A news story that will make national or international headlines is breaking. Quick...what do you do? If you don't have already have a game plan for how to report a crisis online, now's the time to start making preemptive plans. Most newsrooms already have reporters to turn to for print stories and broadcast news coverage, but here are few multimedia components to consider so the internet audience is informed as well.

Maps

The first multimedia component that should be added to a breaking news story is a map that shows exactly where the incident occurred. This can be as simple as a computer-generated map created with Illustrator or mapping software, like the one included in this BBC News story to illustrate where Burma and its 2007 protests took place. Or it could be an uncomplicated Google Map like the one adjacent to a Record story on a bear attack.



Interactive Google map mashups can be created fairly quickly with a number of online programs, the easiest of which is likely FM Atlas. Addresses and locations can be plotted on a map and made ready to embed within minutes. Just be sure to verify the location before posting it online to avoid the Georgia/Georgia screwups that happened last year.


Flash animation/timeline

If a major catastrophe occurs, people want to know how it happened. A very basic interactive graphic or even a flat infographic should be built to better internet readers understanding of the crisis. Examples include washingtonpost.com's interactive explanation of the 2007 Minneapolis bridge collapse and the Press & Sun Bulletin's illustration of last week's Binghamton shooting. Flash graphics can be overwrought and complicated if you allow them to be, but sometimes it just takes a simple illustration to communicate a story. The interactive can be embellished later when time is less of a factor.



Audio slideshow

As disasters occur, telling photos come streaming in from staff photographers or from wire services. Creating an audio slideshow that combines these photos with raw or edited audio collected by field reporters is a fast way to showcase both the story and the emotion behind it. Also, interactive slideshows are often the most popular stories on any news site.

A simple slideshow, with or without audio, can be created using a pre-existing template or with slideshow maker Soundslides. Examples include Reuters' slideshow of reporter David Gray's response to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and its recent encapsulation of the Italian earthquake.



Resources

Once readers are informed of how a disaster happened, it's up the news outlet to provide resources to victims and their families. Post-Hurricane Katrina, MSNBC put together message boards and useful links, as well as comprehensive list of ways readers could donate to relief efforts. In the midst of the fires that raged through California, the Los Angeles Times created a Google map of evacuation centers that showed exactly where victims could go for help.



Landing page

Most importantly, all the print stories, multimedia, interactive graphics and blog posts should be aggregated on one page to serve as a single destination for those looking for information related to the crisis. Not only does a landing page make content easily accessible but it makes the hunt for the latest news less of a struggle when time may be a factor.


Also on 10,000 Words

• 5 Ways to create a Google Map in minutes
• How to save time when using Flash
• How the internet is changing how natural disasters are covered
• Landmark moments in citizen journalism
• 7 Eye-popping interactive timelines (and 3 ways to create one)
• How to quickly track natural disasters online

Labels: audio, flash, maps, photos, site management

Site analytics and subscriber counters can give a good idea of how many people are reading your content, but every good blogger knows that readers are more than just numbers.

In order to get a better picture of the diverse people and personalities that read 10,000 Words, I turned to Twitter where the hundreds of people who follow @10000Words provide bios that give more insight into each person's unique personality. After some thorough analysis, I now know more about everyone and can tailor the blog to cater to each persons interest.

Before we get into who is following 10,000 Words on Twitter, I first wanted to analyze what I've been tweeting. And here it is, presented in a word cloud:



Every tweet ever posted by @10000Words was copied at one time using the Greasemonkey script Endless Tweets, which automatically loads older tweets when scrolling on the Twitter timeline (Find out more about the Greasemonkey extension here). The word cloud was created using Wordle; click the image to view a larger version.

Because I also tweet a lot of links, I wanted to visualize the type of content I have been linking to:



The text from this word cloud comes from the link names and descriptions listed by Twitturly, an online service that tracks Twitter users' outgoing links. The site can also be used for tracking what everyone is talking about on Twitter in real time.

Now on to analyzing Twitter followers. I was especially curious about where everyone was from, especially because of those pesky time zone problems. According to this map, many are from the US, but many more are from Canada and Europe. The map was created using Yahoo Pipes and was amended from this existing Pipe. The original version required a Twitter username and password, but it was changed to pull from a single self-created XML file. Also, because the Twitter-generated XML file only lists about 100 followers per page, it was necessary to view each page and merge the XML files using simple copy and paste.

