UCLA Extension New Media Reporting: Week 7 Summary

During our Week 7 session we were treated to a visit by LA Weekly web editor Keith Plocek, who is responsible for driving traffic to the Weekly's site by, among other means, getting the word out about unique and intriguing editorial content via Facebook and Twitter.

Using social networking -- Facebook, Twitter and even YouTube -- is an increasingly large part of an editorial operation's work online. You report it, produce it, and write it. Now you have to get people to read it in a crowded marketplace. (There are instances -- and the Weekly can be good at this -- in which an aggregated story can get more readers than the original as a result of snappy writing and deft use of social media).

UCLA Extension New Media Reporting: Week 6 Summary

During Week 6 we talked about your crime stories. Most of you did excellent jobs at finding crime stories in your communities to cover and blog about, with original reporting.

The idea here was to realize how a phone call, a visit to a crime scene, even an email to a cop can open a new window to the world and create a new dimension for your work. Aggregating can only get you so far. The next step is old-school reporting. Use both and you could really beat the competition.

Some of you even threw in original video and photos.

UCLA Extension New Media Reporting: Week 5 Summary

During Week 5 I had my LA Weekly news colleague Simone Wilson stop by. She's a master at using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to "background" subjects. Wilson can turn an otherwise ordinary story into the extraordinary -- and drive traffic -- by unearthing tidbits about people in the news.

One of her main examples was her coverage of Reggie Doucet Jr., a young man shot by cops in Playa Del Rey after a night of partying at Drai's in Hollywood, a fact she found out through social-network mining. She also found out he's a promising college football player and a sometime model.

UCLA Extension New Media Reporting: Week 6 Homework

The assignment from last night was to create your own video and post it to your blog.

Basically I'm looking for a soundbite, 30 seconds max, of original content to supplement a news item. You can introduce it with text, but you don't have to write too much, as it's more about the exercise of recording and posting a video.

In class I did a demonstration where I interviewed Frank while taking notes and asked him to repeat an interesting point while I recorded him with my iPhone briefly.

I sent that video directly to my YouTube account via an iPhone feature, then grabbed the embed code and put it in a post.

Check it out here: http://digijournalismucla.blogspot.com/2011/11/frank-alli-using-video-clips-in-blog.html.

Frank Alli: Using Video Clips in a Blog Post

We spoke to veteran TV news journalist Frank Alli about how to incorporate video in an online news story.

He gave us a few pointers: