Social Bookmarking For Journalists: 101

Social Networking Built Around Content, So Why Aren’t Journalists All Over It?

This is the second in a series of practical tips to change your newsroom. The first was CopyCamp, an Unconference for Journalists, which the San Jose Mercury News will put to the test in April. This is also part of the ongoing Carnival of Journalism: More info here.

Over at WiredJournalist I started a group "social bookmarking for journalists," because I’ve noticed that social news sites (a growing corner of social media) have an alarming absence of journalists despite the utility they provide. Similar to blogging, I think ignoring it is like shooting ourselves in the foot.

The good news is: Unlike CopyCamp, my first practical tip on changing your newsroom, this takes only a few minutes of a journalist’s time and no money. If you are all goo-goo-ga-ga over Twitter, then there is no reason not to love social news sites like Reddit, StumbleUpon and others.

As Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 put it to me via email: "Every media brand, to remain relevant, needs to get into the business
of helping their audience find the best content on the topics they cover,
and not just publish their own content. So it’s bigger than ‘bookmarking/rating content.’ It’s being relevant on the web."

The final goal of this post is to get news organizations to see the editorial value in providing links to other relevant stories. The higher quality your links are – the higher your level of editorial service and the more readers will come back for tasty hyperlinks.

A quick disclaimer.

Social Bookmarking 101 will include:

1. A Definition and Short History
2. A Lay of the Land (who is who in social news)
3. Simple Uses for Journalists
4. My Right to rant: Why Journalists should get on board and what we can do collectively.

If after reading this post you want a follow up post with a tutorial for any specific site, just leave a comment.

A Definition and Short History
Perhaps
you’ve heard of Del.icio.us. Lots of journalists use it. Del.icio.us
was the first social bookmarking site. It literally let you save a url
(bookmark it) and share it with others (make it social). When
Del.icio.us launched, however, people would tend to bookmark resources
such as the Library of Congress or their favorite news site. They were URL’s that you could visit time and again.

Eventually, Digg came on the scene. I once interviewed Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg, for a CJR article
and he explained the fundamental shift that Digg made from Del.icio.us.
Digg was designed to bookmark news stories that had a temporary value
that would diminish in two or so days. The term he used was "dynamic
content." In other words – Digg was about news. People would share
their bookmarks and ala Slashdot, they created a front page that showed
the news stories that was bookmarked or "dugg" by the most
people. That was the dawn of social news sites, an outgrowth of social
bookmarking.

Today Del.icio.us also has a most popular page – which shows what
dynamic (news) content is being bookmarked the most. As does Reddit,
StumbleUpon, Sphinn, Propeller and somewhere around 500+ other sites.

Even if you have never participated in a social news site you are
probably familiar with them. Lots (if not most) news organizations have
buttons near the end of articles that let users bookmark them at one of
their favorite social news sites. Poynter has an interesting analysis
of which bookmarks news organizations promote the most.

Most journalists I know use Del.icio.us similar to the way Mathew Ingram does: "I’ve used Delicious for years, and store just about everything I come
across that I think might be relevant for some future piece, and while
I do have other people in my network who save things for me, I mostly
just use it as a "backup brain" and research tool."

My bone to pick isn’t that news organizations don’t know about
social news sites. They obviously do – and want to benefit from the
traffic spikes they can offer. My concern is that individual
journalists aren’t using them enough – which is a pity, because if
anybody should be recommending news articles through these sites it
should be journalists, whose job it is to know what is good and bad
information. If we live in an era of micro-internet celebrities, and micro-blogging – these sites offer a platform where collectively journalists can
show our inherent value on the social web.

A Lay of the Land: What Social News Sites Are Out There?

What, did you think all social news sites were the same? Are Facebook and MySpace the same? No. As Danah Boyd points out
– there are serious differences between social networks. I have not
done the intense research that Danah has done in the previous link.
What follows is just the general ethos I’ve gotten from my
participation in various social news sites and the participants
therein. I’ve gotten to know many on a social network I created for
social bookmarkers of every nature "Social News Central."
An analogy I find helpful is figuring out what news publication they
would be if these sites were print products. (Note: this list is NOT
exhaustive. Neither is this serious listing of almost 400 social news sites.)