By extracting from the combined XML file the "description" tag that Twitter appends to each user, I was also able to gather the text of each person's bio. That text was run through Wordle and here are the results:




If XML isn't your cup of tea, TwitterSheep produces a similar word cloud of your followers' bios (Twitter username and password required). Greasemonkey fans can use Twitter Friends' Bio at a Glance to display each follower or friend's bio and link when viewing them as a list. Also, check out the Twitter Mosaic creator for viewing your followers' avatars all in one place.



A big thank you to everyone following 10,000 Words on Twitter! If you aren't doing so already, check out @10000Words for useful tips and links you won't see on the blog. Also, be sure to subscribe to the 10,000 Words RSS feed so you never miss a post.


Also on 10,000 Words:
• 10 Journalists you should follow on Twitter
• 25 Tools for getting more out of Twitter
• How to design for a computer other than your own
• 10,000 Words Year-end wrap-up and word cloud

Labels: site management

It may be wrong to beat a man (or a newspaper) when he's down, but some of the unconscionable and downright annoying features and practices of news sites warrant a little attention. Here are some of the worst offenders:


1. 50 million-word stories

The reason why so many people use the internet to get their news is because they can do so fairly quickly. So that Pulitzer Prize candidate that takes two years to scroll through and resembles an endless sea of text? Either break it up or kick it down a notch.


2. Multi-page "slideshows"

On the flip side, there are the popular online "slideshows" — one news story spread over several pages, usually with a single image and a paragraph of text on each page. While the practice may be good for page views, no one wants to click through 27 different pages to read a single story.


3. Expanding/ "Rich media" ads

You're going about your business, reading a news article when suddenly that innocuous ad in the corner expands across the page and some cute animation demands your attention. You panic and search for the "close" button, but because it's tucked away in the last spot you'll ever look, you can't finish reading the news article and leave the site in disgust. Sound familiar?


4. No links whatsoever

Often a news story will refer to some cool, hip, happening site, but because there is no link to said site, readers are left to Google it themselves. Sometimes, this is the fault of the reporter for not including the link or at minimum a note to do so. Yet many news sites just don't have a practice of linking out or even worse, don't include links in fear that their readers may be taken away from their site.


5. Registration

Thankfully many news organizations have seen the error of their ways and stopped requiring visitors to register just to view a single story. There are a few holdouts who insist on the practice and who fail to realize that many visitors would rather not read the story at all than to endure a five-minute registration process for a site they may never return to anyway.


6. Poor design

The average front page of a major news site looks like the HTML fairies threw up on it: endless columns of text and links with no real differentiation between the content. If you're going to do the column thing, check out Alltop to see how it's supposed to be done.


7. Full-screen ads

Upon visiting a news site, readers are greeted with a full-screen ad for something or the other instead of the story they were expecting to read. Again, done to generate advertising revenue, but it doesn't make the practice any less annoying.


8. The never-ending hunt

As seen on TV? Not really. Many television newscasters at the end of a report will say something along the lines of "For more information, check out our website" and give the station's web address. However, when the viewer actually visits the site, the link to the story is nowhere to be found and doesn't show up in the site's search.


9. Pop-up ads

Are we really still doing these? Really?


10. Comment trolls and flamers

These guys are the bane of many sites' existence (and not just news ones). Because of the sometimes controversial nature of whats being reported, people use news sites as a forum for their bitter, inflammatory, racist or insulting remarks. Frustrated site managers try to dissuade or delete said comments, but are mostly crying on the inside and clinging to the notion that everyone has the right to free speech.


Also on 10,000 Words:
• 25 Things I've Learned About Journalism
• Eyetrack studies: What we've learned and how to conduct your own
• The difference between print and online design

Labels: design, news on the news, site management

As webmasters and site designers, it's easy to fall into the trap of being so familiar with a site's interface that we disregard the notion that navigating does not come as easy for visitors. Often web users have different viewing habits than we do and eyetrack studies have worked hard to determine what they are:


1. Users will skip anything that looks like an ad

Banner blindness is real, according to this 2007 study. Web visitors don't read websites as much as they scan them, which means ignoring ads in both the header and rail of a web page, as evidenced in the heat map on the right.


2. Readers like "F"s

In a further explanation of the above study, it is revealed that web users read in a pattern that looks like a capital letter F. "At the top, users read all the way across, but as they proceed their descent quickens and horizontal sight contracts, with a slowdown around the middle of the page," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. "Near the bottom, eyes move almost vertically, the lower-right corner of the page largely ignored."


