Ilana Yergin

(Forgive my SEO-less title and first sentence, but that’s my least favorite part of online journalism and I just couldn’t resist.)

The possibilities for the future of journalism seem endless and I’m so excited to be a part of it.

When I decided to go to grad school for online journalism, I did it because I knew I wanted to be a journalist and studying the online field felt like a necessary step. I would start out doing multimedia, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m sure I hoped I would end up writing for a daily paper in a big city.

Throughout the course of this semester, though, that has changed. I love the terrifying mix of multimedia, traditional reporting and uncertainty that is online journalism. There’s nothing more invigorating than walking towards a future and hoping that there’s something for you to do when you get there.

Although I still want to work in a city and I have a couple places that would be my top choices, I’m not so attached to writing for a newspaper anymore. That’s not to say that I don’t care if they go away, I do care. I desperately hope that they don’t go away and I would jump at the opportunity to work for a paper, but I don’t ever want to limit myself to the constraints of the printed word.

I have more fun as a backpack journalist than I ever have with just a notebook. I like making audio slide shows and videos. I’m not great at it, yet, and I still cringe when I hear my voice playback as a voice over, but I also recognize that there are opportunities available through multimedia journalism that clearly can’t exist with any of the news media that we’re used to: print or broadcast.

Combining the best of the old news with the technology of the new news can only lead to bigger and better things.

What worries me more than the financial woes of the industry that seem to have been brought on by the Internet is the downgrade in quality. It is my hope that this is just temporary while we figure things out. As journalists are being asked to do more and faster work, sloppy errors seem to slip through the cracks. It seems like the entire industry would benefit from a weekly AP style quiz (although having passed 501, I believe I should be excluded from the torture).

We’ve always prided ourselves on accuracy and I don’t want to see that watered down because of the rush of the Internet. We might not know where we’re going, but let’s not forget where we came from.

Some college news organizations are leading the way in online news experimentation.

Once I started to think about it, I realized this isn’t as surprising as it first seemed. College students aren’t worried about making money. I’ve never heard of a college newspaper selling the paper on campus (I know some are willing to mail the paper off campus for a small fee). College papers sell ads, but they also have support from the school. When it comes down to it, a college newspaper is the perfect organization to try out different online models to see what works. Then those students can take their ideas and fresh take to for-profit news organizations post-graduation.

They might not know if their model will make money, but at least they’ll know if it draws readers in and creates that ever so sought after online community.

I’m particularly impressed with the journalism students at San Fransisco State University. They’ve put together the Golden Gate [X]press, a news site packed with multimedia components.

The featured story on the homepage always seems to be multimedia.

Riding the Wind is an audio slide show that, to be honest, isn’t great. It is about a couple of students who are learning how to sail. If there is an interesting story, it certainly didn’t come through in the slide show, which is too long and too boring. The photos stay on the screen for too long and it just doesn’t work.

The website is full of multimedia, though. They’ve got maps, audio slide shows, videos, and more. Some of it is great and some isn’t as successful, but isn’t that the point of a project like this?

Students are trying different things and (hopefully) learning from their mistakes. They’ve covering news on and off campus which certainly gives their site a broader appeal. I’m sure that there are people who live in the area who don’t have any affiliation with the school that turn to this site for news, which is probably something that not many college news organizations can brag about.

In Clay Shirky’s post: The Collapse of Complex Business Models he rightly points out that the expensive and complex videos, but I think it is fair to say any type of multimedia, isn’t the most successful online. I doubt these students are running around with top of the line gear or have the time to spend hours editing.

I think this idea of filling a website with multimedia, while also having a lot of traditional print stories reproduced online from their newspaper, is great. The Internet provides us with the opportunity to use these different forms of media and we should take advantage of it. An online news site shouldn’t be a replica of a newspaper. The students at SF State have the right idea, their site just needs some cleaning up.

The Voice of San Diego is definitely trying to get readers more involved and feel more connected to the website but something is still missing.

I searched for a while and couldn’t find any simple polls or other not very time consuming interactive elements on the site besides leaving a comment, which is more like a requirement of a website than an interactive option that VOSD has chosen to use. There are some cool interactive elements that I’ll come back to in a little bit but first I want to explain why the interactive elements on this website are like trying to take calculus before learning how to add.

VOSD would be smart to add some polls or quick questionnaires to the website that people can participate in without having to devote any significant amount of time. Asking readers to vote on their favorite picture or something simple like that would be helpful. The majority of people who read the news, even avid news readers, don’t have the time to devote to helping with citizen journalism, although that is something that VOSD is getting better at.

