1. Journalism Next: Chapter 11: Building a Digital Audience for News Cindy Royal, Ph.D Assistant Professor Texas State University School of Journalism and Mass Communication croyal@txstate.edu www.cindyroyal.com www.onthatnote.com tech.cindyroyal.net twitter.com/cindyroyal facebook.com/cindyroyal

2. Building a Digital Audience If journalists write great stories, but no one reads them, how will journalism survive? Good writing is still the foundation. But it's not enough. Make smart business decisions based on data Tracking content Web analytics Search engine optimization Effective headline writing Distribution through social media

3. Measuring Journalism What gets measured gets managed Essential to competing in data-driven world Track. Measure. Adapt. Decide what to track (stories, blog posts, slide shows, videos, podcasts, news updates, Twitter, Facebook, retweets, replies, user-generated content) Set benchmarks OKR – Objectives and Key Results Make judgments based on historical data/future goals Track your audience – use analytics

4. Identify Key Data Points Pageviews Visits and unique visitors Engagement and referrers

5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) How search engines work Spiders/robots Indexing Queries Google juice – Google gives more importance to a website that links to it Keywords Search-engine friendly headlines/content

6. Grow Audience with SEO Content is king Linking is queen Make sure links make sense Use title tags HTML Meta tags Effective headlines Keywords, keyword, keywords

7. Use Social Media as Distribution Channel Blogs Flickr, YouTube Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest Reddit, Fark, Stumbleupon Increase social capital – becoming the trusted center for a community 2-way conversation Puts human face on journalism Track, measure, distribute, adapt

8. Other articles Analyzing Data is the Future for Journalists – Tim Berners-Lee Future lies with journalists who know their CSV from their RDF, can throw together some quick MySQL queries for a PHP or Python output … and discover the story lurking in datasets released by governments, local authorities, agencies, or any combination of them – even across national borders. Analyzing data Innovation happening outside news orgs – Wikileaks Data-driven journalism is the future

9. Other articles News As User Experience, Royal News in a participatory culture Expectation of participation Q&A with Pilhofer, NYT and Herman, Storify Engaging Users Building Community Fostering News Innovation Academic Programs Reference to Long Tail - niches

10. Entrepreneurial Journalism By Mark Briggs, same as our textbook author DavidsonNews.net “Journalism is an entrepreneurial venture. We’re not the future, we’re the present of local journalism.” Don’t wait for an epiphany Elements of innovation Creativity Risk Hard work Optimism The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity

11. Entrepreneurial Journalism How do you teach innovation? Starting a business Market Research Competitive Analysis Product, revenue, distribution plans Good reporting leads to better business. Why do people need this? Difficult for large organizations to innovate Innovation strategy Make it a priority Make failure acceptable Set goals Be agile Infrastructure – communication, tools, accountability

12. Entrepreneurial Journalism See innovation as a product Stop planning and start doing Practice innovation – innovation events and contests Be an intrapreneur – make innovation happen inside a large organization Kill the cash cows Reboot your brain Stay under the radar Be prepared to be considered a troublemaker Innovation does happen at big news companies Bring startup culture to newsroom (or any job) Demos, not memos – make something! Orgs looking for innovative spirit more than experience