3. The higher your search engine rank, the more visitors you will attract

This one's a bit of a no-brainer for anyone who has been working with the web for a while, but the results of a combined study confirms it. It is also important to note that whereas years ago users may have clicked through a few pages of search results, many will not look past the top few results.



4. Young people want info and they want it now

In this comparison of the Contra Costa Times' and San Jose Mercury News' websites, the interviewees revealed that they prefer clearer, less jumbled layouts and, again, that the most important information be at the top. Most interestingly, the test subjects also rejected time-tested methods of encouraging interactivity such as polls or links to multimedia stories.


There are several online tools like CrazyEgg and clickdensity (which offers a free trial) that will test the usability of your site. In return, you will find out how users view your site and can amend it appropriately to increase user interaction. Financially challenged site masters can also use Google Analytics' free site overlay feature (pictured below). Click here for a comparison of the features offered by CrazyEgg and Google.

Labels: site management

A quick check of recent Technorati backlinks (and more specifically the great blog Old Dog, New Media) revealed that many people were referring to the blog as "10,000words.net," rather than its actual title of "10,000 Words." It quickly became apparent that the problem was that the old logo incorporated ".NET" into the name.

This was initially done for branding purposes and to differentiate between this site and 10000words.com. But thanks to readers like you who have spread the word about this nifty little blog, the time has come for 10,000 Words to grow up and lose the ".net."

Congrats to Alex Gamela (check out his blog here) for winning the twontest and a $10 Amazon gift certificate by spotting the recent change. Join in on the fun by following 10,000 Words on Twitter.


Previously: How did you choose your blog's name?

Labels: site management

Let's face it. No one — save for shut-ins and the Pulitzer Prize committee — wants to read a story that spreads over several pages of a newspaper. Pictures and graphics are not gonna help and putting on the net only exacerbates the problem. So what is a long-winded journalist to do? Here are some ways to make the long story more palatable:

Break it up

Newspapers ought to take a cue from DailyLit, a forward-thinking site that makes classic literature like Dickens and Dumas, as well as newly released books, available for online reading through installments. Users can select a book they want to read and receive daily chunks of it either through email or RSS.

RSS itself is a great way to encourage readers to follow a long with a particular story. Instead of making an excessively long story available online in one piece, deliver different sections of the story through RSS over the course of a few days to ensure the reader digests more of the story.

The same idea could be applied to Twitter: instead of sending a portion of the story through RSS, simply send a link to Twitter followers/readers.

Let the story stand alone

GOOD Magazine, which, along with the Las Vegas Sun, is at the forefront of new media innovation, makes a free 6x6 inch, mini-newspaper available in select Starbucks locations that concentrates on a single story. This week's story is on carbon emissions and is made up of a large and detailed graph of how greenhouse gases affect the world. The first fold-out page is a full-sized ad that the reader sees before reading the story (ad revenue!). Not only is this a genius way of putting a story in front of readers who will likely have a few minutes to spare, it is also a great way to promote brand identity.

More pics: Front cover, Inside ad, Full-page story

Go mobile

Now that more Kindles are finding their way into consumers' hands and the iPhone and BlackBerry have made reading on a cell phone less of a chore, it's time to adapt long investigative pieces or feature stories for reading on mobile devices. If people are willing to read books on a Kindle, they are likely willing to read the newspaper. And now that news sites are being optimized for the web, it's time to optimize the stories themselves.


Whichever way the story is presented, it must reflect the growing segment of the population who don't have time to read long pages of text. After all, what good is a story if no one reads it?

Labels: mobile, news on the news, rss, site management

Journalists are not statisticians, yet we love to include lots of numbers, data, and percentages in our stories to make them stronger. All those facts can be lost on most readers, whereas presenting the information visually makes a more compelling argument.

There a number of online tools for creating charts and to put them to the test, I created a pie chart using data that has become an integral part of my life — the top ten posts at 10,000 Words for the month — and graded each site on how long it took to create each chart (with the text pre-prepared) and embed it in this post. Here are the results:

Chart Chooser by Juice Analytics

Time to create: About 6 minutes
Ease of Use:     
The results: I was initially impressed by the 17 different charts to choose from. I was not, however, impressed by the Excel spreadsheet I was given to download (users can also select a PowerPoint). I got bogged down trying to create six pie slices instead of the default five and I could have just as easily created a pie chart from the templates available in Excel. The image below is a screenshot of the final chart.

