To be clear, teaching AP Style or lead writing to students I can’t work with in person is definitely different. I like sitting next to students at a computer to go through edits, and I think explaining the nuances of writing and editing are best done face to face.

But teaching news writing online offers unique chances to interact with students, and to connect students to each other at the same time. For my Writing and Editing for Multimedia class at the University of New Mexico, I’ve been using Twitter as a space outside our discussion boards where students can talk and learn about journalism.  

These public posts put students in touch with new journalism education resources, they force students to read and analyze current reporting, and they teach students the value of having a professional Twitter account for discussing reporting in a way that a class-only discussion board can’t.

Here’s how I’ve used this approach so far.

A social media presence assignment

It all starts with one assignment that students work on each week throughout the semester. The idea is for learners to have a consistent (at least three times a week) presence on Twitter focused on journalism or journalism education. Students tweet about articles, videos or photos and then talk about the quality of the journalism — not the content. For example: Does their audience think the lead works? Do the photos help tell the story? Do multimedia elements distract from the piece?

This isn’t a social media class, and there isn’t much time to spend on the basics of using Twitter. But to help get them started, I go through hashtags, usernames and other beginner aspects. (I also provide guides like this and other information that points to the usefulness of Twitter in journalism.)

Once students realize we’re not tweeting about lattes and sunsets here, the work begins. Their first concern often is that they won’t have enough to tweet about. I address this by prompting them to post tweets about our weekly topics.

Here’s a lead to start off our discussion this week, #CJ278. What do you notice about the writing? What makes it strong? What specific details help tell the story? https://t.co/fl5FbMjT7n #newswritingonline

— Kate Nash Cunningham (@katenashnm) March 19, 2018

So when they study lead writing in class, they look for story leads, post them and talk about why they were effective. (Or not.)

This is a great example of when you would want to use a delayed lede instead of a direct lede. Here the lede allows the writer to take a more creative approach by setting a scene to tell a short story. #CJ278 https://t.co/Psj8rO2rWq

— Nicholas Aragon (@naragon97) March 22, 2018

When they study headlines, they look for examples and post those.

NPR’s headline in this article is effective. It’s condensed, to the point and follows the rules of headlines. #CJ278 https://t.co/4hJnezSRV0

— Lainey Jameson (@livewithlainey) March 6, 2018

These exercises get them reading news stories and thinking about the mechanics of how those stories came to be, something I think can only help them as they start to write their own stories.

I also tell students they can use Twitter to look for sources or to post their stories once published. To keep this all together (and to make grading easy) students use a hashtag for class. At the end of the semester, students write a short reflection on what they learned, what went well (and didn’t) and how they will continue to use Twitter in the future.

Quickly connecting to outside resources

Twitter users recognize the value of the breadth of resources available on pretty much any topic, and journalism and journalism education are no exception. There are ACES chats on editing to join, Thomson Foundation Facebook Live seminars on mobile reporting to watch, or other resources including the NPR training site to be consumed.

It’s much easier and faster to retweet announcements about those events than going into our learning management system and posting something students might not read in a timely manner. For some chats, I offer extra credit if students participate and tweet five things. This incentivizes students to log on often to see what’s happening and enriches the class beyond the materials posted. My hope is that they follow a variety of accounts they otherwise might not have known about, and they continue to fill their feeds with helpful material well beyond class.

Ten points extra credit if you watch and tweet at least five things you learn, #CJ278 #CJ375 #newswritingonline This could really help prepare you for upcoming assignments. https://t.co/JigkDE0YxK

— Kate Nash Cunningham (@katenashnm) February 12, 2018

Strengths and weaknesses of this approach

One thing I really like about this assignment is that students are learning a few things at once. They are looking for different types of news and thinking about what makes a story strong or a headline weak. At the same time, they also are building their professional social media skills. They also are thinking about appropriate ways to communicate in public forums. As they post, I emphasize that tweets for class should be professional and well-written, and for the most part, they are.

I also like that students who are new to Twitter (and even express reservations about using it) generally come to see the value of it. I’ve had students say they deleted their accounts when the assignment was over, but they still learned something from doing it.

One challenge — and it’s one I have in my in-person classes as well — is getting students excited to use social media for school. To many students, it’s still a place to show off with pics of friends or pets and not something they want their professor to read. I encourage them to create “work” accounts if that makes them more comfortable, and I create lists of each class instead of following each student. To keep students engaged on Twitter, I try to be funny and personable. I also post job ads that require social media skills, so they can see how all of this could come in handy after graduation.

Join us!

The beauty of having a class hashtag is that anyone can join in the conversation. I use #CJ278 for this class, but I also use #newswritingonline in hopes of connecting to other educators who teach news writing at other institutions.

Kate Nash Cunningham is the social media editor for MediaShift. She teaches digital journalism at the University of New Mexico. Follow her @katenashnm.

The post How to Use Twitter to Connect Online Students to News appeared first on MediaShift.

Don’t have a lot of time to spare, but still want to get a roundup of the week’s top news? Then check out our Digital Media Brief below!

MediaShift Podcast

Digital Media Brief

Listen to the MediaShift podcast and follow us on SoundCloud! Thanks to SoundCloud for providing audio support.

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Listen to the podcast via our Stitcher page or with the Stitcher app.

Host Bio

Mark Glaser is executive editor and publisher of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He is an award-winning writer and accidental entrepreneur, who has taken MediaShift from a one-person blog to a growing media company with events such as Collab/Space workshops and weekend hackathons; the weekly MediaShift podcast; and digital training, DigitalEd, in partnership with top journalism schools. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

SPECIAL GUESTS

Melissa Bell is the publisher of Vox Media, overseeing editorial strategy and development of the company’s networks, including SB Nation, Eater, The Verge, Vox, Curbed, Recode, Racked, and Polygon. She is also the co-founder of Vox, Vox Media’s brand known for explaining the news.

Top News Of The Week

Facebook in Disarray Over Cambridge Analytica Misdeeds

This week has been one disaster after the next for social giant Facebook and its dealings with political data consultants at Cambridge Analytica. It all started with joint reports from the New York Times, Guardian and Observer showing that Cambridge Analytica, which helped the Trump campaign in 2016, obtained psychographic profiles of 50 million Facebook users without their consent. The reports detailed how the firm obtained the data from a Russian-American app maker which had asked for people’s permission to play a game, but instead of destroying the data, they turned around and made a deal with Cambridge Analytica. Facebook banned the company from its site, and is now under fire by politicians in the U.S. and U.K. for potential meddling in elections on both sides of the Atlantic. As the Tow Center’s Jonathan Albright told the Times: “Unethical people will always do bad things when we make it easy for them and there are few – if any – lasting repercussions.”

