up social media after taking a buyout, and journalism programs now give aspiring reporters basic multimedia skills. But a facility with Twitter or Soundslides combined with an occupational knack for asking questions won't always add up to the skills necessary to redesign a Web site or create an app. The truth is, journalists and programmers think in fundamentally different ways—words vs. code; stories vs. systems—and often have a hard time communicating and collaborating. And the problem is asymmetrical; most programmers can quickly grasp enough about journalism to work with journalists, but it's much harder to get, say, a midlevel editor to understand the basics of software development or database design. I often find myself wishing I could recommend a course to that colleague or to an unemployed journalist that would teach them how the other half thinks. Most of us have had to muddle through on our own, until we have a road to Damascus moment. But there's got to be a better way. How can we teach journalists to think about technology?
LEVEL: Beginner
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