Widgenie

Time spent: About 8 minutes before giving up
Ease of Use:     
The results: After completing Widgenie's registration process (which asked way more questions than it should), I created an Excel file, which I couldn't upload because the server stopped responding. Once the file was uploaded, it took a minute to figure out the user-unfriendly creation process. In the end I got nothing but error messages and nothing to show for it. A look at some of the other Widgenie-created charts elsewhere on the net revealed embedding and coding problems.

Google Spreadsheet

Time to create: About 4 minutes
Ease of Use:     
The results: Most of the time was spent inputting the data into the Google Spreadsheet. After that, it was just a matter of selecting the relevant cells and pushing a few buttons and presto! Use of Google Spreadsheets requires registration.




Initially, Track-n-Graph was to be included as a part of this test, but because it only offers graphs that track activity (as the name suggests), and as such it didn't fit into the criteria. Still, the site, which requires registration, is worth checking out. AmCharts is another graph creation service that offers great versatility, but requires download and the free version puts a small link to the site in the corner of the graph.

The pie chart isn't the only option for data visualization. There are at least three other alternatives to the pie chart, including the bar chart, the stacked bar chart and a personal favorite: the bubble chart, which can be seen in action in the Fleshmap covered here. TravelMapGenerator is also useful for creating a world map that the user can color code just by checking a few boxes (should come in handy when illustrating the difference between Georgia, the state and Georgia, the country).

Charts don't have to be static either. The following video is a clip from the movie I.O.U.S.A. that uses an animated graph to illustrate rising deficits and decreased social security in the US.



The personal visualization project from FlowingData is the ultimate example of how even the most mundane data can be turned into compelling projects. Users submitted charts and graphs on daily activities like their favorite music, the spam in their inbox and, as illustrated below, the pain in their body.

Labels: design, site management

A widget is an embeddable chunk of code that can be placed on a website, blog or social networking page. The ability to create a widget from scratch often falls outside the technical know-how of even some of the most advanced multimedia journalists and the process is often deferred to "the tech side." If your newsroom doesn't have the funds to hire a pricey widget developer (and who does these days?) there are a few inexpensive or free options to provide widgetized content to your readers.


Perhaps the most novice-friendly online widget creator is Widgetbox. The site not only provides a variety of widgets to browse for inspiration, but makes creating a Flash-, HTML/Javascript-, or web-based widget as simple as possible. For the Flash and web-based options, users can simply plug in the URL to the content to be widgetized and the site does the rest. Those users who want to create HTML/JS coding from scratch are assured their widget won't be crap — Widgetbox reviews each widget and bounces malformed ones with suggested corrections before it is made available through the site.

Those who want to provide blog content in widget form can create a Blidget, or blog widget like the example on the right, in literally minutes. The blidget can be branded with a logo and a variety of colors and instantly be made available to fans of your content. A complete guide to creating widgets with Widgetbox can be found here.

iWidgets provides yet another reason to skip the pricey programmers. Multimedia techies with a basic knowledge of web development can create widgets that mimic the look and feel of social networks like MySpace and Facebook and move away from the basic rectangle look that many widgets have adopted. iWidgets touts its "PowerPoint-style drag-and-drop" approach to widget creation which is helpful for those budding widget developers. Creating widgets on the site is visually intuitive and offers great flexibility.



One other online widget creator worth checking is Sprout, which offers video, audio and photo integration. Sprout has a few widget templates to choose from or you can build your own using the site's Flash-based editor (whose interface has the same feel as working in Flash). Best of all the online service is free.

No matter how a widget is created, it must be created with the user in mind. StickiWidgets has a definitive list of the ten things to consider when building a widget that everyone should read before embarking on a widget-making odyssey.

Now that you know how to create a widget, read this post to see what a good widget looks like.

Labels: design, site management, widgets

For the uninitiated, a widget is a piece of a website that can be integrated into another website, blog, social network and often onto a computer desktops. Widgets are a great way to drive traffic to a site by providing continually updated links in a place where the user is more likely to see them. Like RSS, users can access content without actually having to navigate to a site to check for updates. Click here for a more detailed primer on the technology behind widgets.

There widgets for everything on the web, including news. Here are some of the best.