One of the more ethical people, Facebook’s security chief Alex Stamos, is planning to leave the company in August. The New York Times reported that Stamos faced resistance at Facebook when he advocated for more disclosure on Russian interference on the platform. Meanwhile, damaging reports continued from Channel 4 in the U.K., which secretly taped top Cambridge Analtyca execs admitting to dirty tricks in elections around the world. That includes entrapment of politicians with bribes and sex workers. Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix was put on leave while the company investigated itself. Meanwhile, the reports had an immediate impact on Facebook’s stock, which lost $36 billion in market value on Monday. And the company has gone into damage control to address the fallout. In a Facebook post, Andrew Bosworth, a senior executive, wrote, “Much of the critique that has emerged over the weekend is valid and I am following it closely and listening.” The FTC, Congress and several states were starting investigations into the company. Where will this all lead? It’s time for Facebook’s leaders to show leadership, and tighten rules around privacy and personal data.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/18/us/cambridge-analytica-facebook-privacy-data.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-trump-campaign.html
https://www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-trumps-election-consultants-filmed-saying-they-use-bribes-and-sex-workers-to-entrap-politicians-investigation
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-summoned-by-uk-mps-over-cambridge-analytica.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-is-pummeled-by-user-data-blowback-1521561322?mod=trending_now_2
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-alex-stamos.html

Google Plans to Invest $300 Million to Support Journalism

While Facebook suffered, rival tech giant Google made a splash of a different kind. The company announced the new Google News Initiative, which will be focused on surfacing accurate information during breaking news events, helping the business side of journalism, and creating tools for journalists to do their jobs. And Google is supporting the wide-ranging initiative with $300 million in funding over the next three years. The initiative will swallow up the existing Google News Lab, making their work part of the larger project. And fighting fake news and misinformation is a big challenge for Google and especially YouTube, where every breaking news story seems to be followed by popular conspiracy theory videos. The latest example was after the school shooting in Florida, with student survivors being called “crisis actors.”

Another key initiative is “Subscribe with Google,” a feature for publishers to dig into data to gain new subscribers. The search giant will also make buying subscriptions easier in search, with people using their Google Wallet to buy subscriptions from partners such as the New York Times, the Telegraph, USA Today Network and the Washington Post. But they’re also making it easier to read articles from publications you’re already subscribed to. When you’re logged into your Google Account, you’ll see a subsection of articles from sources you’re subscribed to when you search. They’re also building a new dashboard in Google Analytics to help news organizations find and target readers for subscriptions. All of this points to a serious effort by Google to help publishers on subscriptions, metrics and more. Let’s hope it continues.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17142788/google-news-initiative-fake-news-journalist-subscriptions
https://www.blog.google/topics/google-news-initiative/introducing-subscribe-google/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-20/google-pours-300-million-into-effort-to-aid-news-publishers
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-43473938
https://blog.google/topics/google-news-initiative/announcing-google-news-initiative/

Publishers Embrace Twitter and Pinterest as the Duopoly Fades

A lot has been written about the power Google and Facebook wield in the digital ad market, but other platforms are trying their hardest to contest the duopoly. Research firm eMarketer predicts that Amazon will pull into third place in digital ads by 2020 with an expected 4.5 percent market share in the U.S. Snapchat is expected to break $1 billion dollars in ad revenues this year which is about 1 percent of the U.S. digital ad market. Meanwhile, Twitter’s U.S. digital ad share will drop this year but will grow again next year. Overall, eMarketer expects Facebook and Google to lose a couple percentage points of market share this year, which gives an opening to other platforms as well.

Many publishers that are fed up with the duopoly have started to cast their eyes elsewhere. Last year Twitter announced that it would partner with a handful of media companies to provide video content on the platform. There have been a few changes to Twitter’s video strategy, including more live broadcasting and event coverage, and they’ve also made it easier for users to post videos. And publishers who have struggled with social video on Facebook are also turning to Pinterest. Digiday’s Lucia Moses reports that publishers rarely had consistent communication with Pinterest but that’s changed over the past few months, with an increase in outreach, collaboration and requests for feedback from the social platform. David Temple, Pinterest’s head of content, told Digiday the platform was looking into tools and analytics to help publishers distribute their content on the platform.

http://mediashift.org/2018/03/publishers-learning-embrace-twitter-video/
https://www.emarketer.com/content/google-and-facebook-s-digital-dominance-fading-as-rivals-share-grows
https://digiday.com/media/facebook-news-feed-changes-publishers-look-hopefully-pinterest/
https://theoutline.com/post/3719/publishers-pivoting-to-pinterest?zd=1&zi=5d7kilnd
https://digiday.com/media/snapchat-is-enlisting-more-publishers-to-make-video-shows/

Here are some other stories we’re following

The rise of fake news and Trump could be leading to a rise in journalism majors at large universities.
Tronc chairman Michael Ferro steps down as new allegations come from women saying he made inappropriate advances toward them.
Cheddar, the financial news service for millennials, raises $22 million in a fourth round of venture funding.
And researchers in Germany have discovered pornography and links to child abuse images in bitcoin’s blockchain.

Music on this Episode

Can’t Hate The Hater by 3 Feet Up
Sinking Feeling by Jessie Spillane
DJ by Jahzzar
Backed Clean Vibes by Kevin Macleod
Air Hockey Saloon by Chris Zabriskie
I Never Wanted To Say by Lorenzo’s Music
I’m Going for a Coffee by Lee Rosevere

Jefferson Yen is the producer for the MediaShift Podcast. His work has been on KPCC Southern California Public Radio and KRTS Marfa Public Radio. You can follow him @jeffersontyen.

The post MediaShift Podcast #263: Facebook in Disarray Over Privacy Concerns; Google to Spend $300 Million to Support Journalism; Vox Media’s Melissa Bell appeared first on MediaShift.

They are not not consuming news; they are just getting it and sharing it in a completely new way.

I realized this when the Marjory Stoneman Douglas student journalists broadcasted live via Snapchat and Instagram as their school, friends and teachers were being attacked.  Despite horrific circumstances, those student journalists kept the tape rolling to share with the world what was going on in that school. As a result, these young people created a movement that originated and now is communicated with their peers and the world strictly online.     

This means, as teachers, we need to meet our students where they are – online, all the time. It is challenging because you must constantly change with the technology and what is popular with students, but that is the reality of our business, and I’ll show you how my journey to an online journalism instructor has evolved.

My, How Things Have Changed

I started teaching online media courses in late 2013.  Facebook had been around for a while, but Twitter and Pinterest were fledgling outliers. Instagram and Snapchat were practically still in the womb.  

Fast-forward JUST FIVE YEARS and social media tools have exploded in popularity for teens and young adults.  They use devices to communicate – with their friends, parents, teachers, employers. They use social media to maintain their social lives by “liking” and “following” photographs, celebrities and even causes.  Students also learn about the world – good and bad – because of social media.