Their new initiative, The People’s Post: Local Voices. On the Web. is a pretty cool idea. The People’s Post is one of the San Diego Foundation’s Regional Information Initiative. In partnership with the Knight Foundation, a couple of local organizations including VOSD have teamed up to give San Diego residents a place to tell their own story with the ultimate goal being an online San Diego community.

I like this idea particularly because the beginning and end of the project revolve around the idea of community, which the Internet is made for. The project is pretty new as far as I can tell, so it isn’t fair to judge it yet, but it looks promising.

The only downside for VOSD is that it isn’t their sole project. There is easy access to the stories on the VOSD site, but readers on the The People’s Post’s main site, which is significantly better designed and more appealing to use, won’t necessarily know that VOSD is involved and therefore won’t become part of the VOSD community. In other words, people who are on the VOSD site may easily find their way to The People’s Post and become a part of that community, but not the other way around. Symbiotic relationships can be very successful on the Internet, and this doesn’t seem like one of them.

Moral of the story is VOSD is still doing interesting things but need to focus on the small and overlooked things that will help them build a good foundation.

As a web only news organization, I would hope that the Voice of San Diego has someone who knows how to make a great webpage, and clearly they do.

The website satisfies most of the rules that we talked about in class. I think what is most successful on the site is its simplicity. There aren’t a lot of bells and whistles; the colors aren’t overly bright (which happens to be one of my biggest pet peeves about websites that are trying too hard), the font is simple and, as far as I can tell, they use the same font for everything.

The homepage is pretty good. They use a grid format with three columns. Everything is aligned pretty well, although to me, something seems off-center when it should be centered. Here’s a snapshot of the homepage:

The middle column looks like it should be centered under the masthead, but it isn’t. I know this is totally nitpicking, but its one of those things that now that I noticed it, I can’t stop seeing it and its kind of bugging me. I also recognize that everything doesn’t always have to be centered, but in this case so much is that it really stands out in not a good way that one thing is not centered.

The other thing that really does bother me about the homepage is that after you scroll down a couple of screens, the third column disappears, and the site is left with a lot of negative space.

We talked about in class how most people don’t scroll down that far, and that’s why bigger websites, like The New York Times use that space for links to the top stories in all of their individual sections. However, just because most people don’t scroll down that far, doesn’t mean the space should get neglected or isn’t important. It is still the homepage.

Really though, those are the only two things I could find about the website design that I didn’t like, and they seem pretty small, so overall, I’d have to say VOSD has a good website. It is definitely user friendly and the layout is very consistent.

I’m pretty excited about what the Voice of San Diego is doing by teaming up with the local NBC station. Together, the two are creating a weekly video that gets posted to the website and aired during the Thursday evening NBC newscast. The series is called “San Diego Explained.”

Each week, a VOSD reporter teams up with an NBC reporter and together they explain a single relevant issue that is specific to San Diego. This is a good idea for three reasons.

First of all, it shows readers that the reporters at VOSD are people, it gives them a face and a voice to the name. It makes a community oriented website that much more personal.

Secondly, NBC is bound to have resources that VOSD doesn’t have (yet). From having a more recognizable name to simple things like most likely having a bigger audience. The show airs during the 6 o’clock broadcast of the NBC local news and then gets posted online. This has to be helping VOSD draw in more viewers.

Lastly, this has to be a great learning experience for the VOSD reporters. They’re getting their name out there, and for anyone with a mostly writing background, any screen time is a new experience. I always think it’s a good idea to be constantly learning new things. A new skill will only make a good reporter better.

The videos themselves are pretty good. A couple of the VOSD reporters still sound like they’re getting used to being on screen, but I don’t know that I could do any better myself, so I can’t criticize that. I think it’s great that they’re getting out there and trying.

There are a couple interview clips, the reporters go on site, and they use graphics. The point of the story is clear and it is well reporter. They don’t seem to be pushing the envelope, but that might be because they’re also being broadcast on TV where it is probably a lot harder to introduce new styles. But the topics seem relevant and if I lived in San Diego, I would definitely be interested in this series.

For this assignment, I decided to photograph how the campus took advantage of the last day of spring break. Excluding the fifth picture, I more or less tried to capture how people were using up their last true vacation day before classes start up again on Monday.