NBC Nightly News

The Nightly News widget, adorned with a photo of news anchor Brian Williams and available through Yahoo! Widgets, pulls stories through the site's RSS feed.

CNN

CNN's podcast widget makes the audio shows available instantly and provides a link for downloading

Yourstreet

Yourstreet's news widget is customizable: users can input their zip code and receive news from a variety of local sources.

MSNBC

The NewsScroller is the word in customized news widgets. Users can set the type of news they want, the colors that it appears in, expandable story items and more.

delawareonline

Delaware has a number of widgets available, but the standout is its video widget that makes the online news site's video content embeddable in any site or blog.

WMBB

At last check, Hurricane Fay hadn't made its way to the Florida panhandle, but if it does, or if any storm system should hit the area, anyone with this widget will be the first to know.




The clear winner when it comes to widgets is National Geographic. The site offers 11 different widgets for everything from the Photo of the Day to a U2 widget.


Photo of the Day Widget




Daily News Widget




Place of the Week Widget




The cream of the crop is the Mysteries of the Ancient World Game widget which does what every good widget should do: it encourages interactivity by providing content (in this case a game) that the user would be interested in; it has a stellar and exemplary design that separates it from other online clutter; and it promotes brand identity.





You've seen some exemplary widgets, now check out this post to find out how a good widget gets made.

Labels: design, site management, widgets

In this new age of page views and search engine optimization, it is safe to say that news headlines as we know them are over (at least online). That means flowery language and clever puns must give way to keywords and summaries. The necessary evil of optimizing news headlines for higher traffic means that online copywriting will require a different kind of ingenuity. At this point, will there ever be another headline that will go down in history?

If old school copywriters were thrust into the modern era here is probably how famous headlines may have turned out:



FREDDIE STARR ATE MY HAMSTER

would be:

Cheshire woman accuses comedian Freddie Starr of eating her pet


MAN WALKS ON MOON

would be:

US astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes first man to walk on moon



DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN

would be:

Truman defeats Dewey*

*The Chicago Daily Tribune corrects its previous statement. Thomas E. Dewey did in fact lose the race.

Labels: site management

We've previously covered 12 Useful online tools for journalists and 12 More useful tools, but the internet is made for techies, coders, designers and technical journalists. Here are the online tools that make our job easier.


1. Dummy Text Generator

The Lorem Ipsum generator has been around for ages as a way to create filler text for web projects. The Dummy Text Generator offers greater flexibility by offering a number of pseudo languages including Far Far Away, Kafka (who I never understood) and simple A-Z.


2. Word HTML cleaner

Any web designer worth their salt has, at one time or another, struggled with stripping proprietary Microsoft Word code from an HTML document. The simple tool from Textism allows users to upload a Word HTML document and moments later receive a page free of extraneous formatting. Dreamweaver also has incorporated a Word code cleaner into its software, but hey Dreamweaver isn't free.


3. netrenderer

An even bigger scourge to most web designers is Internet Explorer, the Debbie Downer of browsers. Instead of having to actually open the browser, anyone can use netrenderer to see what a page looks like in various versions of IE. The service itself is a little touch and go, but useful nonetheless.


4. Browsershots

For many designers, Internet Explorer isn't the sole worry. Browsershots lets users see a site in more than 60 variations of browsers, including those for Mac, Windows, Linux and Unix.


5. Font Tester

This tool eliminates the need to toggle anxiously between Arial and Verdana to pick the right font for your site. Just a quick change of some basic text properties and you can see the difference between two or three types of text side by side.


6. TextFixer

TextFixer does in seconds what would take forever in a text editing program: it can remove line breaks, capitalize sentences, uppercase or lowercase text, put text in alphabetical order and remove tabs and white spaces. It even has some nifty HTML tools.


7. Online Scientific Calculator

Sometimes multimedia projects, especially those created with HTML, Flash or CSS, require more complex math than a pen and paper can afford. If you're looking for an upgrade from Google's built-in calculator, try eCalc's impressive online scientific calculator. The user friendly tool has more features than anyone will ever need, including some I haven't seen since my TI-83 in high school.


8. Now Do This

When a bunch of tasks are piling up on your desk, use Now Do This to create a simple list that can be followed until everything is complete. The online tool is much better than the old method of sticking Post-its to a computer monitor.

Labels: site management

The rest of the web knows how to link: if you get information from another site, common courtesy indicates you should link back to the original source.

