Create Digital Listening Posts Using RSS Feeds - It’s Easier Than It Sounds

Go to soccer games, Jan Leach recently urged a room full of students at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. You never know the stories you’ll overhear folks talking about.

Leach, former editor of the Akron Beacon Journal, spoke to the power of “having a life outside the newsroom” - being present in the community, and having one’s reporter ear constantly tuned for stories.

In a digital age, let’s expand upon that theory - let’s create Digital Listening Posts.

3 Steps To Creating Digital Listening Posts

1. Sign up for Netvibes.com.
2. Spend some time adding links to local sites and bloggers.
3. Check your account periodically to scan for story ideas.

Here’s more detail.

1. Netvibes.com is an RSS aggregator [wiki definition]. Think of it like TiVo for news - you add a feed, and the webpage automatically fetches updates for you. If you’ve visited Google News before, you’ve seen RSS feeds in action - that site is populated by feeds. [Oprah-style intro to RSS feeds]

Your “start page” on Netvibes will offer you some beginning options - little boxes (widgets) that allow you to search for content relevant to your beat.

For purposes of demonstration, I set up a “Columbia Heights, DC” page, which pulls information about my neighborhood. (It’s easier for me to evaluate newsworthiness in my own ‘hood than in a randomly selected city.)

2. Adding links to quality local bloggers will probably take an afternoon’s worth of your time. Treat local blogs much as you would a community newspaper - a place for story ideas, trend spotting, or source-finding. Use technorati.com, a blog search engine, to search for local blogs. Metropolitan-themed blogs tend to link to each other; look for a blogroll to find similar themed blogs.

3. Check your Netvibes page regularly to find story ideas.

What Story Ideas Did I Find?

Image Search

• Interior photos of an extremely nice renovated house in a rough neighborhood; potential sources for articles on gentrification, or an architectural feature.
• A DC Bilingual Public Charter School; which could be the beginning of a profile, or a piece on funding issues.

Adding Blogs, I found …

• DCCabbie.Blogspot.com is a veritable treasure trove of story ideas. This outspoken (and often profane) blogger writes about an underground bar called the BUNKER he’s been going to since “this Russian chick started the joint over ten years ago,” and Ethopian cab drivers who save up to buy mansions at home. Lots of story potential here.
• Mr. T in DC’s Live Journal reports a man in his neighborhood who walks around with a grocery cart, stealing Sunday papers. Does he resell them? Where, and why? That’s a feature I’d like to read. [Mr. T is also exceptionally active in the online Columbia Heights community, posting frequently to the community forum and moderating the neighborhood Flickr group; he would be a good source to cultivate.]
• A WMATA Riders’ Advisory Council Member (DC Metro/public transportation planning organization), keeps a blog of transit developments - a useful source for transit beat reporters.
• For more ideas on using YouTube to find local stories, see Cathy Resmer’s post Finding and Using Local Content on YouTube.

YouTube searches revealed …

• An ‘94 “Illuminati Pedophiles in Washington D.C.” video - good perhaps for a feature on the subject, or a larger piece on the second life YouTube can bring to archival documentaries.

That’s a quick look at the current info in my Netvibes. Like all story tips, it’ll take some old-fashioned shoe leather journalism to see if any pan out.

Easy, Embeddable Google Maps for Your Site

Tagzania.com offers an easy way to add contextual map experience to your site.

Tagzania: Items by LauraFries

Tagzania allows you to:

• Create a point by searching for an address or clicking on the map.
• Add a description; including links to pictures hosted elsewhere, and links to stories
• Add keywords to your ‘point’ to help other users find your content

From there, it’s just a matter of clicking “Paste this map on your site” in order to generate some code that can be used throughout your site (depending, of course, on your individual templates).

In news stories where place is important, Tagzania can help illustrate the story for a reader. For example:

Point A: Factory leaking fumes
Point B: Schoolhouse where children became sick
Point C: Bakery where bread became contaminated

I created a quick map using AAN’s offices and two hostels I worked at to illustrate some possibilities.

How do you think Tagzania could work for your publication? Or do you have a better mapping tool we should know about?

Or, a Lil Dab’ll DB-Do ya.

