The Carnival gets underway with a post from John Hassell of the exploding newsroom fame. For those of you who don’t know, John is the online editor at the Star-Ledger of Newark, NJ. He enters the carnival with “A day in the life of a big local story.” Want to see how a major daily fires all guns at a story? Then check out his post.

Not wanting there to be only one John at the Carnival, John Ndege offers “Out Scooping the Wire News Services.” John Ndege is a great blogger whose insights go beyond journalism. If you are earching for some guidance in this crazy journalism/Internet world, take a stroll through his blog. For the Carnival, he ponders the future of news wire services and the impact of services like Twitter.

Soon to graduate from the University of South Florida, Wendy Withers offers the Carnival a post with some great “Advice for college journalists: Online portfolios.” Wendy has always offered some great insights (it has a spot in my reader) and this post is no different. Her tips could be the difference between a graduate moving into their own pad and starting a job or moving into their parents attic and looking for work.

Think we’re done? Wait! There’s more to come so keep checking back as more posts will continue to go up. Have your own thoughts? Drop a comment below and let people know what you are thinking.

See, I told you we weren’t done yet.

Charlie Beckett, someone who seemingly wears more hats then I can capture in a few witty words, reminds us that sometimes there is good writing beyond the blogosphere with his book review of Can You Trust The Media? by Adrian Monck. Full disclosure, Adrian also participates in the Carnival of Journalism (see below). Read the review and, dare I say, buy the book.

Moving back across the pond, Jack Lail, managing editor/multimedia for The Knoxville News-Sentinel (someone who always manages to be blogging — how he pulls that off I’ll never understand) offers “The ‘Golden Age’ of Web news.” His posts always give me something to chew on for a few days and this one isn’t any different:

All-media-meets on the Web has created a local news and advertising battlezone in market-after-market the likes of which I’ve never seen in a 30-plus-year career.

The author himself, Adrian Monck, takes a moment to address some of the observations about his book in “Can You Trust The Media? – Review.”

Think the Carnival’s done? Not quiet, check back later for more.

And before I could hit “Save,” along comes Andy Dickinson, faculty member at the University of Central Lancashire and prolific blogger (and apparently wine drinker) offers “What is a picture worth?” Although he describes it as a “bit of a ramble of nice words and tricky pictures,” I don’t think I’d be that harsh. Give it a read and let Andy know what you think.

NOTE: I’m proud to be participating, along with fellow journalism bloggers from around the world in the Carnival of Journalism. In addition to reading my post please visit the Carnival host site and see what my colleagues are writing about. Not sure what a blog carnival is? Check out this entry on Wikipedia.

Now to be fair, not everyone does this. Some bloggers, Amy Gahran for example, will provide some guidance for why she is sharing a particular entry with her readers. For example, her entry “Impressions on obsession with recession (The Joy of Tech comic)” was accompanied with the following explanation:

“I gotta admit, I think there’s a lot of truth to this one — especially re: media’s role.”

But others don’t even make that effort. Some bloggers will simply include an excerpt from the piece that struck them while others won’t even provide that. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with the use of these sites. I also don’t have a problem with bloggers including them on their pages. But to complain about others not providing context and then to ignore it yourself, just shows how lazy an industry we can be.

In newsrooms throughout the country I have heard reporters and editors claim that they have no local bloggers, or if there are any, they can’t find them or don’t interact with them. I have heard them talk about the lack of a local blogging community as a justification for not expanding their own blogs. Their community, they claim, just doesn’t “get” blogs.

But whether your coverage area has local bloggers or not, I think you have a great opportunity to develop new bloggers, strengthen your existing blogging community and, as a result, build better relationships between your newspaper and the blogosphere.

So you’re intrigued, but wonder just how to do this. Well, think about leveraging your internal expertise. You can:

• Hold workshops hosted by your staff for local bloggers on topics ranging from SEO to writing better headlines.
• Have an open house where people interested in blogging can come and get help setting up a blog either on your own system or on one of the free blogging platforms that you choose.
• Sponsor a MeetUp where local bloggers can get together and meet each other and members of your staff.
• Create a directory of local blogs (for example I’m listed on njweblogs) and host it on your site.

While those should get you started, I wouldn’t even stop there. What ever you decide to do, remember to advertise the events both in print and online, you might even want do something as low-tech as distributing flyers around your coverage areas. I would also recommend that you ask attendees to RSVP, so you can be prepared especially if, for example, you’re hosting an open house.

No matter what you decide to do, I think you’ll find this effort enjoyable and rewarding. As John wrote, you’ll learn more about the community you cover, create new avenues for collecting information and distributing your reporter’s works and you’ll build trust “with people who are passionately interested in local issues.”

Give it a shot, and make sure to let me know how it goes.

As of today, for example, you’ll notice a “listen” button appearing on my blog (it’s above this post if you’re at my site). This is functionality that I’ve seen on sites like Jerusalem Post. Simply, it converts my blog posts to audio files that can either be heard through an embedded player or downloaded to an mp3 player or even added to an iTunes playlist. I know you’re thinking that it’s going to be one of those creepy, computerized voices, but give it a listen — not too bad, actually pretty good. This is thanks to technology from Odiogo and best of all, for bloggers, it’s free.

