Jen Lee Reeves

In the time where I haven’t blogged here, I’ve been working a lot in the newsroom. And I have spent a lot of attention trying to hone a fan page for the newsroom where I work. It’s all about promotion… and it got a little easier to promote these days. Today there was a really interesting addition to Facebook. Anyone is able to create a fan badge. Check it out:

Jen Lee Reeves is a fan of

KOMU-TV

Create your Fan Badge

To me this is a big deal because it makes it MUCH easier to show and share a fan page. I tweeted earlier today saying I think this is Facebook sharing a little bit of Ning.

In the aftermath of our Homecoming real world event, I realized the two students who had a chance to pitch in and live blog the event really learned a lot. They not only used a new technology tool (Cover It Live), they also had a chance to listen in and really engage in the live event.

So I’m trying it again. I’m giving two of my students who are graduating in December, Blair Miller and Brooke Hasch, a chance to live blog our class today. Students interviewed potential Media Giraffes for a site that keeps up with innovative minds in the media.

For the sixth year, I’m holding a gathering to bring Mizzou j-school alumni together with current students. It’s a chance for our professionals to share the lessons they’ve learned when they transitioned out of the Mizzou newsrooms and into new ones. Many of our grads are also finding alternative jobs that let them use the skills they’ve gained. So this year I’m hoping we’ll have a HUGE mix of skills represented. We always have great conversations. We always eat pizza from Shakespeares.

The gathering used to include three or four alumni and we’d hang out in a small room at KOMU-TV. This year we’re holding the event in a large room in the Reynolds Alumni Center. So I figured – why not turn the event up another notch. Let’s live blog it.

So I’m inviting students to give live blogging a try during the event. They’re new to this – but that’s why I try to find these kinds of opportunities. So I’m inviting alumni who are unable to attend to check this live blog out and please contribute to the event by sharing and commenting on this live blog. I hope to put the blog up on a screen behind the speakers so we can keep up with the conversations. I’m also going to use the twitter hashtag: #realworld

So join on in if you’d like:

I spend a lot of time talking. I spend a lot of time teaching. I spend even more time managing a newsroom these days.

Since returning to the newsroom full time after my stint as a Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow, I’ve learned it’s so hard to do things really well when I desperately want to change newsroom functions. I need to provide guidance to my reporters on so many levels. They need to cover legitimate local news. They need to find ways to deliver the information they’re gathering throughout they day. They also need to cover that information in on air newscasts. What is the priority? In my view, it should be online and online properties. But for many people who work in my newsroom, the newscasts are still getting priority. Why? Because I’m working in a traditional newsroom. No matter what, our major product is currently newscasts. I’m striving to transform and improve the many other alternate (and in my world more important) information outlets inside web and mobile tools. Growing pains.

I stood in front of a class today and admitted I don’t know everything. I told them that I’m still learning and that’s why I expect them to continue to learn. I am trying to be open minded. I want them to be open minded.

Journalists in this transformational age need to be open minded. Anyone who manages information or communication needs to be open minded.

So instead of spending non-stop time talking about what is going wrong, let’s focus on learning, listening and watching how people are communicating and ingesting information. Just watching can go a long way. Just experimenting can go a long way. Deciding new ideas are not worth trying just because it hasn’t been perfected is close-minded. Let’s keep learning and maybe, just maybe I’ll feel like I’m making a difference as I’m in the thick of my current newsroom absorption.

I’ve taught my current class for four years and it’s amazing to watch the shift of the students in my classroom. Four years ago my students were interested in working for the web – but most students had plans to work traditional jobs in broadcast newsrooms. They wanted to be on air reporters, newscast producers and videographers. Very few had interest in web-based newsroom jobs. Four years ago, some of the students who wanted web-based jobs couldn’t even find them.