At our recent college learning day, I attended the “bricks, clicks and teacher tricks” session on how to learn about communicating and collaborating with students.  We had “appy hour,” learned about teacher time savers and dazzling design, but I was floored that some colleagues still argued about “student responsibility” and “why they [students] expect email responses faster than 48 hours.”  

I thought: students barely even use email anymore, and if I had to wait 48 hours for an answer to my question about an assignment, I would go nuts!  I realized in the session that while some of these tools are great for teachers, they are not necessarily good for the students beyond the face-to-face classroom.  Tools like Kahoot and Go Soapbox may be cool in class, but they are not especially useful online. Teachers seem to fear Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter – for a number of reasons – but that is where the students are, and we need to be there, too.

Transitioning from Face-to-Face to Online

I teach the gamut of media courses – introduction to news reporting, writing for mass media, writing for social media and introduction to public relations.  I teach all of them online, except introduction to news reporting (for now).

At first, this was a real struggle.  I was trying to teach online courses like my face-to-face-classes.  I quickly learned this was not possible. Online students typically take this type of format because they need the flexibility. They often work full time and go to school.

Face-to-face students meet with area public relations professionals. Online students participated via Twitter Chat at #ValenciaPRChat. (Photo: Rebecca Newman)

For the last five years, I have changed, rearranged, restructured and learned a ton of new skills because I am trying to make the learning work for my students.  Students don’t read textbooks. They do not wait patiently for me to get back to them via email. But they do like clarity and consistency. They also like assignments that are interactive and challenge them to practice real-world skills.  How do you do this? The answer is, it is a work in progress, but it can be done. Here are a few tips:

1. Use the social media that students use:  Obviously I have boundaries, but social media tools really do make it easy to give students quick feedback when they need it.  I use Twitter in my classes since that’s what journalists use. I permit them to DM me with questions and comments, and my response time is actually far faster than traditional email.

2. Live Stream guest speaker events:  Twitter Live and Periscope are great tools for livestreaming events with professional speakers.  Use whatever tool is comfortable for you and where you have the most followers, but FYI – students are no longer using Facebook.  For these events, I collect my student questions ahead of time, so they can “ask” questions during the event, too.

Such a great day @valenciacollege hanging w/ these talented @orlandosentinel reporters. Thanks for sharing your experiences and caring for our community! #WomenInMedia pic.twitter.com/0KYOdsVNSt

— Rebecca Newman (@ProfessorBec) February 14, 2018

3. Study the apps and available technology:  Do you want to hear students practicing interviews with sources?  Have them record it and send it to you in an audio file. Want to have students build their “professional brand”?  Give them an assignment building a LinkedIn profile. Want your social media students to be able to post “professionally” designed content?  Introduce them to Canva (free) and have them begin creating and posting. There are TONS of choices out there. Find the free and easy-to-use tools.  Share them and use them.

Caution – my Twitter blows up in T-minus 90 minutes! But feel free to join if you have ? for guests @GabrielleRusson, @OSAliciaD @KaylaOBMedia pic.twitter.com/7dLNR9AD0b

— Rebecca Newman (@ProfessorBec) February 13, 2018

4. YouTube is your friend: There is so much great content on YouTube.  Students like to watch videos, so let them. I use a great video from Dr. Kim Zarkin that teaches new journalism students how to use the AP Stylebook.  I then make up a series of quizzes that gets them using the book and recognizing important style elements.

5. Be present:  “Talk” to your online people — FREQUENTLY.  Each semester, I host virtual conferences (for a grade) via FaceTime, Skype or Google Hangout.  Not only is this simulating real-world distance meetings, it is an opportunity to check in with these people, so they can put a face with the stranger behind the computer screen.  Is it time consuming? Yes, but it is totally worth it.

There are so many ways to make online learning engaging and meaningful.  There are so many cool tools to use to make this work. Some come and go, but if you pay attention to the right people (other faculty and colleagues), the industry and the kids, you’ll know what is working and what is going to be obsolete.

Embrace online learning.  It is here, and it is the future.  

Rebecca Newman is a media professor at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida.  She is the faculty advisor of the Valencia College student news organization, Valencia Voice.

The post How to Make the Transition to Teaching Media Courses Online appeared first on MediaShift.

Twitter has signaled its intention to focus on video as a key platform feature for 2018, and some publishers have already been noticing the effects.

Last year, Twitter’s announcement that it would be partnering with a string of media companies to provide round-the-clock video content for the platform was met with some skepticism.

Was Twitter trying too hard to muscle in on a social video space that was already saturated and showing unpredictable returns? Video on Twitter was largely known for Vine, the since-shuttered service that allowed six-second looped clips, and Periscope, a live-streaming channel that faced plenty of competition of its own.

When we previously outlined four ways that publishers used the medium in mid-2016, there was a feeling that Twitter video could only every really be thought of as a promotional or extremely short clip service.

In 2018, Twitter’s video plans look a little more concrete.

What’s changed for Twitter video?

Since the partnership announcement (which was followed later in 2017 by an announcement of even more partners), there have been a few changes in Twitter’s approach to video, some of which seem to have managed to increase use of, and engagement with, the medium. With these media partnerships and increasing numbers of key live events, Twitter appears to be stepping enthusiastically into live video broadcasting, a space where Facebook has recently ended its payments to publishers..

Twitter is also reportedly working on a new feature design to reduce the number of steps users have to take to share video on the platform, while executives have signaled that video will be an important keystone of the company’s ambitions in 2018.

Back in December, a new public metric called view counts was added to Twitter videos for the first time, leading to an increased standardization among other social video formats on different platforms. Twitter’s ‘total video view’ metric is calculated by the sum of “any views which are at least 50 percent in-view for 2 seconds.” Under this measurement system, at least half of video has to be visible and playing on a user’s screen for at least two seconds to count as a view.

There are some signals that user behavior around video on Twitter is also starting to change. Last month, several publishers, including Bauer Media and CNBC, told Digiday that they had seen significant increases in video views on Twitter recently.

One of the elements that publishers have to deal with on Twitter is that the platform has not traditionally been known as a referral powerhouse like Google or Facebook. Content on Twitter has to be able to work alone natively. Still, some publishers have been noticing the increased attention from followers. According to Digiday:

“Lifestyle publisher Stylist saw a 500 percent increase in its Twitter video views as a result of dedicating more resources to Twitter. Men’s interest site Joe Media saw a 20 percent increase in video views over the last four months to 6.2 million. A source familiar with the matter said that over the last year, Twitter has had a “significant” increase in the number of video views on the platform compared to the previous year.”

What are the biggest videos on Twitter?

So how have publishers been using video on Twitter in recent months? Looking in our analytics tool Spike, the most popular videos on Twitter (ranked by total retweets and likes) in the last 30 days from influential accounts are largely made up of viral clips, fan-focused content and videos posted from celebrity and public figures’ accounts.

For the publishers that do appear among the top videos however, certain themes are evident. News videos are extremely popular, which is not all that surprising given the popularity of news-focussed content on timelines generally.

