How Journalists Should End Every Article - With Tasty Hyperlinks

Over at the online journalism blog Paul Bradshaw has a great post on the editorial value of links.

He writes:

Yesterday I discovered that the Birmingham Post features writer Jo Ind has started incorporating Del.icio.us social bookmarks into her articles. If you look at the bottom of this health article you’ll see the following line:

“To learn more about Select Research and the body volume index, see Jo Ind’s suggested links or visit her blog.”

 

And he is absolutely right to take a moment and praise Jo Ind. In my conversations with editors I've actually had to argue the value of linking to outside sources. Now personally, I think this debate is dead and decomposed but, just in case, it goes something like this.

• A: We are in the business of informing people.
• B: Having links to good information is an editorial service
• C: If you provide good links, people will rely on you as a "news recomender" and come back for more.

Take a moment to appreciate that argument and you can understand why we have Digg, Newsvine, Reddit, NewsTrust and other news aggregators. The links that are produced can ADD value to a news article produced by a journalist. That's why most of the news aggregators (NewsTrust included) create widgets that you can incorporate into your content with simple cutting and pasting.

Here's an example from our recent collaboration with Scientific American. One article they produced was on flourescent light bulbs and their impact on the environment. It was a great story. 

Now imagine you are a first time Scientific American reader - you ended up on this article vertically through some search engine or clicking a link. After all, this is how tons of traffic is shifted around on the web - through search.

You reach the end of the article, but you want more. Odds are you are interested in the environment, that's what your search terms were about when you landed on this page. Who knows, you might been interested in just this specific story. Instead of assuming the job had been completed by this one story, at the end of this article Sciam gave the reader a blast of information. They included a NewsTrust.net widget that displayed the top rated news articles on the topic of the environment (see image below).

One of three things will happen at this point.

1. The reader got all the information they needed and continues surfing the internet for other articles.
2. The reader liked this specific story and submits it to NewsTrust for review - believing it should be on the list of top rated news stories.
3. The reader sees the headline of a news story on this widget they found interesting and clicks over to read it.

What does this translate to for Sciam?

1. That reader may never return to Sciam again? Or at least - not until a search term brings them back - outcome is neutral to bad.
2. Sciam gets more readers and constructive feedback on the article - outcome is positive
3. Sciam becomes more than just a news source - they are a portal. The reader knows they can come back to Sciam not just for original environmental news, but to find out what is going on all over the web. Outcome is positive.

Notice that the only bad outcome is with option number one - and that is the ONLY option if more links aren't provided at the bottom.

The beauty of all this: It takes literally seconds to insert a NewsTrust widget. Here's a tutorial.

Step one: Go to NewsTrust.net 's Tools page where you will find a link to our widget maker.
Step two: Create your widget: It's a point-and-click operation. Just pick a subject, a listing (I suggest top rated), source type, etc. Don't forget to specify how many articles you want listed on your widget. Unless you know what size you need your widget to be, leave it on auto.
Step three: Copy the html/javascript produced below.
Step four: Paste the script where you want it to appear.

And then you're done. They also look great in the sidebar of blogs. If the topic you are looking for doesn't have a widget - contact us.

What News Do You Share? Is Your Site Optimized for Social Media?

I'm always weary of news buzzwords - but this one caught my eye: "Social Media Optimization."

At this point in the web's development "search engine optimization" is standard. I challenge you to find a serious web publisher who doesn't recognize the acronym SEO from a mile away.

Social media, however, isn't on everyone's radar. My question in reading this blog post from the Early Edition, which tipped me off on "Social Media Optimization, isn't how news organizations can leverage social media to get more traffic - but on what rubric they are doing so. Do we want news organizations to clamor for traffic or quality reporting - and is there a way to achieve both?

The World Needs A Better News Filter

Chris Brogan, one of the web's leading thinkers on social media, writes "We Still Need Better Filters."

He says:

With billions of blogs and hundreds of thousands of podcasts and with Flickr and with site after site after site worth of data to consume, we have the “get it to my desk or phone” part of the problem fairly well managed. With services like Google Reader and Friend Feed, and del.icio.us to a lesser extent, we’re starting to find ways to collect all this information in one place (or a few places).

But what’s missing are filters. Twitter has no filtering mechanism, nor even a “bubble up the good stuff” mechanism. Google Reader lets friends share what they think are good blog posts, but obviously this works out that what YOU think is a good post and what I think is a good post might not always match up. There needs to be another layer of filtering such that I can choose to read your promoted posts, but I should then get the opportunity to bubble my best (and by “best,” I mean most closely informationally aligned) sharing sources to the top of the heap.

It’s all still too linear. Too boolean.

Who’s making the right kinds of filters to promote the best stuff? Who’s helping us suppress the drivel?

How would YOU like to see filters work?

What a way to state the problem. Particularly "we have the “get it to my desk or phone” part of the problem fairly well managed." There is a digital divide, but it is shrinking - and once on the web, access to information levels out for everyone (putting government censorship on the shelf for sake of argument).

Access is less and less the problem. What we are faced with is too much information and not enough media literacy.

By reading Chris' post I began to wonder about what exactly it is that needs filtering. Chris mentioned Google Reader and Friend Feed, both great services, but hardly "social news" sites. Both allow me to easily track what my friends are reading, but there is no collective wisdom. When I wake up in the morning and open up Google Reader, I view the articles Robert Scoble has shared and I trust them only so much as I trust Robert Scoble's ability to recommend good technology news. But this method just means I have to keep track of individuals as news recommenders, a task that doesn't scale up. Still - this kind of filter (human filters) is a good start if you feel confidant about the individual.

One step up from that is creating a social news site, like Digg or NewsTrust, where you are essentially aggregating news recommender and finding a way to weigh everyone's recommendations against each other. Of course, this opens a whole new can of worms, but it is scalable - assuming you get enough people with enough interests, you'd have an expert to recommend and review stories around every possible topic.

Is there a magic filter for the web? Of course not. But we are inching in the right direction. Sites like Twitter and Friend Feed will continue to empower individual news recommenders like Robert Scoble and we hope NewsTrust.net is moving towards a more powerful way to find news you can trust on the web.