My how times have changed. In a rough economy, I’ve been happy to see many of my former students find amazing jobs. Some of the jobs are positions that had never existed before. My students are presenting skills to newsrooms and other businesses that aren’t seen everywhere. They can shoot and edit video, convert and post it to websites, think visually by creating graphics or understanding enough to work with more techno-savvy flash designers to accomplish their interactive vision. My students understand how to use social media and they understand the challenge of building online relationships through social tools to deliver information. They’ve learned how important it is to be flexible and accept that this world is full of tools that are great now, but could easily change tomorrow. I’m pretty excited about the future and hope I can continue to keep up with it all so my students can be as informed and experienced as possible.

I know many others have already written about Google Voice… But I haven’t had a chance to play with it until now. I set up Google Voice for my cell phone and my home phone. I decided to call it using my husband’s cell phone to see what the experience is like. When you call a Google Voice account, it asks you to leave your name and then Google Voice alerts the account owner. My phone rang saying my husband was calling. I answered and Google Voice asked if I wanted to answer the call, let it go to voice mail or listen in while the person leaves the voice mail. I opted to let it go to voice mail. I left a quick message after that.

The result: I quickly had an inbox message on Google Voice with the audio and a transcript of the voicemail. It wasn’t a perfect transcript, but it was incredible how quickly it was completed. Along with the ability to call the phone back or send an SMS, I can even embed the voicemail:

Let’s think about this in the sense of news collection. You could have a reporter call in, leave a voicemail report and quickly share the text with the news producers or editors while placing the audio recording onto your newsroom’s website. The audio is also downloadable. What if a reporter used Google Voice to call in his or her voice track for a news package? Who knows. I hope to try these ideas out in my newsroom. Does anyone else have good ideas for the use of Google Voice?

UPDATE: I was too excited to play with Google Voice – I missed that it gives you an option to record your phone conversation. The next thing I hope to investigate is how long Google Voice will record your audio. Imagine the simplicity of collecting a phoner interview using Google Voice. A transcribed interview before you even sit down to write.

I haven’t had the chance to blog a lot lately. That’s because I’ve been busy trying to renew and rethink the way KOMU8 News and KOMU.com delivers news to our audience. A big part of that has hovered around using Twitter as an effective news delivery tool for general assignment reports.

It all started back in March when I was at South by Southwest Interactive Festival. I had an opportunity to see a demo for CoTweet. It helps multiple people manage the one Twitter brand at the same time. To me, this sounded like heaven. The program not only helps multiple people tweet at the same time in an organized manner, it also sends you email alerts if your Twitter account gets any kind of mention. (In my newsroom’s case, that means I get an email anytime someone uses @KOMUnews in a tweet) I was very lucky to get access to the company’s private beta. That private beta moved into a public beta last week and that’s pushed me to make sure I wrote up my newsroom’s CoTweet process so others can follow the fun and possibly try it out themselves.

To remain extra transparent in how our newsroom uses Twitter, I collected the photos and initials of each CoTweet user and added their photos onto the side of our Twitter page.

Currently, the people who manage CoTweet with me are a mix of full time managers (our Executive Producer and Managing Editor) and part time web editors or newscast producers. I’m working on trying to blend in more of our traditional managers to look at ways to incorporate Twitter workflow into the daily news gathering and sharing process. CoTweet makes it easy to place each person’s initials public next to the Tweets they post on the @KOMUnews account. That helps Twitter followers know who is posting the information and it helps our brand become less vague. I got the Twitter image idea from the CoTweet folks. Their Twitter background looks very similar. (I just have many more people who are helping manage KOMU’s account)

We have many reporters in our newsroom, and I’ve decided to keep their online tweets separate from the @KOMUnews Twitter brand. I’ve asked each of the reporters to create their own professional Twitter accounts. (Professional means they use their real names and post legitimate information about their life and work in their Twitter profiles) As the reporters gather information from the field, I ask them to send tweets about their story with @KOMUnews or #komu included in the 140 character reports. CoTweet picks those up and my crew and I can decide if the information is good enough to share (or in Twitter lingo, we “retweet” reporter posts) on KOMU’s Twitter feed. We’ve recently published an internal handbook on how reporters should post tweets and how managers and keep up with CoTweet to share the best information on the KOMU brand.