Some of the new ways that publishers appear to be using video include standard TV-news repackages, as well as more recognizable social video formats. A strong current affairs theme runs through many. One of the most retweeted and liked videos of the last 30 days was a clip of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s lackluster 60 Minutes interview, repackaged and posted by the news site Axios.

Sec. of Education Betsy DeVos struggles to answer fairly basic questions on school performance on 60 Minutes pic.twitter.com/lFVq3USwUW

— Axios (@axios) March 12, 2018

Another popular clip in the last month was a video posted by ABC News of a parent of one of the victims of the Parkland High School shooting criticizing the NRA. Both of these clips demonstrate strong news value, but do not differ significantly from the original made-for-TV broadcasts.

Father of Parkland victim slams NRA videos:

"If this was put out by a terrorist organization, we would be raising the terror threat level in this country. Why are we letting this lobby have anything to do with DC? I don't understand it!" https://t.co/9eh7udBMsx pic.twitter.com/FZeTqvTRmK

— ABC News (@ABC) March 7, 2018

In this way, Twitter videos may differ from Facebook video, which has placed an emphasis on differentiating itself as a unique format. Instead, audiences may see Twitter as a place where they can ‘see for themselves’ a video clip or footage that is the focus of news reports elsewhere. This is certainly a notion that Twitter itself looks to pursue, frequently touting its potential as a breaking news and live events platform.

In terms of volume of video content, there is a remarkable variance is overall posting habits from different publishers. This chart, compiled using NewsWhip Spike, shows the number of videos posted by ten selected TV news publishers in the U.K. and U.S. over seven days, from March 7 to 14, 2018.

This does not include retweets, therefore giving a clear picture of the amount of original video uploads that various networks are distributing through Twitter.

Fox News is the leading poster, with 701 videos over seven days, or an average of around 100 per day, from just one Twitter account. Other networks such as CBS and ABC also post video frequently, while BBC News posted just 28 videos in the same time period.

The vast variance is more apparent than on Facebook, and perhaps points to different experiences and strategies being pursued by the social media teams.

Twitter has some characteristics that have the power to make it a unique proposition in social video publishing. How exactly publishers decide to use the feature may change throughout this year, as the platform attempts to grow its share of the online video attention space.

In addition to audience engagement and uptake however, one question that will certainly be on publishers’ minds will certainly be: where do we make money from this?

Liam Corcoran writes about digital journalism and media trends, metrics, and more for the NewsWhip blog.

The post How Publishers Are Learning to Embrace Twitter Video appeared first on MediaShift.

The Mexican government has failed to investigate allegations that government agencies used surveillance software to infect the smartphones of journalists and human rights advocates in the country, according to an official statement from groups affected by the software.

In June 2017, a group of experts revealed evidence of 76 incidents of journalists and human rights defenders being targeted with a surveillance software product called Pegasus, which is manufactured by NSO Group, an Israeli firm. Pegasus allows the attacker to access and monitor the victim’s mobile phone communications and activities. These incidents were documented by Article 19, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and Mexico City-based NGOs R3D and SocialTIC.

After the New York Times reported on the findings, President Enrique Peña Nieto asked the Attorney General’s office to respond to the allegations. The groups say that since June 2017, authorities have not sought documentation concerning the use of the software, nor have they investigated its technical deployments or interviewed any government employee who was trained to use the software.

They are now calling for an independent investigation of the findings, arguing that the Attorney General’s office is unable to do this, due to evidence that it was the agency that purchased the malware to begin with. And while the Mexican government has yet to carry out a thorough investigation on its own, it has asked the US government to assist in the process — a request the US officials have rebuffed.

This is the latest update in a series of revelations and investigations into the use of surveillance software in Mexico that date back to 2013. Policymakers advocating for stronger public health policies and experts investigating the disappearances of 43 students in Ayotzinapa also have been among those targeted.

Bahraini human rights leader sentenced to five years in prison over tweets

Nabeel Rajab, the outspoken leader of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, was sentenced to five years in prison on February 21, over a series of tweets that prosecutors claimed were “insulting to national institutions” and “insulting to neighboring countries.” In the tweets, Rajab criticized Saudi Arabia’s position in Yemen’s civil war and also pointed to evidence of torture and ill treatment in Bahrain’s Jaw prison published by Human Rights Watch.

Malaysian cartoonist could face prison over PM clown painting

Malaysian cartoonist Fahmi Reza was prosecuted and found guilty of “uploading false communication” after he posted on Facebook a hand-painted cartoon of Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak wearing clown makeup. In a subsequent post about the case, he wrote:

“Painting the portrait of the PM with an evil clown make-up over his face was an at of protest against this corrupt government that uses the Sedition Act and other draconian laws to silence dissenting voices.”

He has been sentenced to one month in prison and a RM30,000 fine, as per Section 233 of the 1998 Multimedia and Communications Act. His lawyer intends to appeal the case.

Kashmiri digital photo journalist marks 150 days in detention

Kashmiri photojournalist Kamran Yousuf has been behind bars for 150 days, after being arrested in September 2017. He was finally charged on January 18 with being associated with “funding of terror and anti-state activities in the Kashmir Valley.” His charge sheet also claims that he has not met the “moral duty of a journalist” for having neglected to cover any “social/developmental activity by the state government or Government of India.”

Yousuf rose to fame last year after his photos and videos of funeral processions and stone pelting battles went viral on social media, regularly receiving tens of thousands of views and shares. The Press Council of India has expressed concern about his detention. The Kashmir Editors Guild and the Committee to Protect Journalists have called for his release.

Macedonian citizen prosecuted for posting photos of on-duty police officers

Police in Macedonia pressed charges against a person who took photos of on-duty police officers during local elections and then posted them on Facebook. The photographer posted 30 photos, as part of an effort to demonstrate evidence of possible irregularities in the electoral process. The Basic Court of Gevgelija found the person guilty of “abuse of personal data” and issued a sentence of three months in prison. The person, who is unnamed, is appealing the decision.

Balloons that read “Free Deniz” in reference to Deniz Yucel, a German-Turkish journalist imprisoned in Turkey, on February 14, 2018 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Turkish journalists put behind bars, for life

Six Turkish journalists were issued lifetime prison sentences for “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order” on the same day Turkish-German journalist Deniz Yucel was released after spending a year behind bars without charges. Yucel was arrested on suspicion of “inciting the people to racial hatred and enmity” and “spreading the propaganda of a terrorist organization.” His release came shortly after the Turkish Prime Minister’s visit to Germany. There are currently 155 journalists serving jail time in Turkey.