But many online journalists haven't quite adopted that reasoning. There is still a prevailing theory among many journalists that the blogs we ransack for leads or story ideas are not actual news sources and do not merit attribution. Add to that a resistance to linking to any outside site for fear that visitors will be led away from the page and the result is a slew of professional journalists who are linkphobic.

Back in February, Robert Niles wrote a helpful primer on how, and where, to hyperlink a news story. Clearly, some people never read it. Recently, there has been an outcry from bloggers who are seeing mainstream publications source their original content without attribution.

The SEO Company has an informative table that shows which online media powerhouses are linking to sites outside of their own. Interestingly, many sites only link in their blog posts and not in their main stories. SEO makes a good point about linking out:

We believe that linking to useful websites doesn't "leak" traffic - quite the opposite in fact. Offering useful links actually makes visitors more likely to return to see what other interesting websites they might find in the future[...] Mainstream media websites are, with the exception of the BBC, business entities with shareholders and an obligation to maximise profits. It's understandable that they are reluctant to send valuable page views elsewhere.

Here is the cardinal rule of internet journalism: A link should be added to any story if the information is based on that from another site, even if it is from a blog. Anything else is plagiarism and just wrong.

Web journalists should also link to sites that readers may find useful. For example, if a theatrical production is being reviewed, a link to purchasing tickets may be helpful. Or if a Crime Stoppers-like organization has more detailed information on a crime suspect, provide a link for readers to follow.

Hyperlinking can be a form of journalism itself. Two excellent blogs, Journerdism and shiner.clay, both provide collections of links to stories that may be interesting to readers.

To those who are still apprehensive about the whole linking thing, do not be afraid that readers will leave your site. If you continue to provide, well-written, one-of-a-kind content, readers will keep coming back.

Labels: blogging, news on the news, site management

In a continuation of 12 Useful online tools for journalists, here are 12 more tools for getting the job done.


Gcast
Computer-free podcasting

Who needs thousand of dollars in equipment (okay maybe hundreds) to record a podcast, when Gcast lets anyone record a podcast by calling a toll-free number on their phone? The recording isn't exactly broadcast quality, but it is useful for recording in the field.


Listen and Write
Improve note-taking

In the last post, Learn2Type was suggested as a means of improving typing skills. Well once you have the keyboard mastered, it's time to visit Learn and Write and practice recording skills while listening to actual news stories.


wikirage
Find out what's going on

Wikirage lists the pages in Wikipedia that are receiving the most edits per unique editor over various periods of time, according to the site. This means journalists can find out what's popular (or controversial) on the web and the world without leaving our cubicles.


Urban Dictionary
Speak the lingo

Language changes all the time and if you're covering teens and preteens, or just very cool adults, Urban Dictionary will help in translating those unheard of words. The dictionary was especially useful in helping a former editor understand the word homothug and whether it should be used in print.


Tablefy
Compare data

Tech savvy journalists love a good Excel spreadsheet, but if more of us use Tablefly, a useful tool for comparing one or more things to each other, then Excel may go the way of the dinosaur.


Alerts.com
Manage appointments

The free service makes it easy to juggle multiple appointments with sources, editors or whomever, by sending alerts directly to you by email, phone or text. The site can also send traffic and weather alerts, baseball scores and gas prices, or updates about your favorite websites.


Hey!Spread
Video distributor

Journalism is all about getting as many eyes on a story as possible. Hey!Spread makes it easier with their tool for distributing video to almost 20 different video hosts, including YouTube, Google Video and DailyMotion. P.S. It's not free.


SimplyNoise
Block out distractions

Newsrooms can be a noisy, raucous affair that makes it difficult to concentrate when writing a story. The white noise generator from SimplyNoise will block out your surroundings with just a slide of a little orb.


FindSounds
Find sounds (yes, it's that simple)

Producers, especially those in radio and multimedia, will appreciate this online search tool for finding all the booms, clicks, bangs and dings that make audio projects sing.


eufeeds
Stay in touch with the world

Eufeeds is a one-stop shop for finding out what newspapers around the world are reporting. Its front page can be used for quick scanning and reference or click one of the almost 30 countries to read several of its newspapers at once.


The Alphabetizer
Sort your lists

The aptly named Alphabetizer takes any lists and sorts in alphabetically in just a few seconds.


Time and Date
Distance calculator

Journalists, present company included, love to say this place is about X miles from this place. Instead of pulling out a ruler and map, use Time and Date's distance calculator to get a more accurate number. The calculator came in handy in this post when determining the distance between England and Israel.