I’m using this example not just to highlight a new way to enjoy my own blog, but also to hopefully illustrate the importance of experimentation and innovation. Sadly, at many newspapers experimentation and innovation have been replaced with process and stagnation. And, I would argue, at those papers both the employees and the readers suffer.

Employees are more likely to find satisfaction and enjoyment in an environment in which experimentation and innovation are embraced and as a result, will generally perform at a higher level. Readers and visitors to your site will benefit from a better site, better content and/or better functionality and as a result traffic to your site will grow.

I understand, that a newspaper’s website is not like a personal blog. Not everything that is free for me to use on my site is free for a commercial site and that it is not as easy as deciding to add functionality and just doing it. But it shouldn’t be as hard as it currently is. I have colleagues at newspapers where they wait for months for permission to add a Digg or other social networking buttons or where changing positions of elements on the homepage requires a discussion by a committee.

As an industry, I think this really needs to change. We need to be more nimble, more aggressive; we need to be quicker to act and even quicker to react. We need to stop being afraid of new technologies and start embracing them. We need to trust our employees and give them the room to work. Success for us online, would not be a bad thing — it is likely the only way to save our industry.

So take some time and listen to some of my other posts thanks to Odiogo and think about how your paper, your site can better embrace experimentation and innovation.

I’m sure there are those of you who are already shaking your heads and saying “it won’t work” or “messages can only be 140 characters long.” Actually, I think, not only can it work, but also that the 140 character limit makes it ideal for this type of event.

Reporters are infamous for over-reporting and especially for taking pages upon pages of notes, many of which will never be used. Covering a meeting via Twitter might just be the remedy to this malady. If “notes” or in this case Tweets need to be limited to 140 characters per entry, it might just force them to focus their efforts and be more judicious with what they note. And when the meeting is complete, they’ll have a chronological record of their coverage.

And, there’s a bonus, a Twittered meeting can be pulled (via the RSS feed) into a newspaper’s webpage and readers can be invited to follow along either at your site or through Twitter. Seems like a win-win for me.

What do you think?

1/21, 9:23 p.m. (EST) The New York Times has a great piece today about Twitter and Presidential campaign reporting. If this approach at all interests you, check it out: “Campaign Reporting in Under 140 Taps“

E&P’s approach appears to be a mixture of aggregating online coverage and original writing from Editor Greg Mitchell. Although as of 1:14 p.m. EST it’s sounding like Nevada is already over, Mitchell appears ready to update throughout the remainder of the day. So if you find yourself online today, add their coverage to your mix and see what you think.

Is this something that you think E&P should be doing? What traffic do you think it will drive? How are you approaching the day at your newspaper or website?

On Wednesday, New York Observer Leon Neyfakh, reported in his “Off the Record” column that the Times was planning on printing portions of the “City Room” blog in the daily newspaper.

“While items from City Room are regularly repackaged as Metro stories and published in the paper—three short dispatches from Albany might be synthesized into one article for the next day’s paper . . . articles from the blog that run in the print edition could appear under a clearly marked “City Room” banner,” Neyfakh wrote.

This would not be the first time that the Times has repurposed online content for print, two other blogs, Bits and the Caucus, regularly appear “in the print edition in the form of discrete columns.”

According to Neyfakh, part of the thinking at the Times is that reverse-publishing the blog will “give more exposure to the City Room brand” and “drive print readers to the Web site.”

Well good for the New York Times!

Personally, I would like to see more publications not just working harder to drive more print readers to the web, but also repurposing more web content for print.

The first point should be obvious; newspapers have two audiences that don’t completely overlap, so here’s a great opportunity to increase online audience by leveraging print audience. In-print promotions or teasers and house ads are great but I don’t think they can compete with quality content in terms of demonstrating to print readers what they can expect online. Kind of like a car brochure can’t replace the experience of a test drive.

As for the second point, I’ve previously written about how I don’t think it makes sense to keep filling the “A” section with outdated and possibly irrelevant wire copy, one of the most popular objections is that if newspapers were to make this change, they wouldn’t have enough content to fill the pages. Well, BINGO! Here’s a great opportunity to showcase your online content and help fill those pages. In addition to reverse-publishing blogs (ala New York Times) what about

• Publishing excerpts from online forums? In-print game coverage could include excerpts of fans debating their favorite play from your sports forum or political coverage could include readers commenting on the issues of the day.
• Including online comments with the print story. Show print readers some of the online reaction and invite them to have their say on your site.
• Online Poll results. Use your online polls to frame your print issues.

What’s great about these approaches is that they don’t require an expansion of the existing news-hole and allow you to take advantage of existing resources.

And let’s not forget the revenue-generating reverse-publishing possibilities. Everything from car sales to real estate can find a place in this model.

If you’re already reverse-publishing or doing something similar to what I’ve suggested, let me know how it’s going.