Adam Wilson from Michigan was visiting Carolyn L'Huillier, a University of Maryland student over spring break and took a photo of her with the school's mascot outside McKeldin Library on March 19, 2010. (UMD Photo/Ilana Yergin)

Adam is the first thing noticed in this photo then the reader looks to see what he’s photographing. Technically speaking, this photo follows the rule of thirds pretty well. Both Adam and Carolyn are relatively close to being in the cross-hairs for where the photo would be broken into thirds. The photo is also split into three different levels; the level Adam is on, the steps, the level Carolyn and McKeldin are on, which I think gives the photo good dimension.

On the last day of spring break, March 19, 2010, James Brown decided to catch up on some studying outside on the College Park campus. The campus was nearly deserted. (UMD Photo/Ilana Yergin)

This photo of James has a lot of the elements we talked about in class. Although in this shot he is looking at his paper, rather than looking up at something, the majority of the photo is space that’s in front of him instead of behind, which is something we talked about. If the subject of a photo is looking at something, we should be seeing more in the direction that they’re looking in as opposed to what’s behind them, which isn’t usually relevant to the photo. There’s a lot of color and shadow in this shot, which I like, however it feels very heavy on the right side. I could have cropped it, but I didn’t want James to be centered because that would unnecessarily throw off the rule of threes, so I decided to leave it as is.

Students relaxed near this fountain on the University of Maryland College Park campus on March 19, 2010. This was the last day of spring break for the campus. (UMD Photo/Ilana Yergin)

I very intentionally decided to center this photo and have it be a straight on shot of McKeldin and the fountain. I really like that the fountain narrows and draws the viewer in to the focal point, which is just above the center of the photo where the fountain and McKeldin seem to meet. There is a student sitting right there with her feet in the water, which unfortunately because of how far away she is and the shadow that she’s sitting in, doesn’t really show up in the image. I like this picture, but the obvious downside is that it is that you have to work to see the students, but there are 3 in the image.

One of the few students on the quad on the last day of spring break March 19, 2010 relaxes in the sun as she reads a poetry book. Emily Zido stayed on campus over break because of her rugby team's practices. (UMD Photo/Ilana Yergin)

Again, this photo follows the rule of threes, because of where Emily is placed in the frame. The vastness of the quad to the right of Emily emphasizes how empty the campus was. During school, it would be hard to get a shot of this space on such a nice day this empty.

The University of Maryland College Park campus took advantage of the empty buildings over spring break, which ended March 19, 2010. They completed Asbestos cleaning in Woods Hall, home to the departments of Women's Studies and Anthropology. (UMD Photo/Ilana Yergin)

I like that there isn’t a lot of color in this picture, it makes the blue tape and sign stand out even more. There are lots of divisions in this photo, which does break up the white nicely. Even though there isn’t a lot of color in the photo, I think it has good levels and isn’t too bright.

Photoshop Class Exercise

Photo Credit: US Embassy New Zealand

One of the most useful aspects of the Internet is how convenient it is to get your readers involved. The Internet has made it incredibly easier for readers to give reporters tips and point out errors if one gets published. They can give immediate feedback by commenting on an article, tweeting it, or posting it to Facebook.

A still underused tool is crowdsourcing. Rather than asking readers to participate after the fact, crowdsourcing enables readers to help report the news. For example, guardian.co.uk asked readers to help them dig through records that they wouldn’t have time to on their own.

Although Voice of San Diego hasn’t completely taken advantage of crowdsourcing, they’ve tried some smaller projects and are hoping to eventually take on bigger jobs.

CEO Scott Lewis said in a recent phone interview with me that he would like to see the website start asking readers to report the news, but they know they’re going to have to be specific with the request.

The website has asked readers to help with reporting before, but not on a project as big as the aforementioned projects done by other websites.

“The last crowd sourcing specific thing we did is we asked readers to help identify a type of plant that’s growing at the border to help with erosion,” said Lewis, and the project was successful. The readers were able to help VOSD correctly identify the plant.

The website is also planning on asking readers to help with a Politifact like project called the San Diego Fact Check. Right now, readers can suggest things for VOSD to fact check, but Lewis says he hopes to start a blog called “Help Check,” a place where readers will be able to go to find out what needs fact checking and then do the fact checking.

This is a really great idea and, once it is operating, will be a great addition to the website. If VOSD can find enough readers to participate in the fact checking, this should turn out to be a very cool project.

My only concern is that fact checking can take a lot of time and be very frustrating and time consuming as any intern will testify to. Clearly projects like this have the potential to work, but I think for it to be successful, you need to have a very strong, active, and involved following that is still being developed at VOSD.

The other thing that VOSD will need to overcome before they can do a project like this is to up their tech skills. Lewis mentioned that they don’t have a lot of super tech savvy people working at the site right now and that’s a definite must for a crowd sourcing project. The website where readers go to find out what projects the site is asking for help on needs to be user friendly and fun to use.