Anyone who is “On Duty” will get email alerts to the @KOMUnews tweets. Anyone who is a member of KOMU’s CoTweet will be able to follow KOMU’s followers without knowing KOMU’s Twitter password, so that keeps only a small number of people privy to changing the look and settings of KOMU’s account, while many others can keep an eye on its content updates. CoTweet also makes it easy to email Twitter questions or thoughts to other members of our newsroom. If a viewer asks @KOMUnews a question, I can quickly email the question to a reporter or anchor to get their input. If that reporter or anchor is on Twitter, I ask them to reply on Twitter or using Twitter’s direct message function. It helps so many more people participate and actively keep KOMU’s Twitter account an active element in our newsroom.

The process isn’t perfect, but it’s helped us cover breaking news effectively. It has also helped our reporters share information about their reports throughout the day instead of just focusing their efforts towards our traditional 5, 6 and 10pm newscasts. After testing this process for the last month and a half, KOMU.com has launched a new look and it includes easy access to our Twitter feed. It doesn’t look pretty, but it is effective to give our most recent updates. It’s faster than posting information into our content manager. It’s faster than getting an anchor in front of the news desk to report on the air. It’s also helping open our minds to a new 24/7 process of news gathering and sharing. As I told a news director friend of mine last week: I’m not helping build reporters who report for newscasts, I’m helping build reporters who can report the news – whenever and however they need to report it.

One other thought about CoTweet: The company responds to your thoughts and questions. Any time I needed something or shared ideas on CoTweet’s site, I’ve gotten rapid replies and assistance. I think that’s pretty fantastic.

Please let me know your thoughts and if you need anything better explained about our newsroom CoTweet workflow. I’m happy to tweak this post to help make sure other newsrooms understand what I’ve been up to!

I’m in Los Angeles attending the Beyond Broadcast 2009 conference at USC Annenberg School of Communication. I had a chance to learn more about the school yesterday and see how the broadcast and multimedia programs work at the school. Today I’m looking forward to learning more about how others use new media to reach the public.

The highlight so far was enjoying the opening keynote speech from Henry Jenkins. He spoke about his definition of “civic media” and the changing media landscape. I enjoyed hearing what he had to say about the changing directions of citizen journalism and public media. I took away many thoughts and ideas I’ve had but may not have fully verbalized. I look forward to even more great conversations and ideas to develop across the next two days!

Okay — I am searching for the best ways I can help my students find journalism jobs in this challenging economy. And one of my former students, Ted Arthur, is still looking and has put together one of the more creative ways to show off his portfolio. I highly recommend watching this… But it works even better if you watch it on his website.

SUPER creative. I’m so proud of Ted and I would hate to watch him leave the industry before he gets to jump in and use his talents to the fullest!! Please share his link! Contact him if you’re interested. Contact me if you want to know more. Do you know of a journalist looking for a job? How are they trying to get the word out creatively? Let’s all work together and help these folks find a great opportunity!

With the end of my fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute, I’m transitioning back into a full time role in my newsroom, KOMU-TV and KOMU.com. As part of this transition, I’m taking on new roles as a morning editor in charge of our morning assignments and online initiatives. In many ways, I’m putting my money where my mouth is… I’m working on finding ways to get my day turn reporters to think beyond the original broadcast goal of reporting for the morning, noon, 5, 6 or 10 newscasts. That’s not how things work anymore. My general assignment reporters will be expected to tweet, send cellphone photos, email information directly to the newsroom. It requires a new mindset. It doesn’t require many different rules of video or still image editing or even the tenets of being a journalist. It just requires a wider scope of focus when you are collecting information.

I will try as hard as I can to chronicle this process. But I also realize that my returning focus to daily work in the newsroom will make it pretty hard to blog more often. But I will do my very best! And if you’ve seen success in using twitter and other mobile tools on a daily basis in your newsroom, please share it with me!!