My News: Joining a Great Team at CNN.com

I am excited to be joining CNN.com. Meredith Artley, the managing editor of CNN.com, just sent this note to the staff:

Everyone, please join me in welcoming Carl Lavin to the team as our Lead Homepage Editor. He will guide the talented group that sculpts one of the most powerful pages on the web.

Check out Carl’s background – he was most recently the national managing editor for Main Street Connect, a network of local sites, where he was point for quality, innovation and editorial guidelines for more than 50 news sites in three states. But wait – there’s more – he was the managing editor of Forbes.com where he drove mad traffic, shaped their social media strategy, and led a team that wrote headlines and stories with voice out the wazoo. Before that he was the deputy managing editor for news at the Philly Inquirer. And he spent some time at The New York Times in a variety of leadership posts, including Washington news editor during the Clinton impeachment and 9/11, graphics editor and deputy metro editor.

He has a reputation for being an inspiring leader who people love to work for and with, an audience-focused editor and an excellent communicator with sterling and swift news judgment.

Carl and his wife, Lauren, are in the process of moving from his home in Montclair, NJ to Atlanta. He starts at the end of the month.

Many thanks to Meredith and everyone else at CNN who helped make this happen. There is already a post on cheesesteak to help a former Philly guy feel at home in Atlanta. Other tips? Add a comment here.

Social Media Lessons From Muscatine: Start With the Hashtag

A global leader’s visit adds a cymbal crash to the rhythm of local news set by vandalism, business openings and wrestling tournaments.

For the editor of The Muscatine Journal, Chris Steinbach, the cymbals come together on Wednesday. That’s when Xi Jinping, the Vice President of China and the man slated to be the country’s next leader, makes a return visit to Muscatine, Iowa. Xi’s first visit, as a junior official, was in 1985.

Steinbach posts regular to his blog, the Editor’s Notebook, where a recent item discussed a delegation of Chinese journalists who asked how The Muscatine Journal planned to cover Xi’s visit:

I told them we focus our coverage as intensely as possible on what happens in our community and often pay little, if any, attention to what happens elsewhere in the state, nation and world.

But in this instance, I said, the world is coming to Muscatine and we would work to cover it as extensively as possible. In fact, news about Mr. Xi’s visit will dominate our news columns from today through Thursday. And we will cover it live Wednesday at muscatinejournal.com and via Twitter and Facebook. You can follow, and join, our coverage via the social media by searching for the hashtag #xiiowa.

Fortunately, Steinbach’s staff had a Twitter training session last week. Stephanie DePasquale of the Quad-City Times, another Lee Enterprises newspaper, told Muscatine reporters that it is important to listen to local residents on Twitter. If a musician tweets about a new CD, “that’s something that we might want to do a feature on,” DePasquale told them in the part of the social media session  caught on video.

Training and planning can take care of only so much, of course. One task many large chains don’t seem to do well is to quickly share content that has national appeal. I’ll be watching to see if Lee tries to do that across the scores of media properties it operates. At the very local end, the Muscatine paper, like most newspapers, seems to lack an almanac entry on its own market. What is special about Muscatine? I didn’t quickly find a piece on the Journal’s site that would allow me to skip a visit to an online encyclopedia. (Even the about us page for the Journal went to an error message when I clicked.)

There are many more signs that the Journal staff, led by Steinbach, is doing a lot right. I count these four important steps: 1. starting with the hashtag (reporters seem to be using both #xiiowa and #iowaxi) and the full-scale social media plan, 2. making the newsroom’s local expertise available to visitors, 3. being open with readers about coverage plans through the editor’s blog, and 4. staying focused on what the visit means to Muscatine.

There’s another lesson, for all of us: when a sister-city delegation comes to visit, be gracious to everyone. You never know how important one of those visitors may be 27 years later.

Buy Nothing or Seek Bargains: Ready for Black Friday

Tips for editors, short url’s included to promote sharing.

The group that provided the idea for the Occupy Wall Street movement is also taking aim at shopping with an annual promotion for what it calls Buy Nothing Day:  | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters http://bit.ly/tTxB7w. This will be the 20th year that the Adbusters group has run its Buy Nothing campaign on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and an annual festival of sales kicking off the holiday shopping season.