And one bonus tool:

Tell Zell
Resignation form creator

For our colleagues at Tribune Co. properties, including the Los Angeles Times, this handy form will let you craft your resignation letter with just a few drop down menus. This would be hilarious if the situation wasn't so dire.

Labels: audio, site management, video

It's hard enough to write the perfect headline for online stories, but it's even harder to avoid recycling news clichés. And now that the Web 2.0 world has given readers a space to critique news writing, the pressure is on even more.


Every reporter and media manager should take a look at Kill The Cliché, if only to avoid tired phrases that only journalists perpetuate. Hall of famers like "officials say," "allegedly," and "death toll" are tracked and tallied to illustrate how clearly overused some of these terms are. The site also tracks some of the top cliché-writing journalists at several major newspapers (The Boston Globe, New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Financial Times and Los Angeles Times). Jill Drew of the Washington Post leads the pack with an astounding 187 total clichés.

Trevor Crook has sage advice for creating great headlines, especially in his posts 8 Different Types of Headlines Which Sell and Headlines Suck!... 12 Kick Ass Rules To Creating Headlines Which Sell. His advice, in a nutshell, is to create attention-grabbing headlines that are engaging, but not annoying.

One of the best pieces of advice for creating headlines and nut grafs is to simply tell what the story is about aloud to another person. In that same vein, One Sentence asks its users to submit true stories that are — you guessed it — one sentence long. The site is great for inspiring encapsulation or abbreviated anecdotes.

Additional headline-writing resources can be found at ACES' website. For inspiration rather than education, pick up a copy of Headless Body in Topless Bar, a very funny and captivating collection of headlines from The New York Post.

Labels: site management

The majority of reporters (and not just multimedia journalists) are using computers to create the news. Here are some tools that make reporting just a little bit easier.


Mezzoman
Find a meeting point

Mezzoman is a great tool for meeting sources/interviewees who aren't nearby the newsroom. Just enter your address and the address of the person you plan to meet and the site will find a coffee shop or restaurant near a midpoint of the two locations.


DarkCopy
Distraction-free writing

The internet is full of magic and wonder that can be distracting when it's time to buckle down and write that story. DarkCopy takes away those distractions by providing a full-screen text editor that will (hopefully) help maintain your focus.


Jott
Call-in note taker

Every reporter should carry a digital voice recorder, but Jott turns a cell phone into the next best thing. Call in notes to a special number and Jott will provide a transcript of your call.


CL1P.net
Copy and paste made easier

Sometimes text isn't just copied from one file to another, but from one computer to another. Rather than send it by email, use Cl1p.net to paste the text into an online notepad and pick it up on another computer. It's incredibly simple and the text can be saved for up to seven days.


flagxo
Airport reviews

Those reporters who find themselves traveling often will appreciate flagxo, a unique site that provides information and reviews on airports around the world. Users rank factors such as power plug availability, lounges and wi-fi. For a detailed list of airports that have wi-fi available, including a list of providers and costs, check out Travel Post's Airport Wireless Internet Access Guide.


hotspotr
Wi-fi finder

For wi-fi outside of the airport, use hotspotr to track down the nearest wireless internet connection. Simply enter an address and the site will not only provide a map of nearby wi-fi hotspots, but list additional features of the location.


Qipit
Capture written notes

Most newsrooms are equipped with an oft-used whiteboard or make available a printed laundry list of stories to appear in upcoming issue that usually become scribbled with notes. Capture those notes for posterity with Qipit. Using a camera or mobile phone, take a picture of the notes and send it to Qipit, which will in turn clean up the photo and convert the notes into an easier easy to read PDF file.


Time and Date
World clock

The clock on the wall says 5:30, the computer says 5:27 and your cell says 5:32. When time is important, use Time and Date to be sure of the correct time. The site is also useful for determining if your 2 p.m. call from New York isn't actually a 3 a.m. call in Tokyo.


Learn2Type
Typing tutor

If your typing skills range from competent to less than impressive, Learn2Type is here to help. Users can take an online typing test, print out a typing certificate or find resources to help improve their skills.


Google Calendar
Appointment tracker

Most reporters carry some sort of day planner, whether it be digital or an old school paper version. But if there are already enough gadgets crowding your backpack, consider using Google's online calendar for keeping tabs on future or past interviews and meetings in one safe place.