Spanish man faces prison for misogynistic tweets

On February 16, a 22-year-old man in Spain was sentenced to two and a half years in prison by the country’s Supreme Court for publishing tweets in 2015 and 2016 that “incited hate against women.” One of the tweets that authorities singled out read, “And 2015 will end with 56 women murdered, it’s not a good record but was all that could be done, let’s see if in 2016 we can double that figure, thanks.” The man had previously been sentenced to two years imprisonment for those tweets and for others that authorities said “glorified terrorism.” On review, the Supreme Court absolved the terrorism-related conviction, saying the tweets were “generic,” but increased the punishment for the anti-women messages.

Venezuela is collecting more citizens’ data — and storing it for longer than ever

The National Telecommunications Commission of Venezuela has expanded the (already long) list of personal data necessary to access telephone services in the country. It also has lengthened the period of time that operators should retain the data, from three months after a contract expires to five years.

The new rule makes Venezuela one of the countries with the longest data retention periods in Latin America, alongside Colombia. In addition to an identity document, signature, fingerprint, and complete name and address, users must now also disclose their email address, be photographed, and have their fingerprint taken with a biometric device. The commission said telephone operators should digitize the data collected, but did not specify how it should be protected, only that operators and the state’s security apparatus should define the conditions for proper storage and treatment.

New Research

• Dead Reckoning: Navigating Content Moderation After “Fake News” – Data & Society
• La participación en la elaboración de la política nacional de ciberseguridad – Pablo Viollier/Derechos Digitales
• State of Privacy in Lebanon – SMEX/Privacy International
• Unique subscribers and mobile internet users: Understanding the new growth story – GSMA Intelligence

The Netizen Report is produced by Global Voices Advocacy. Afef Abrougui, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Marianne Diaz, L. Finch, Rohith Jyothish, Rezwan Islam, Inji Pennu, Karolle Rabarison, Elizabeth Rivera, Juke Carolina Rumuatand Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

The post Netizen Report: Mexican NGOs Push for Independent Investigation of Malware Attacks appeared first on MediaShift.

Don’t have a lot of time to spare, but still want to get a roundup of the week’s top news? Then check out our Digital Media Brief below!

MediaShift Podcast

Digital Media Brief

Listen to the MediaShift podcast and follow us on SoundCloud! Thanks to SoundCloud for providing audio support.

Subscribe to the MediaShift podcast via iTunes.

Follow @Mediashiftpod on Twitter.

Listen to the podcast via our Stitcher page or with the Stitcher app.

Host Bio

Mark Glaser is executive editor and publisher of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He is an award-winning writer and accidental entrepreneur, who has taken MediaShift from a one-person blog to a growing media company with events such as Collab/Space workshops and weekend hackathons; the weekly MediaShift podcast; and digital training, DigitalEd, in partnership with top journalism schools. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

SPECIAL GUESTS

Hari Sreenivasan is anchor of PBS NewsHour Weekend and a senior correspondent for the nightly program. Prior to joining NewsHour, he worked at CBS News and ABC News, ran his own production company and freelanced as a reporter for KTVU in Oakland, California.

Top News Of The Week

Twitter Bots and Conspiracy Theories Sow Division After the School Shooting in Florida

Unfortunately, we’re all too familiar with the media cycle that follows a  mass shooting like the one that happened in Florida last week. After the initial round of shock and sadness, there’s outrage and entrenchment. And, in what has become a disturbing trend, Russian-linked bots on Twitter immediately spring into action after a big breaking news event in the U.S. with divisive comments and hashtags. After the school shooting in Florida, bots on Twitter started popping up at hashtags #Parklandshooting, and later #ar15 and #NRA. It follows a pattern used by Russian bots during the 2016 election, and more recently in pushing the #releasethememo hashtag to get Congress to release the controversial memo by Rep. Devin Nunes. There were also fake tweets attributed to the Miami Herald’s Alex Harris asking for pictures of dead bodies and asking if the shooter was white.

Russian bots and alt-right figures also spread a conspiracy theory that an outspoken survivor, David Hogg, was actually an actor working for the FBI. The conspiracy theory gained further attention when Donald Trump Jr. liked two tweets about it. A related video became the top trending video on YouTube, while similar stories were in the trending news section on Facebook until Business Insider’s Steve Kovach brought it to their attention last Wednesday. Kovach noticed that in each case the algorithm was supposed to catch these kinds of misinformation, but failed, and while the tech companies have promised to add more human moderators, it hasn’t helped yet. The question is whether the tech platforms or U.S. government will take any meaningful action to stop the misinformation campaigns as they continue spreading after breaking news events.

http://fortune.com/2018/02/20/russian-twitter-bots-gun-control-florida-school-shooting/
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2018/02/20/russian-bots-pounce-after-florida-school-shooting-to-inflame-gun-control-debate.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/david-hogg-florida-school-shooting-russian-bots-attack-2018-2
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/16/us/russian-bots-florida-shooting-intl/index.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2018/02/15/florida-school-shooting-doctored-tweets-russian-bots-and-hoaxes-spread-false-news/340349002/
http://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-promotes-conspiracy-theory-video-florida-shooting-survivor-david-hogg-2018-2?op=1

Vox Media Lays Off 50 Staffers as The Atlantic Plans to Hire 100

It’s been a topsy-turvy world for media lately, and sometimes legacy media comes out ahead of the digital upstarts. As digital natives like BuzzFeed and Vice have struggled with ad revenues, Vox Media announced it would have to cut 50 jobs, especially among social video teams. Vox CEO Jim Bankoff explained in a memo that social video was “growing successfully” but “won’t be viable audience or revenue growth drivers for us relative to other investments.” The company is laying off staffers from Curbed, Racked, SB Nation and their video team. Another 12 employees will be offered positions elsewhere in the company. Racked, a shopping vertical, is particularly hard hit with both its native social video and native shopping programs getting cut. Undoubtedly, one of the issues for Vox and other digital publications has been Facebook’s News Feed changes, which now focus more on posts from friends and family.

Meanwhile, legacy media outlet The Atlantic announced it would hire up to 100 people over the next year, expanding coverage of Washington, Hollywood, Europe and technology. Helped by investment from Emerson Collective, run by Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs, The Atlantic now has resources to grow and will hire more writers, editors, video producers, podcast producers and live event producers. The Atlantic will also bring in more people to its Talent Lab, an initiative to make sure its staff is diverse. According to Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, “We are in a moment of national fracturing, and our expansion allows us to do a lot more of the kind of work that really is in our DNA.” It helps to have a billionaire owner for The Atlantic, but the same pressures will remain on being a sustainable business with profitability as a top priority.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/vox-media-laying-around-50-people-1086869
https://www.ft.com/content/482dc54a-1594-11e8-9376-4a6390addb44
https://www.buzzfeed.com/juliareinstein/vox-media-layoffs?utm_term=.nqpO8DMR0#.ickR92Blm
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vox-media-layoffs-latest-sign-of-trouble-for-digital-media/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-21/vox-media-cuts-50-employees-as-facebook-changes-rattle-industry

A Facebook Exec is in Hot Water Over Tweetstorm About Russians

After the independent counsel, Robert Mueller, detailed how Russian actors manipulated the public via Facebook, an unexpected source gave his own commentary on the findings: Facebook VP of ads Rob Goldman. In a series of tweets, Goldman said he was “very excited” about the indictment and pointed out that the media hadn’t really reported that most of the ads ran on Facebook after the election. He also noted that Facebook will be taking steps to fight misleading ads, including a new postcard effort to verify ad buyers by snail mail. Facebook will mail ad buyers a code so they can prove that they’re in the U.S. before they can buy a political ad. But these will only be required for federal elections where a candidate is mentioned by name.