A tip for VOSD, once you’re ready to start the project, keep in mind journalism students aren’t the only people willing to do free labor. I’ll bet you could find a couple Computer Science majors to pitch in and help you out and create an awesome crowd source page.

I was very fortunate to be able to talk to Adrian Florido, a reporter at the Voice of San Diego and author of Pounding the Pavement earlier today. We talked about his use of social network sites as a reporter and how he has struggled to leave behind old ways of thinking about journalism.

“It’s taken me a little bit longer to feel comfortable doing this sort of thing,” Florido said about his use of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook in the newsroom.

He said he’s only been a professional journalist for about a year and as a student he was taught to be wary of giving hints about what he’s working on before it’s ready to be published to avoid being scooped.

“It’s a little elitist. It says ‘we know what’s best for you to know’ and we’ll present it to you when we think we’re ready for you to know it,” says Florido of keeping stories under lock and key until publication.

Florido says that VOSD CEO Scott Lewis and Editor Andrew Donohue are trying to help the staff leave this thinking behind and start working with their community to find the news.

“They’re trying to engage our readers in a much more conversational form in terms of information dissemination,” said Florido.

Florido has slowly started to use Twitter and his blog to reach out to the community and potential sources, even about stories that he has not yet published.

He recently decided to start working on a new story about the Burmese refugee community in San Diego. As part of the process, he turned to his readers for assistance. The Burmese refugee community in San Diego is relatively new and not much has been written on it. He asked his readers if they had any suggestions for who he should talk to and what questions he should ask. Some of his readers got back to him with great ideas for who he should talk to that he may not have found without their help.

Florido frequently finds stories by walking around different neighborhoods. His editors are encouraging him to take people along with him as he’s reporting, so to speak, by giving Twitter updates or uploading pictures of what he sees as he’s walking around. That sounds like a good idea, but it doesn’t look like he’s really started doing that yet. Of his own admission, Florido mostly uses Twitter to pose questions also asked on VOSD, or to tweet links to stories he’s posted on VOSD.

I’m very grateful at how open Florido was with the struggles that he’s having with figuring out Twitter. As a mostly feature writer who doesn’t cover what Twitter seems to be best used for, it isn’t clear how Florido can best take advantage of Twitter. Many reporters use Twitter to give updates while at meetings to let people know what the progress of the meeting is.

Florido doesn’t cover meetings and he doesn’t want to be one of those people who gives so many Twitter updates about things that no one is interested in that people start unfollowing him. As a feature writer, how does Florido best use Twitter?

Personally, I like the idea of him tweeting as he’s out reporting and letting his readers have more insight into how he spends his time.

The Voice of San Diego has a Facebook page but they have a mere 2,281 fans, a number that a fair number of individuals on Facebook probably have beat.

The main problem is that voiceofsandiego.org doesn’t seem to have a strong enough following to make a Facebook page worthwhile. In my opinion, the Voice of San Diego needs to find ways to build an active community of followers who are willing to comment and interact on their website before they begin worrying about a supplementary online presence.

The articles posted to the website do not often get many responses, one of the most useful aspects of online journalism. Websites that garner many comments on their stories have the opportunity to not just provide the information to start community discussions, but be where people go to hold the discussion.

As of tonight, the most commented on article on the website, Border Patrol: ‘We’re Not Walking Away,’ had only 7 comments made by 5 people. That’s not very impressive for a website that’s been operating since 2005.

Even if a Facebook page would draw more readers to the website, what’s the point if the website lacks community?

That’s not to say that they shouldn’t have a Facebook page, of course they should. Maybe they’ll get lucky and the readers that they attract from Facebook will all want to comment on articles and build up the community. Or maybe the writers on the website need to find ways to more actively promote an idea of community on the site.

As far as the Facebook page itself, beyond not having many followers, they aren’t doing that bad of a job. There are a couple past events and they have a photo of the day, which seem to be the most popular part of the Facebook page. There are comments and likes on many of the pictures, still in small numbers, and one of the photos even has an almost conversation. A fan posted a comment that a moderator replied to and asked a follow-up question, but unfortunately the fan never responded.

I personally think that The Voice of San Diego should find out why they are lacking an active community on their website before they start working on building a community on Facebook. Why draw readers to the website they may end up becoming disinterested? Doesn’t it make more sense to build a strong community on their website, and then draw readers in from elsewhere?

Either way, The Voice of San Diego will not be truly successful until they find a way to create a strong presence online and become a part of the conversation.