Google Translate
Online translator

Translate is another useful Google tool (there are so many) that will help translate foreign text to English and back again in a matter of seconds. There are more than 20 languages to choose from including Spanish, Swedish and Romanian. The service should only be used for reference and not for actual translation as some native idioms will likely not be translated perfectly.


meebo
Instant messaging

With all the instant messaging services out there (Yahoo, AIM, MSN) there is no telling which service the person you need to talk to will have. Rather than flip through several different services on your computer use meebo to log in to all your IM clients in one place. Meebo is also useful for using a computer that does not have any IM clients installed.

Labels: site management

The latest trend in online magazines is to have an online gallery of the covers of past issues. It's a great idea and invokes nostalgia in readers who remember the fond memories tied to each issue. There are a few magazines who are making use of the online space and giving their cover galleries a little extra zip:


Wired includes links to each issue's stories:




Seventeen has video and slideshows documenting each cover girl:




LIFE has slideshows of its covers as well as quizzes and the option for users to vote on their favorite covers:




Rolling Stone has a great flash interface for searching for covers:




VIBE posts not only its covers, but also the links to its cover stories:




For more on the story behind the magazine fronts, check out Cover Awards, a unique blog that covers the covers. For today's newspaper front pages, visit Newseum. More online cover archives after the jump.

Vogue (UK)




Time




Sports Illustrated




Esquire




Vanity Fair




New York Magazine




O, The Oprah Magazine

Labels: design, flash, site management

Today is RSS Awareness Day. Are you aware of RSS? Were you aware that RSS Awareness Day existed? And I'm totally not asking because I think you should subscribe to the 10,000 Words RSS feed. While RSS is popular in many tech circles, your average internet users hasn't quite caught on.


In the spirit of the day, here are some of the possibilities of RSS:


1. Get sports scores

2. Check the weather

3. Create a custom newspaper

4. Get constant updates on the latest in multimedia and technology news and commentary

Labels: rss, site management

Online ads run the gamut from innocuous to annoying. Before you begin to curse an online ad on a news site, remember they are the bread and butter of a news industry that's still searching for a substantive way to generate revenue from their content (paywalls anyone?).

Most news sites have forgone the flashy, blinky ads of yesteryear and opted for static image and text ads. But there are a few that are crowding advertising in every area of the site, in the middle of news stories, tacked to the beginning and end of online video and sometimes completely blanketing the entire content. Several news sites are making use of rollover ads and annoying site visitors in the process. Instead of clicking on a link to another part of the site, users are unintentionally clicking on rollover ads that are sometimes deceptively hard to close.

Other offenders include ads with self starting audio, heavy flash animation and a few holdouts who still use pop up advertising, though a large number of sophisticated users have integrated pop up blockers into their browsers. The last thing any site should want is for the user's experience to be frustrating.

Unlike a newspaper or magazine, online ads have only a few pixels to sell the message. On the plus side, there is less likelihood of a website visitor to tune out the message, as is often the case in television and radio, because the advertisement is staring them directly in the face. Online advertising is a very lucrative business and there are people right now working on the next generation of online ads.



Ad overload

As annoying as advertising can be for the casual visitor, on the opposite end of the spectrum is ad blindness, which for those on the business side, is a terrifying reality. Web surfers are beginning to tune out ads that are integrated or stand alongside news content. Google Adsense text ads are found on millions of webpages and as such are easily fading into the background.



A recent study found most people do not click on ads, and 99 percent of Web users do not click on ads on a monthly basis.

So who is clicking the ads? Mostly middle-aged women from the Midwest, according to AOL Executive Vice President Dave Morgan. And because online ads are still prevalent there have to be a great number of people clicking them, right?

There are some things your site can do to create more dynamic advertising. Every internet user by now is used to seeing banner ads. Try experimenting with the size and shape to create something more unusual that viewers will be drawn to. Ads should be intriguing and/or fun and make the user want to click the ad and not the "close" button." Stason.org has more great design tips on how to combat ad blindness.

As a personal aside, I absolutely loved travel website Orbitz' online ad campaign (which is now defunct, I think) because the ads were well-designed and incorporated games that were actually fun to play. Unlike those "Is George Bush a good president?" or "Push this button to win an iPod ads," they actually required some skill.



And if I find myself annoyed at bad ads, I just remind myself that those ads are the reason I have a paycheck.

Labels: site management