Digg: Teen Magazine

Digg
has a lot of users – so it’s not fair to generalize. But if I had to:
They tend to be younger, they have a great sense of humor, but they
hate reading. They tend to like easily digestible content: Pictures and
top ten lists. They tend to be left leaning if not libertarian. Digg
has recently struck deals with Ask.com and the Wall Street Journal
among other news outlets. The site itself is slow and can be
frustrating, but Diggers tend to pull up the best internet memes before
they start: This is the best place to go to show-up all your e-friends
and be the first to know about a viral video.

Mixx: LA Times

Mixx
has a lot of Digg-refugees. Users who got fed up with Digg because of
its slow user-interface. The content is, echem, mixed, between serious
content and fun and informative. I haven’t picked up on any political
leaning. The LA Times has also invested in Mixx. Their user base is
small right now, but they are passionate.

Reddit: San Jose Mercury News

Reddit
tends to be heavily focused on hardcore technology. It has a
left-leaning balance in the user base. Reddit is owned by Conde Net and
recently opened up the ability for users to start their own Reddit’s (where there is huge potential for local beat journalists). Reddit is often considered the second largest social news site and was the first to experiment with both an up and down voting system (stories can even be rated -4 or -6 on Reddit if it’s that bad).

Propeller: USA Today

Propeller’s
user base is a little older and more mature than Digg’s. They tend to
comment a lot. In fact, it’s not unusual for a post on Propeller to
have as many comments (if not more) as it does votes. Owned by AOL and
originally called Netscape, Propeller is the USA Today of social news
sites, because it is packaged for the masses, not a tech or geeky
audience. I’ve noticed a slight political balance to the left – but
Propeller does have pockets of conservatives who speak their mind.
Founded by Jason Calacanis, Propeller was the first to begin to pay
some of its more active contributors. You might scoff – but think of it
as an editorial service. It has real value.

Newsvine: MSNBC

Bought
by MSNBC, Newsvine has (IMHO) the best user interface. On the
flip-side, the user base is very liberal and somewhat whiny from my
experience. But they do more than just seed links, they write content
as well – turning them into both a social news site as well as a
citizen journalism organization. Newsvine was also the first to let
users create groups within the larger voting circle. For example, I
belong to the citizen journalism group on Newsvine. I can seed links
specifically for that community – and nobody else will vote on it.
Again, local beat journalists can and should take advantage of this ala
beat blogging.

Stumble Upon: Boston Metro

Stumble is growing at such a fast rate and used by
such a diverse group of people, it’s hard to tell what the user base is
like. I have noticed that people who are ardent Mixxers or Diggers, etc
– also use Stumble Upon. Because the interface is so quick and light
(use the toolbar and it follows you around the web) it is a bit of a
commuter social news site – people tend to contribute here and there 10
minutes at a time. That adds up, however, and Stumble has a serious
community growing.

NewsTrust.net: NY Times

NewsTrust
is, to my knowledge, the only nonprofit on the scene. Unlike other
social news sites where people vote based on popularity, NewsTrust
ranks stories based on "journalistic quality." Because of that focus,
NewsTrust could become "the social news site of record" if it grows in
popularity ie: The place to go to find the most accurate account of a
news event. It’s a small user base – right now they tend to be older
and qualify as "news-junkies." What I would like to do is organize
"news hunts" with various news organizations. Example: Mother Jones has
a feature story on torture, so we highlight that story, ask our
community to review it and Mother Jones leads us on a search for other
stories on the topic of
human rights. Perhaps we could even feature a reporter from Mother
Jones who is knowledgeable and hosts the topic and submits the stories
that the rest of the community rates. This is very similar to what
Scott Karp did with Pubishing 2.0 and their hunt for good news stories on Super Tuesday.