But Goldman was swiftly attacked on Twitter, and used by President Trump to declare that the “Fake News Media never fails.” The president referred to Goldman’s tweet claiming the Russian ad campaign’s main goal wasn’t to sway the election. This is directly at odds with the indictment of 13 Russians by special counsel Robert Mueller. Goldman later walked back that contention, writing that the Russian campaign was “in favor of Trump” and apologizing internally to others at Facebook. A New York Times fact-check by Sheera Frenkel found some other problems with Goldman’s contentions. While he defends Facebook around the Russians’ use of ads, they also used pages, groups and events on Facebook. In another tweet, Goldman touts “digital literacy and critical thinking” campaigns by Finland, Sweden and Holland as effective ways to fight disinformation. But while those countries have made efforts to promote digital literacy, they’re still grappling with misinformation. Seems like Facebook will have to update its social media rules for its own executives.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/technology/facebook-executive-russia-tweets-fact-check.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-facebook/facebook-plans-to-use-u-s-mail-to-verify-ids-of-election-ad-buyers-idUSKCN1G10VD
https://twitter.com/robjective/status/964680122006581248
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/dont-let-facebook-off-the-hook/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/technology/russia-facebook-trump.html

Here are some other stories we’re following

Dish reports 2.2 million subscribers to its streaming service Sling TV as paid satellite subscribers drop

Twitter suspends the accounts of people spreading fake stories about attacks at movie theaters showing ‘Black Panther’

Alt-right leaders are kicked off of Medium under new rules by the blogging platform

And foundations raise $4.8 million for non-profit newsrooms in last year’s NewsMatch program.

Music on this Episode

Can’t Hate The Hater by 3 Feet Up
Sinking Feeling by Jessie Spillane
DJ by Jahzzar
Backed Clean Vibes by Kevin Macleod
Air Hockey Saloon by Chris Zabriskie
I Never Wanted To Say by Lorenzo’s Music
I’m Going for a Coffee by Lee Rosevere

Jefferson Yen is the producer for the MediaShift Podcast. His work has been on KPCC Southern California Public Radio and KRTS Marfa Public Radio. You can follow him @jeffersontyen.

The post MediaShift Podcast #259: Bots, Conspiracies Sow Division After School Shooting; Vox Cuts Staff as The Atlantic Grows; PBS NewsHour’s Hari Sreenivasan appeared first on MediaShift.

Don’t have a lot of time to spare, but still want to get a roundup of the week’s top news? Then check out our Digital Media Brief below!

MediaShift Podcast

Digital Media Brief

Listen to the MediaShift podcast and follow us on SoundCloud! Thanks to SoundCloud for providing audio support.

Subscribe to the MediaShift podcast via iTunes.

Follow @Mediashiftpod on Twitter.

Listen to the podcast via our Stitcher page or with the Stitcher app.

Host Bio

Mark Glaser is executive editor and publisher of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He is an award-winning writer and accidental entrepreneur, who has taken MediaShift from a one-person blog to a growing media company with events such as Collab/Space workshops and weekend hackathons; the weekly MediaShift podcast; and digital training, DigitalEd, in partnership with top journalism schools. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

SPECIAL GUESTS

Doug Mitchell is the founder and project leader of NPR’s “Next Generation Radio.” It’s a digital media professional development camp for college students and early career professionals. He is on the board of the Latino Public Radio Consortium, a peer reviewer for the Fulbright Association, and consults for the International Women’s Media Foundation. He also leads the Journalism Mentorship Collaborative through the Online News Association.

Top News Of The Week

Southern California Newspapers Get a Billionaire Owner

Biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong joins the growing club of billionaire owners of major metro newspapers, joining Jeff Bezos of the Washington Post, John Henry of the Boston Globe and Glen Taylor of the Minnesota Star-Tribune. Soon-Shiong has agreed to buy the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune and Spanish-language newspaper Hoy for $500 million. The sale is expected to close in March or April. Over the past year, the Times newsroom has seen its share of turmoil with three editors leaving in the past 6 months, a contentious union campaign, and most recently allegations of sexual harassment by publisher Ross Levinsohn. According to a report by the LA Times, the deal happened relatively quickly taking just five days to complete.

The Los Angeles area has had a tough time supporting local media, both in print and online. The LA Times has struggled, the L.A. Weekly has been gutted, the Los Angeles Daily News has had big cuts and DNAInfo closed, shuttering the LAist site. Meanwhile, the papers’ current owner, Tronc, will push forward with its newly formed Tribune Interactive, which will focus on content formats, products and other digital strategies. It will be led by Ross Levinsohn, who was cleared of wrongdoing after an investigation into alleged sexual misconduct, and Lewis D’Vorkin, who stepped down as editor at the LA Times. The question remains how devoted the Los Angeles area will be to its major daily paper after so much upheaval, and if the latest white knight billionaire can turn around its fortunes with yet another makeover.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-soon-shiong-latimes-20180207-story.html
http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-los-angeles-times-sold-20180207-story.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tronc-divestiture/tronc-to-sell-la-times-other-newspapers-for-500-million-idUSKBN1FQ381
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/los-angeles-times-owner-will-sell-paper-ending-a-long-troubled-relationship/2018/02/06/60f5f42e-0b5f-11e8-95a5-c396801049ef_story.html?utm_term=.b73a38a74728
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tronc-pushes-into-digital-future-after-los-angeles-times-sale-1518017136
http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/02/newsonomics-inside-troncs-sale-of-the-l-a-times-and-all-the-new-questions-to-come/

How Twitter Bots Pushed the #ReleasetheMemo Hashtag

The recent Twitter campaign to release the memo from Republican House Representative Devin Nunes – which alleges that the FBI’s Russia investigation is politically biased  – actually went viral because of Russian troll bots, according to information warfare expert Molly McKew. The social media intelligence group New Media Frontier traces the #ReleaseTheMemo campaign, from its origins in a tweet by a user flagged for unusual activity, to the eventual vote to release the memo by the House Intelligence Committee. Conflicting reports about the hashtag’s origin miss the point, McKew says, because whether or not this is the result of a Republican or Russian efforts, they have the power to push a fringe social media campaign to the mainstream media with bots.

