Making User Generated Content That Works
My last post addressed why User Generated Content (USG) isn't being utilized effectively in most news organizations. This blog will cover the opposite.
First, great journalism of the future will require user generated content. Newsrooms currently expect regular multi-media journalists to dig deep into a topic or storyline. In order for a reporter to dig deep, they have to have enough understanding of the topic to ask the next right questions.
Pity the poor reporter given this assignment: Why did XYZ Bank end up on the FDIC watch list? What does that mean to the Bank, what does it mean to the depositers, what does it mean to the people with loans? How many warnings had it received, what is causing the financial difficulty, what will be required to get the bank off of the watch list? Speak to some industry insiders find out how the bank can get off of the list. What would the likelyhood of raising the proper capital to get the bank out of trouble? How can they raise the capital in the current market conditions?
Due to the paper's new multi-media journalist policy, which requires all journalists to cover all story assignments, the reporter will immediately find himself at a disadvantage unless he is a veteran business writer. Most news organizations don't have such expertise on staff so the reporter is stuck trying to write about something they don't know the first thing about.
Under a viable UGC policy, there would be a section on the newspaper's website for developing stories. The reporter would start with the basic story and post it in this section, allowing the process to take advantage of the USG theory of better journalism.
In a USG world, a reporter will have their contact lists categorized to include business leaders, elected officials, school experts, savvy local pundits, and a variety of consultants. The journalist will sort through the contacts and send out a brief questionnaire form to make it easy for the source to participate in the story, along with a link to the posted story labeled “in development.” The questionnaire will allow for attachments of pertinent information such as pictures, video, charts and graphs.
The returned questionnaire forms will provide a host of new information and angles on what the real story is. Those ideas and concepts will be posted along with the story in progress as the reporter continues to develop the final product.
As the story captures more interest, more people chime in, utilizing the questionnaire linked to the story, providing even more rich content from sources the reporter didn't even know existed. Now he has the makings of a great story.
This process can be adopted to include nearly every subject matter from governmental mergers to fashion design, and the list goes on ad infinitum. This style of UGC creates a town hall meeting that captures the knowledge of a community and beyond to get closer to the truth on any given topic. We don't set up reporters for unrealistic expectations when writing a story, they now have plenty of help.
Journalism is just at the beginning stages of being better than it every has been. The tools are available to make it easy to create content like never before. Add social media applications to this, and now you really have something. More on that later.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
User Generated Content Fallacy and Opportunity
User Generated Content (UGC) is the buzzword in the news industry with hopes to fill a news hole gap caused by staff reductions. Had media companies used UGC the way it is intended to be used, content quality would have improved years ago.
UGC has not filled the gap in most media companies and is actually causing a falling off of engaged readers, many of whom express their frustrations in letters and emails to media leaders and demonstrate their lack of support by reducing their reading time or cancelling subscriptions altogether.
The consumer doesn’t want to pay for UGC that doesn’t serve a purpose in their world other than to fill space that normally would have had a reporter’s by-line.
To be effective, UGC has to be mined with a specific purpose. It has to be driven by the need to seek out and provide expertise that news staff does not have – either due to research limitations, familiarity with subject matter or experience.
In the rush to make reporters and photographers into multi-media journalists tasked with covering all things in all manner, the news companies have lost a focus that consumers depend on; that is, a driving force to uncover news that impacts reader's lives.
Leaders in the newsroom have had a new concept in journalism shoved down their throats and find themselves having to choose between good journalism and content quotas based on a cookie cutter approach that has resulted in “Mall-izination” of the newsroom.
Each community has its hot points and each news opportunity should be looked at differently in how to best tell the story.
There are no goals and directions handed out to the newsroom for incorporating UGC into the news hole. The goals state the encouragement of UGC, but not the value it can bring to a story. Community expertise is ignored while valuable print space is given to shallow and useless content because editors and reporters are not instructed on how to seek out quality UGC.
Reporters need to feel empowered to aggressively pursue a story by utilizing numerous individuals with information and expertise. In the past, reporters contacted one or two immediate sources for their story. Today's social media provides a means for invaluable content from the community through online formats that walk a source through a series of questions that can be returned to the reporter with the click of a button. We’ll cover more on that at a later post.
UGC has not filled the gap in most media companies and is actually causing a falling off of engaged readers, many of whom express their frustrations in letters and emails to media leaders and demonstrate their lack of support by reducing their reading time or cancelling subscriptions altogether.
The consumer doesn’t want to pay for UGC that doesn’t serve a purpose in their world other than to fill space that normally would have had a reporter’s by-line.
To be effective, UGC has to be mined with a specific purpose. It has to be driven by the need to seek out and provide expertise that news staff does not have – either due to research limitations, familiarity with subject matter or experience.
In the rush to make reporters and photographers into multi-media journalists tasked with covering all things in all manner, the news companies have lost a focus that consumers depend on; that is, a driving force to uncover news that impacts reader's lives.
Leaders in the newsroom have had a new concept in journalism shoved down their throats and find themselves having to choose between good journalism and content quotas based on a cookie cutter approach that has resulted in “Mall-izination” of the newsroom.
Each community has its hot points and each news opportunity should be looked at differently in how to best tell the story.
There are no goals and directions handed out to the newsroom for incorporating UGC into the news hole. The goals state the encouragement of UGC, but not the value it can bring to a story. Community expertise is ignored while valuable print space is given to shallow and useless content because editors and reporters are not instructed on how to seek out quality UGC.
Reporters need to feel empowered to aggressively pursue a story by utilizing numerous individuals with information and expertise. In the past, reporters contacted one or two immediate sources for their story. Today's social media provides a means for invaluable content from the community through online formats that walk a source through a series of questions that can be returned to the reporter with the click of a button. We’ll cover more on that at a later post.
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