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.




Wilson searched YouTube and found a video Doucet posted on the eve of his demise.

In other cases she showed us how to use Facebook's search function to search people and postings that could be relevant to a story. Often a hometown, a college, a workplace, or an age will match with what we know about someone in the news, leading us to personal details. She also showed us a trick: Searching for a recently deceased person's name -- say someone who passed in a car accident or as a result of a shooting -- and adding "RIP" to the search terms. Sometimes a special page in their honor will come up.

Twitter can be searched similarly.

Wilson also talked about her controversial coverage of CBS reporter Lara Logan's rape in Egypt, which she rightly called early on, and the pressures of pushing the boundaries of online journalism.

Her original post broke traffic and comment records at LA Weekly and company-wide.

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We discussed our Week 4 homework -- covering Occupy L.A. and coming up with a unique perspective by using a number of different linked sources. Most of the students did a great job and really dug into this story, with some even coming up with original video, photos and interviews.

The idea behind the assignment was to realize that basing a story based on someone else's work is just "aggregating." But looking at (and linking to) multiple sources can lead to a whole new perspective, even a "conceptual scoop."

We talked a little about using Google Analytics to research traffic drivers on your site, see what key word searchers are leading to your online work, and looking at top referring sites.

Of particular use was a look at the keyword searches, which show why using key word-intensive headlines with proper names, places and particulars are so important.

Finally, we looked at some examples of how you can turn an aggregated story into your own by making a phone call and doing some reporting. A story someone else broke can then become a story that you took to a new level with new information.

Here's one example where a story everyone had was given a unique twist at LA Weekly because I interviewed one of the attorney's suing the L.A. Sheriff's Department over its alleged harassment of photographers.

Finally, our Week 5 assignment was to report and write a crime story using at least one original reporting technique (e.g. interviewing someone, or contacting them via email) to add to what was already out there (either another report or a press release).