According to McKew: “Information and psychological operations being conducted on social media—often mischaracterized by the dismissive label ‘fake news’—are not just about information, but about changing behavior. And they can be surprisingly effective.”  On Capitol Hill, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein and representative Adam Schiff demanded Facebook and Twitter look into the hashtag campaign for Russian interference. But they shouldn’t hold their breath. Social media platforms have been slow to track misinformation campaigns, even after a public outcry. Thomas Rid of Johns Hopkins University told the PBS NewsHour that Twitter basically gives the same level of privacy protection to Russian bots and fake accounts as it does to real people. Rid contends that Twitter could easily detect and remove bots but wants to keep an inflated number of users so it can keep Wall Street happy. Until Twitter takes this problem seriously, it will be hard to take Twitter’s trending topics very seriously.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/04/trump-twitter-russians-release-the-memo-216935
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-twitter-bots-are-recycling-cold-war-techniques-to-sow-political-division
https://www.recode.net/2018/1/31/16955432/democrats-congress-adam-schiff-dianne-feinstein-russia-release-the-memo-bots-trolls
https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/23/feinstein-schiff-releasethememo-twitter-facebook/

Facebook Instant Articles Are Losing Big Publishers, but Gaining Fake News

Over the summer, Facebook touted the success of Instant Articles and said more than 10,000 publishers around the world are using the feature. By hosting their articles on Facebook’s servers, publishers deliver articles more quickly on mobile devices before users got bored of waiting. But a recent analysis by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism found that of the original 72 publishers who opted in for Instant Articles in 2015, 38 did not post a single Instant Article in a snapshot review on January 17th. One of the issues that publishers have had with Instant Articles has been poor monetization compared to their own websites. The analysis showed that two-thirds of links went to a publisher’s home page.

The outlets that weren’t using the feature include the New York Times, Refinery29, the Washington Post and Cosmopolitan.  Pete Brown of the Tow Center wrote on CJR that “the reported growth in Instant Articles could be driven by an uptick in use by local publishers, specialist publications, or amateur outfits. It’s difficult to tell.” One surprising area of growth for Instant Articles has been from purveyors of fake news, according to a report by Jane Lytvynenko at BuzzFeed. She found that 29 Facebook pages and websites were using Instant Articles to spread false stories and 24 of them were part of the Facebook Audience Network, meaning the social giant was profiting from them. Facebook quickly moved to distance itself from the sites, but will need to do a better job to sell Instant Articles to legitimate publishers – and keep bad actors off the platform.

https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/are-facebook-instant-articles-worth-it.php
https://www.buzzfeed.com/janelytvynenko/fake-news-in-instant-articles?utm_term=.iiXw8OQxL#.pb7e83xXW
http://www.businessinsider.com/publishers-turn-away-from-facebook-instant-articles-2018-2
https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/313294/fake-news-and-algorithms-is-boosting-facebook-i.html

Here are some other stories we’re following

ESPN’s new streaming service will cost just $5 per month but not contain any programming that runs on its cable channels.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Vice Media missed its revenue target for 2017 by $100 million and early investors are looking for an exit.

Snap Inc. beat analysts’ expectations for the first time since the company went public, with rising revenues, but lost more than $3 billion last year.

And alumni from the shuttered DNAInfo site in Chicago have launched a new local news site funded through blockchain startup Civil.

Music on this Episode

Can’t Hate The Hater by 3 Feet Up
Sinking Feeling by Jessie Spillane
DJ by Jahzzar
Backed Clean Vibes by Kevin Macleod
Air Hockey Saloon by Chris Zabriskie
I Never Wanted To Say by Lorenzo’s Music
I’m Going for a Coffee by Lee Rosevere

Jefferson Yen is the producer for the MediaShift Podcast. His work has been on KPCC Southern California Public Radio and KRTS Marfa Public Radio. You can follow him @jeffersontyen.

The post MediaShift Podcast #257: Billionaire Owner for the LA Times; Twitter Bots Push #ReleasetheMemo; Next Generation Radio’s Doug Mitchell appeared first on MediaShift.

How To Write For MetricShift
Jason Alcorn / MediaShift
A call for contributors.

Sometimes, Impact Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be
Jason Grotto / ProPublica
An official claimed to respond to your reporting? Be skeptical, or else.

January Social Media Platform Changes: Full Roundup
Tory Starr / WGBH Social
A “seismic” month on social media.

Public TV Begins Counting ‘Invisible Audiences’ For Education Content
Karen Everhart / Current
Beyond Nielsen Ratings: “Vegas PBS tracks 27 education-related data points.”

Opinary Is Building New Tools To Help News Orgs Use Polls To Inform Their Coverage
Ricardo Bilton / Nieman Lab
Can Opinary build a better audience insights dashboard?

More From MetricShift

4 Ways Newsletter Publishers Can Hit Open Rates Between 50 and 60 Percent
Mark Schiefelbein

Why Scroll Depth Is A Key Metric for Individual Pages and Article Formats
Andrew Sweeney

Which Publishers Benefit Most from Facebook’s News Feed Change?
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Upcoming Trainings and Events

FREE! — How to Get Better Newsletter Metrics [Feb. 7]
MediaShift’s Jason Alcorn and Special Guests

Jason Alcorn (@jasonalcorn) is the Metrics Editor for MediaShift. In addition to his work with MediaShift, he works as a consultant with non-profits and newsrooms.

The post Media Metrics Roundup for February 7, 2018 appeared first on MediaShift.

That’s a lovely idea, but in reality, the newsroom is often a lonely place for the social team. Rather than being fully engaged in the editorial process, social media teams—or possibly just a lone social media editor—are scrambling to publish content on Facebook, churn out copy, and follow analytics moment by moment. Exercising creativity and collaborating with other teams get lost amidst budget cuts, time constraints and the real pressures of the day-to-day newsroom. That’s a problem, because it limits the potential of social media at a time when the news industry needs to focus on experimentation.

Below, a breakdown of what needs to change and why, as well as possible fixes.

There’s No Editorial Guidance

Most social media teams don’t have a point person the way a writer has her editor, or an editor has her CEO. Chances are, the team is leading itself, adapting to the demands of daily news trends and the whims of staff writers, video producers and business managers.

An American Press Institute study found that a decade after the introduction of Facebook and Twitter, most newsrooms continue not to appreciate the journalistic potential of social media. This creates a silo around the social team, which often finds itself doing miscellaneous tasks.

“The three of us who do social media full-time are also responsible for curating and troubleshooting our mobile app, monitoring the wire, answering phone calls from customers, searching for user-generated content during breaking news and coordinating requests for retweets from [other newsroom] accounts,” one social media team member is quoted as saying in the study.

Social Teams Do the Housekeeping

The daily tasks for social teams generally include following social channels, drafting copy for breaking or trending news, and manually scheduling social content. The most common activity for social media team members is “posting links” — but is this a good use of time, especially when there’s little to no time left over for thinking about large-scale engagement or broader strategizing? When social teams are seen as just link-posters or taskmasters, rather than creative, non-traditional journalists, their position in the newsroom becomes mentally and morally isolating.