Background on the editors of the Canadian magazine Adbusters: Kalle Lasn and Micah White, the Creators of Occupy Wall Street: The New Yorker http://nyr.kr/tycsF9

Another group of people is also protesting the extraordinary overnight shopping hours and the sales that in some cases will start at 10 PM on Thanksgiving Day. A petition started by one Target worker in Omaha, Neb., now has 130,000 names on it. Many retail workers and their families don’t want their holiday interrupted: Retail backlash over Thanksgiving night openings http://bit.ly/uhqeVt

Phoenix Jones, Open Newsroom, Scanning Photos: Tips for Editors

Prompt of the Day
Does your town need a superhero to fight crime? Make a reference to Phoenix Jones, the self-styled superhero arrested in a paper spray incident in Seattle. Jones's names is at the top of the Google hot search list early Tuesday morning. Here's the rest of the round up of editor tips (short url's includede to make sharing easier).

Open newsroom
Call it budget, sked or newslist – when newsrooms turn process into product and plan in the open, everyone wins: http://bit.ly/ptWxaK The Guardian has started publishing its news budget on the web, letting readers in on the process. From Dan Roberts, a Guardian editor – Have Your Say:

What if all those experts who delight in telling us what's wrong with our stories after they've been published could be enlisted into giving us more clues beforehand? What if the process of working out what to investigate actually becomes part of the news itself?
It might seem a minority pursuit, but the experience of covering breaking news already suggests otherwise. Like many websites, we are discovering some of our best-read stories are the live blogs that report events as they unfold, often with brutal honesty about what we don't know or hope to find out.

What do we learn? The Guardian business news desk is kicking of the earnings season with a report on Alcoa's earnings and a politician's plan to crackdown on internet porn will be subject to a "reality check." It turns out the hidden plans of a newsroom gain nothing by being kept private.

In praising this step, Matthew Ingram of GigaOm (Memo to Newspapers: Let Your Readers Inside the Wall) says the time for secrecy is over: "Either newspapers develop a more balanced relationship with the people formerly known as the audience, by allowing them to contribute to the process, or they will find their audience has gone elsewhere."

Value of Photos — From Your Archives, From the Police
In Conway, Ark., the Log Cabin Democrat has been scanning and publishing 5,000 photos a month. It organized them into what it calls the Conwaypedia. Another initiative from this Morris newspaper is Faulkner County Booked, which is attracting 300,000 pageviews a month.
These steps are part of the Morris drive to put digital first. A Morris exec, Derek May, posted this more detailed explanation of what the company is doing in an attempt to reverse a 40% drop in revenue and a 75% drop in profits over five years.
Digital first might have a familiar ring: Digital First, of course is the holding company for the JRC and MediaNews Group newspapers, from San Jose to New Haven.
It's also the rallying cry in papers from Seattle to Wichita:
In Seattle Times’ new digital-first newsroom, roles change to ‘creation, curation, community’ | Poynter. http://bit.ly/n0nzcE
Wichita Eagle: Testing a new organizational model for a digital-first newsroom | Knight Digital Media Center http://bit.ly/okhsUf
Making the most of every frame captured by staff photographers and your readers keeps readers engaged. When my hometown paper published a gallery showing the opening of a new fire station, our family was delighted to find this photo of my father: Photo Gallery: Canton's New Fire Station -  CantonRep.com http://bit.ly/nIKxE6  One tip: allow readers to add caption material.

Pumpkins, Unicef and Pet Costumes: Halloween Ideas
Who runs the pumpkin contest in your market? Size matters: 1,704-pound pumpkin earns CA farmer $10,224 in Pumpkin Weigh-off prize money: http://bit.ly/p7K0Ma

Unicef Halloween drive is a good peg for a prompt: Are you donating to Unicef this year?
UNICEF's Little Orange Box Goes Digital This Halloween http://on.mash.to/qlPEZc

Favorite pet costumes: MainStreet.com has a pet costume roundup: http://bit.ly/rqKgyO

Have you brainstormed your Halloween coverage plan? Have you been inspired by the Guardian to publish a list of stories your have in the works?

Rich List Rankings, DADT and Local Story Ideas

Follow the Money

Every September, Forbes publishes an update of The Forbes 400, the list of the richest people in America.
Every spring Forbes runs the richest people in the world and every fall, the publisher lists the richest people in the United States. Each list is an opportunity for local coverage.

A year ago, this MLive post was typical of the way local outlets used the material: Metro Detroit boasts 5 on Forbes 400 richest list: Ilitch, Taubman, Moroun, Penske, Ford | MLive.com.

Here is a similar post about the spring list, from a Florida TV station: Central Florida billionaires make Forbes’ richest list.

The Forbes site allows you to search by state. For example, here are the Connecticut people on the 2010 rich list.

Publishing at a time President Obama is pushing his Buffett rule for a minimum tax on millionaires, the Forbes list is also an opening for a local reporter to ask the wealthiest people in your area to weigh in on the tax debate.

Ask, Tell

Starting today, (Tuesday Sept. 20), the US military is open to openly gay service members. The topic can be mined for Facebook and Twitter prompts that will stir conversation in your area. What does it mean to a local recruiter? To students in your area considering enlisting? To veterans groups?

The AP has a strong piece about elite military training: Academies don't expect much change from DADT end http://bit.ly/oyZkN2 

Even the Pentagon is tweeting about this: Twitter / @DeptofDefense: #DADT is Repealed. http://bit.ly/no1rRi 

The Army is there, too: @USArmy Today marks the end of "Don't Ask Don't Tell." The law is repealed. http://ow.ly/6zmR1 #DADT #Military

A local reporter can use advanced Twitter search, the hashtag #DADT and local geographical information to find people in your area who are also Tweeting about the day.

ASNE Chat

 Copy editors in staggered shifts, starting at 6 AM? Dismantling the night rim was just one step Sherry Chisenhall took in Wichita. Read more and ask Sherry questions at #ASNEchat today at noon, Eastern time.
Wichita Eagle: Testing a new organizational model for a digital-first newsroom | Knight Digital Media Center http://bit.ly/okhsUf

Hat Tip

Many thanks to Yvette Walker and Steve Buttry, who continued the discussion about the use of Twitter for breaking news stories, based on my note about the Reno air crash and the @rgj Twitter feed.

Yvette: NewsTeach – Disaster plan 2.0 — does it include social media? http://bit.ly/qiCYUN

Steve: Carl Lavin studies Twitter use in covering Reno air crash « The Buttry Diary http://bit.ly/o7GO2R

 

Royal Wedding and Marriage Equality: What 3 Billion People Are Saying

Marty Rouse, HRC national field director, at the Equality Forum (Photo by Lauren Shay Lavin)

Many advocates of marriage rights for gay couples used the spotlight on the royal wedding to seek attention for their issue. Events in London and  Buffalo, in Australia and Iowa raised awareness and money for marriage equality.

The pomp and majesty of the Friday wedding at Westminster Abbey drew a global audience that many reports estimated at three billion people. From dress (elegant) to tiara (understated), from carriage (historic) to kiss (polite), each detail was dissected intently. The flood of voices and exclamations did much to drown out the few attempts to discern larger meanings in the event.

A day later, in Philadelphia, a panel on national politics at the Equality Forum included advice for those same marriage equality advocates. Use this attention to make the point that marriage does matter, Marty Rouse, national field director of the Human Rights Campaign, told 50 people gathered in a small auditorium at the University of the Arts.

It was a message meant for supporters and there may not have been many reporters in the crowd. Rouse's message, though, could start to resonate as more supporters spread the message and the debate over marriage equality sharpens in 2011 and 2012, with important legal and political events on the calendar.

Yes, Rouse, said, plenty of people will celebrate the passage of civil union legislation allowing same-sex couples dozens of the rights granted to married heterosexual couples. But civil unions are not marriages, he noted. "Millions and millions of people watched William and Kate get married yesterday," Rouse said. "Would they have done that for a civil union?"

 

 

Don’t Be an April Fool; Annual Spoof Warning

Last year, I posted this April Fool's warning:

There is no off season for spoofs. Remember the film team that exposed the low standards of a lot of the reporting about celebrities? 

If the stories seemed far-fetched, it was because they were part of a series of fabrications about celebrities ‑ made up and fed to tabloid newspapers by a documentary team that wanted to prove that journalists don't check facts.

That was from October.

As March draws to a close, it's worth repeating this warning, a warning I send around the newsroom every year at this time:

The silly season is upon us. Many publications will be running corrections on April 3 for items they fail to see as pranks on April 1. Don’t let that happen to you – or to your readers.

One editor reminded me about a 1998 prank announcement that fooled the FT:

Guinness brewery issued a press release announcing that it had reached an agreement with the Old Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England to be the official beer sponsor of the Observatory's millennium celebration. 

According to this agreement, Greenwich Mean Time would be renamed Guinness Mean Time until the end of 1999. In addition, the famous observatory would refer to seconds as "pint drips." 

The Financial Times, not realizing that the release was a joke, broke the news in an article in which it discussed how some companies were exploiting the millennium excitement in order to promote their own brand names.

There are sure to be more examples this year. Have you seen any? Comment below.

Update: The UK started the day early, and in style. Some top 2010 spoofs, from a friend's list:

*Ferrets to deliver broadband to rural areas, Telegraph

*AA to use rocketman to rescue stranded motorists, Daily Mail

*Google launches translate for animals, Google

Funny to read. Not so funny when they are re-told as real news.