WHAT: Online Spreadsheets, made better. DabbleDB.com features a faaaast video demonstration of Dabble’s functionality.

WHO WILL LOVE IT: Anyone who uses spreadsheets to track assignments, special sections, clients or finances will be impressed with DabbleDB’s versatility - especially reporters who crunch data and reps who crunch numbers.

WHY: Excel spreadsheets are clunky and often crash on Macs. Google Spreadsheets are somewhat better, but DabbleDB offers more flexibility.

HOW IT ROCKS: To import your old spreadsheets, you can *cut and paste* your old spreadsheets. You can also cut and paste info you find online, such as public records search results.

Dabble allows you to select which fields you want to see at any given time … which means you can have a giant spreadsheet, but you can easily just compare and sort by two columns — without having to cut and paste your info into a new spreadsheet.

Below is a screenshot of my Dabble account, as I sort by AAN member papers with a MySpace presence.

You can also re-arrange your columns easily and on a whim. Filters allow you to display only the info you need (like “unpaid accounts”).

I asked AAN Awards Contest Administrator Heather Kuldell, who works with massive spreadsheets, for her take on Dabble:

The handiest part of Dabble DB is combining the view feature with the export features. For the AltWeekly Awards, I have large spreadsheets of information on judges — first name, last name, email, mailing addresses, what categories they judge, reading assignments, etc. But I only need to see a few columns for various steps of the awards. One view I have is simply a view that shows a first name, last name, and mailing address that I can export as a .csv file, which I can flow into Word to create mailing labels.

HOW TO USE IT: DabbleDB has a lot of great “help” info with screenshots embedded into the site, so the best way to figure out DabbleDB is to set up a trial account.

COST: Free, if you are OK with your info being public [Free account info]. Free, if you remember to delete your account within the 30 day trial period. Or, for a private account $10/month. [See Dabble DB pricing plans]

NERD NOTE: To create a free account, set up a 30 day trial account. Follow instructions to ‘upgrade your account’ - but choose the Free option, not a paid one.

You may have heard the buzz around it, but been confused: What exactly is Twitter? Why is it useful, and why should I pay attention? And how can I use it to connect audiences at events - or to drive traffic to my site?

What’s Twitter?

Twitter is a deceptively simple technology. Sign up for an account. Invite your friends to do the same. Then, you can send each other short little messages - like the ones below - using your phone or the web. Your messages go out to everyone in your network.

You can receive your Twitter messages however you like - via IM, web, or SMS (text message). It wouldn’t be a stretch to call Twitter-ing microblogging.

Flickr’d by rorris | Flickr’d by cackhanded | Flickr’d by Patrick Haney

Why is Twitter useful?

Twitter works really well in two ways:
1. Connecting wired friends in a compact urban environment. At South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) 2007, networks of people used Twitter to find out about great conferences and parties, and to meetup with each other.

2. Connecting like-minded friends over topical interests. Now that SXSWi is over, my network sends out links to things I’m interested in, like new web developments.

Sounds cool. How can alts use Twitter?

Use Twitter at sponsored events to help people interact A screen displaying the latest “twits” from attendees is a huge crowd pleaser.

Use Twitter to drive traffic to your site FoxNews has taken the lead here, using their Twitter account to send out the latest news to their “friends.”

NERD NOTE: Fox News uses TinyUrl.com, a program that shortens lengthy URLs, in order to stay within the 140 word character Twitter maximum.

So what do you think?

Is Twitter overrated? Do you see other ways alts could use this technology to connect with our audiences?

There’s a Junior Boys concert on my website. It’s full length with awesome video quality, and it’s free. And it could be on your website, courtesty of Dutch website FabChannel.com.

Unlike music footage on YouTube - currently under attack by Viacom for copyright infringement - these concerts are cleared to use legally on your site.

CEO Justin Kniest said via email:

“We have cleared the rights of all our concerts with the labels and artists so you can post them on the sites of your papers. In fact the artists would love that because these days they can use all the publicity they can get.”

Neat, huh? Get to copying and pasting!

NERD TIP: For technical advice on embedding FabChannel content in Wordpress and MySpace, read this FAQ.