When I worked as a social media producer for Al Jazeera’s AJ+, the team had a good deal of journalism experience. Yet we were only tasked with repetitive, last-minute video uploads and tweet drafting. We sometimes felt that we weren’t considered “real” journalists. But we managed to create some complex, nuanced work, like a Medium series of user-generated personal essays on the question, “Where are you from?” and a Facebook group that documented incidences of hate in the U.S. These projects were accomplished when we carved time out for them, or worked off-hours.

A Vanity Fair tweet from 2015. (Photo credit should read (MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/Getty Images)

Invite Us to Important Meetings

Social teams often aren’t brought into the fold on projects until the final stages, when it’s time to promote online — despite the fact that a project may have been weeks or even months in the planning. 

When I worked as the lone social media person at an education news nonprofit, I often found myself having to remind management to include me in project meetings. Sometimes I’d realize a relevant meeting was going on and would walk in halfway through it. 

Invite your social media team to join the process earlier. We can help.

What Needs to Change

In order for social media teams to thrive and live up to their journalistic potential, here are a few things that need to happen:

1) Management needs to build in time for the team to collaborate with other departments, bounce ideas off others in the newsroom, conceive of big engagement projects, and exercise multimedia skills.

2) The social media team’s workload should include more than manually scheduling content throughout the day. Algorithms often dictate their responsibilities, forcing the social team to think in terms of the number of times content is posted per hour or day, rather than longer-term engagement projects.

3) If newsrooms want to attract exciting, well-rounded candidates who stick around, they should be sure to create a clear path for advancement within social media. As it is, that path is unclear: Do you move into audience development, where you’re working with data strategy and moving away from editorial work? Do you transition into web producing where you hone multimedia and coding skills, but focus less on engagement? There must be a conversation about this.

4) Digital leaders with solid backgrounds in social media are few and far between, so the team is often left guiding itself. This means management needs to be keenly aware of the importance of including the social team in meetings–it will result in a more seamless process from conception to publication.

When newsrooms decide to really rethink the social media team’s role in the terms above, they will be tapping into a resource they could have been using all along.

The post Why Social Media Editors Should be Better Integrated into Newsrooms appeared first on MediaShift.

That’s my conclusion after overseeing the publication of “Master Class: Teaching Advice for Journalism and Mass Communication Instructors,” a new book produced by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication standing committee on teaching, which I’ve chaired for the past four years.

It’s no secret that journalism remains in a state of upheaval, with many media organizations struggling to find new, and profitable, business models that will sustain their operations. What often gets underplayed – or downright ignored – is how fast academia is adapting to those changes.

“Master Class” addresses the issues facing today’s journalism instructors in a way that the last book on teaching in our field, which came out in 1992, would have never imagined.

Here are some of the major takeaways that came out of the two years it took to put the book together:

1. Technology is the future

If your program is not teaching the technology that comes along with producing journalism, then it is in danger.

Many schools are now exposing their students to the best search engine optimization techniques and using social media. But many schools are woefully behind in these areas. (Hint: Look to see whether your school has a LinkedIn page and how many of your school’s instructors are on Twitter.)

And “technology” means more than showing students how to use a content management system or download and edit videos. Today’s journalism student needs to be exposed to how virtual reality and artificial intelligence can be used to help tell stories. They also need basic coding skills.

The leading journalism programs are training their students to build media apps, and to download and massage data in ways that help tell stories. They are teaching students to use technology to attract audiences that may have never been exposed to content that they want and find useful.

2. Instruction is moving online

Many of academia’s top journalism programs have online master’s degrees that cater to professionals that need to upgrade their skills and understanding of how mass media works. That’s good and serves the industry.

(Photo: Getty Images)

The next step is moving more undergraduate education, and perhaps even doctoral education, online. As our universities and colleges struggle with limited classroom space and resources, the solution is to put more journalism education on the internet. It’s how most journalism is delivered today.

To be sure, not all undergraduate students thrive in an online teaching environment. But today’s millennial student wants flexible learning, and journalism can easily be taught with online tools. I’ve been teaching one section of our introductory newswriting class online now for more than a decade, and I see more and more skills courses moving online.

3. Non-tenured instructors in the classroom

The percentage of non-tenured, or non-tenure track instructors in the classroom is increasing, particularly at state universities receiving smaller slices of the budget each year.

As a result, many programs are hiring lecturers and contract professors from the local market to teach many of their skills courses. There’s a positive to this move in that professionals have recent experience. But this leads to higher turnover among instructors, and could cause the quality of education to decrease.

Some journalism programs are also partnering with local media organizations to have reporters and editors teach their classes at no expense to the university. The media organization gets exposed to the students and is able to recruit the best ones to come work for it after graduation. And the program saves money that can be spent elsewhere.

4. More schools have become content producers

The “teaching hospital” model of journalism education espoused by the Knight Foundation has taken hold at many journalism programs, which are now having their students produce content – either in the form of print or video – distributed to the local media for them to use. Some media are even providing spaces in their shrunken newsrooms for the students to work.

These classes are typically capstone courses for seniors that require them to cover a beat as well as market their stories to the local media organizations. The students get published clips while the media gets cheap (often free) content. As an example, last year I started the North Carolina Business News Wire.

In some cases, this puts the journalism program in competition with the student newspaper, which can be a tricky relationship, especially if the newspaper is not independent of the university.

I’d like to see a future where programs start selling advertising on a website where this content is posted, allowing them to generate revenue that can be put back into the education of journalism students. It would also allow programs to experiment with journalism business models themselves.

5. The lecture is not dead, but it’s on life support

This should go without saying, but it’s no longer functional for a journalism instructor to simply walk into a classroom and spend 45 minutes lecturing about AP style or the inverted pyramid to students. The millennial student will zone out and start scanning Snapchat, Twitter and other social media on their phone.

The best journalism instructors today incorporate video, gifs and other technology into their class time. Whether we like it or not, today’s journalism student also wants to be entertained. If you can get their attention by using new and unusual teaching strategies, then they’re more likely to pay attention to the importance of checking facts.

I’m bullish about the future of journalism, and I’m bullish about the future of journalism education. In the past few years, I’ve taught myself – and my students – how to do basic coding, create a website, produce email newsletters, shoot and download video, and build an audience on Twitter.

And I’m still teaching my students the journalism basics I learned more than 30 years ago as well.

Chris Roush is the Walter Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Media and Journalism and the chair of the AEJMC Standing Elected Committee on Teaching. He was the School’s senior associate dean from 2011 to 2015 and director of the master’s program from 2007 to 2010.

The post 5 Takeaways on the State – and Future – of Journalism Education appeared first on MediaShift.