Blatant plug: We are still signing up media partners
– but as you can see, that Mother Jones example isn’t just talk. If
your news organization would be interested in leading a "news hunt" –
finding the best journalism in a particular topic, contact me. As Jack Lail put it "I’m changing up this weekend’s blog roundup to list not what bloggers are posting, but links that bloggers are bookmarking.
Think of it as read what they’re reading." Only at NewsTrust – we don’t
just bookmark, we rate and sort after evaluating the content.

Sphinn: MIT Technology Review

Like
NewsTrust Sphinn has a particular niche it’s trying to fill: This is
the social news site for SEO types, or people who want the latest in
online networks and marketing. As you might guess – that’s the user
base as well.

Simple Uses for Journalists

Getting more eyes/feedback

It’s simple – if you’ve written a good and informative story you
naturally want to share it with as many people as possible. Clipping it
on your refrigerator doesn’t cut it anymore. Share it on a social news
site. Not every article you write is going to get on the front page. In
fact, most won’t. But you will expose yourself to new readers each time – and you will get feedback in the form of comments. And, if you continually seed stories on the
environment, people will slowly notice and you will become a resource
on that topic. Which brings up another use.

Make a name for yourself on a topic

There are dozens of individuals I follow on different
social news sites specifically because they inform me about niche
topics. If you follow Journerdism, you are really just following Will Sulivan’s Del.icio.us links – he is my expert on what’s going on in journalism.

I
follow others on Digg who keep me abreast about what’s going on in the
open source world and the environmental movement. There are users on
Propeller that I can go to if I ever want to see what’s going on in the
world of gay rights, college humor, sports and entertainment news. They are news recommenders
– and almost none of them are journalists. If you have a beat – you
should bookmark everything you read on a social news site – and people
will start to follow you to find out what’s going on in that area.

In simple terms: It’s an editorial service – if you aren’t
providing it, others will, and they will earn a readers trust and they
will set the agenda for where the conversation goes.

Creating New Content:

Robin Hamman at the BBC says:
"We’re using del.icio.us for all sorts of things at the BBC, from
making
it easier for production teams to keep track of and share links with
each other to using the auto-publish feature to actually create
content….every 24 hours, my saved posts are auto-published into my
blog. Several of the BBC’s blogs are using this feature as well. Example and great tips for this here.

Finding new story ideas

All these sites operate on the idea that the wisdom of the crowd takes
the best content and brings it to the top. That’s not always true.
Often there are great ideas that stay at the bottom because they were
presented poorly. Journalists have the time to take those ideas and
polish them up. If you learn how to scan these sites I guarantee you’ll find new and interesting ideas.

Passive citizen journalism

In addition to becoming a valuable resource for other people seeking
information, readers will comment and vote on stories they think are
important or good. Participating in social news sites is a very passive form of citizen journalism.
It is an easy way to be engaged in the news and have an impact on how
others become informed. Journalists should embrace that – we can learn
from that interaction, it doesn’t threaten any body’s job and we can
build loyal readers from that interaction. News organizations should: Build sub-reddits, start Newsvine groups or join NewsTrust.net or Pub2.0 on future "news hunts."

Journalists should and can OWN the news recommendation world. It’s what we already try to do.

Enter The Rant

Right now I see few journalists participating in anything beyond
Del.icio.us. I can understand the initial recourse to participating in
these organizations: "you mean, work for free?!?"

Yes – you probably won’t get paid for participating (although if you
are really good, Propeller might hire you as a freelancer). But if you
do so honestly and you find and seed good content, you will be
recognized for it. More importantly – together journalists can engage
readers in finding quality content – not just popular content. As
social bookmarking matures there will be an increasing desire to create
niche social news sites that focus on topics (like Hugg – a site for environmental news).
One of the niche’s that will need to be filled is going to be "serious
news." Where do people go to find quality journalism? I don’t think
Digg is ever going to fill that niche. I hope whoever does fill it is a
journalist or part of our world and understand those concerns.

 

Disclaimer: I work for Propeller and NewsTrust.net – both are social news sites which I discussed in this post. While I will try to be as honest in my assessment regarding those two sites, I can understand if you take that analysis with a grain of salt. BUT: ignoring social news sites in total is just ignorant.