That was last year. Every year brings a new type of spoof, and 2011 is no different. That hot, newsy Twitter feed? Think twice, or three times.

A selective guide to fake Twitter feeds:

BP, Rahm Emanuel, Bronx Zoo cobra, Darth Vader.

 

 

No Controller, But Not ‘Out of Control’ — Flight Safety Basics for Newsrooms

Non aviators may be confused by some of the news about the Reagan National traffic controller who has been suspended from his job after no one could reach him as planes were landing at the airport.

Reports of planes "forced to land" or "landing without clearance" point to a control problem, but not a cockpit problem or a passenger safety problem.

The Daily Beast labels the article "scary" and summarizes that pilots were "forced to land their passenger airliners without direction." Similar language appeared in other reports.

Pilots are in charge of a flight, not controllers. A few hundred airports have control towers. Thousands do not. All pilots train constantly on standard approach and landing procedures and do not depend on controllers to conduct safe operations.

Three keys: 1. Shared communication channel. Each airport has a designated radio frequency for all cockpit-to-tower and cockpit-to-cockpit communication. All pilots approaching National or departing National will be communicating on the same frequency. 2. Automated weather and airport condition reports. All pilots know to obtain weather and airport conditions from a separate standard radio broadcast for each airport. It includes wind speed and direction and which runway or runways are being used for landings and departures. 3. Collision-avoidance radar. All airliners have cockpit radar equipment that displays the location of other aircraft and sounds alarms if planes are approaching each other.

In addition, all airports have standard approach and departure lanes in the sky, clearly marked on navigation charts, that pilots know to follow.

Does a pilot need clearance to land safely? No. Controllers do provide essential traffic guidance and are a vital part of a safe transportation system. Flights to and from airports without air-traffic controllers are not, however, out of control.

If you are worried about flying to Reagan National, this might come in handy. Click to read the AOPA refresher guide to landing at non-towered airports.

Engage Readers, Distract Drivers

Any editor wants to create compelling content. On the highway between Newark, N.J., and Manhattan recently, we had a good indication that our friends at the Financial Times have reached a new level of reader engagement. While I drove, my wife, Lauren Shay, shot some photos. This driver mostly kept his minivan in his lane as he used two hands to hold the weekend section of the FT.

Newspapers are not the only distractions for drivers. Below, on the same trip, are Lauren's photos of other drivers who used the time to talk, eat anad text. Please note that texting takes two hands, too.

(Photos by Lauren Shay Lavin)

This year, Matt Richtel of The New York TImes won a Pulitzer Prize for his carefully reported series Driven to Distraction. Texting while driving had been an issue from Texas to Michigan and from coast to coast. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told Bloomberg he wanted to reduce temptations that would distract drivers:

“I don’t want people talking on phones, having them up to their ear or texting while they’re driving,” LaHood said in an interview this week. “We need a lot better research on other distractions,” including Bluetooth-enabled hands-free calls and the in-car systems, he said.

What will LaHood do when he finds out drivers are reading newspapers, too? Right, he'll tell them to get Google cars, that drive themselves. 

 

Don Lemon: Not Left or Right, but a Human Point of View

TV ratings trends and even a job switch or two have fueled the argument that audiences are more attracted to news delivered with a point of view. News from the left has helped Rachel Maddow and MSNBC. News from the right has helped Fox News. That's the argument.

Don Lemon on CNN showed another dimension on Saturday evening. Lemon hews closely to the CNN down-the-middle, politically nonpartial approach to the news. Politics, though, do not drive every news consumer. In the middle of a live report on allegations that an Atlanta pastor sexually abused young men in his congregation, Lemon admitted that as a youth he was a victim of a pedophile.

I have never admitted this on television. I’m a victim of a pedophile when I was a kid. Someone who was much older than me.

TVNewser was quick on the beat, reporting CNN Anchor Don Lemon's On-Ar Revelation:

Lemon’s admission led to an audible gasp from one of his guests. “I’ve never admitted that on television and I never told my mom until I was 30 years old,” Lemon said later in the segment. “Especially African-American men don’t want to talk about those things.”

The supportive reaction on Twitter and Facebook showed that Lemon had touched his audience:

You are an exceptionally brave man.God Bless You,Sir.

–and:

I am proud of you for talking about your abuse. I respect you as a reporter and a man.

–and:

 @donlemoncnn You have no idea how many people you helped to get free tonight.

These are just a quick sampling. At the end of his program, Lemon thanked his audience for the tweets. Others will have to judge how much it means for a reporter to share his all-too-human story and how many ways there may be to escape what Jay Rosen has derided as the view from nowhere.