#25 – Laura Amico turns passion for crime reporting into Homicide Watch D.C.

WASHINGTON – When Laura Amico was assigned the crime beat at her small California newspaper, she joked with her editor it was her dream job. Now, Amico and her husband Chris run one of the most well-executed and highly acclaimed news start-ups in the country entirely about homicide.

Homicide Watch D.C. started in 2010 when Amico moved to Washington, D.C., after her husband got a job at PBS NewsHour. She said her first month she had 500 visitors. It was small and she wasn’t sure what to expect. Over 2 1/2 years, the community response has exploded. She averages 10,000 hits a day, most of her traffic coming from search engines.

Journalist Laura Amico spoke to It’s All Journalism Producer Michael O’Connell about the challenges of launching Homicide Watch D.C.

“I think this speaks to the ways that people in the community are trying to access and interact with information about these crimes is that they’re putting names and addresses into Google,” Amico said. “So they’re saying, ‘I know something happened on Fifth Street last night. Or I know something happened to this girl Selina who I went to high school with.’ And they’re putting that into Google and Google is sending them to Homicide Watch D.C. So that’s been really interesting to me.”

“I think it had to do with so many homicides in the past having to deal with the crack epidemic, and that really not being so much of a problem anymore.”

In her reporting, Amico found that the homicides reported by the traditional news outlets seemed to be focused on certain areas, and not representative of where the crimes were happening.

“I think it had to do with so many homicides in the past having to deal with the crack epidemic, and that really not being so much of a problem anymore,” Amico said.
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#24 – Social media expert Mandy Jenkins explains how to crowdsource breaking news

On Sept. 1, 2010, a lone gunman walked into the Discovery Channel building in Silver Spring, Md. That was the day Mandy Jenkins first realized the true power of social media.

Jenkins, an Ohio native, was the social media editor at TBD.com, a local news website launched just a month before by Allbritton Communications and WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C.

Mandy Jenkins spoke to It’s All Journalism producers Megan Cloherty and Michael O’Connell on Saturday, Jan. 19, 2013, in Washington, D.C. She talked about social media and crowdsourcing. (Photo by Megan Cloherty)

“I think it was the spouse of someone that worked here at the TV station had called us and said there was a hostage situation happening,” Jenkins told It’s All Journalism podcast producers Megan Cloherty and Michael O’Connell. “We were able to kind of get
our heads together really before it was reported that it happened.”

While the newsroom mobilized reporters and the TV station sent out its helicopter, Jenkins began opening up Twitter searches on her desktop.

“Think about if you’re locked in a building because of a gunman. You are not getting any work done. Nobody is working when that happens, so everyone is on Twitter”

“I was trying to find people who were either tweeting from inside the building or near the building,” she said. “Try to get an idea of how we could get sources that were already inside of there. … Just by doing a lot of keyword searches and doing some location based searches around that area, I didn’t find anyone inside the building tweeting, but I did find people in the adjacent buildings who were also locked in.”

As the hostage situation unfolded, the police SWAT team locked down the area, making it impossible for any reporters to get near the Discovery Building.

But, Jenkins was already making connections with sources in the vicinity.
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#23 – Sports journalists blaze new trails via social media, multiple platforms

WASHINGTON – Sports reporting is one of the first jobs in journalism where multiple mediums were expected out of a reporter’s daily product. Even years ago, when the black and white scores arrived folded on fan’s doorstep, they could likely hear their favorite writer on the radio every now and again.

CSN’s Mark Zuckerman says not only has social media changed the sports scoop, but it has changed the story pitch as well. (Photo by Megan Cloherty)

Mark Zuckerman was that reporter. His career started in print, and he became well-known by fans in Washington writing for The Washington Times. His career took an interesting turn in 2010 when the Times collapsed its sports department and Zuckerman found himself asking fans to support his work covering the Washington Nationals spring training.

After an unexpected outpouring of financial support from his readers, Zuckerman launched NatsInsider.com and became one of the few reporters to successfully pull-off a paywall. Now, Zuckerman reports for Comcast Sports Network where he still covers the same team, but in a very different way than he did when his career began.

Read a transcript of our interview with Ben Raby & Mark Zuckerman.

“Yeah, it’s in a lot of different ways. First and foremost is the immediacy of it. I remember writing for a newspaper and something happens early in the day, ‘Well, I have all day to work on that story. I’ll file it at the end of the day and it will appear the newspaper the next day. Nobody’s going to read it until then.’ Now, [when] something happens, I’d better be posting that somewhere immediately, whether it’s Twitter or ultimately on the blog or on the website, because people want to read this immediately. And, it’s changing. It’s evolving over the course of a day,” Zuckerman said.

Ben Raby, who covers the Washington Capitals, works in radio, television and reports online. When Raby’s career began, he was exposed to a number of different mediums. But, he couldn’t decide which he liked most.
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#22 – How the Washington Post’s Maura Judkis covers art, inaugural balls and D.C. weekends

Getting as close to the subject as she can is the way Maura Judkis likes to approach a story. She has spent her short career rising through the ranks of Washington publications with a goal of covering art and culture in the city. Now, she’s at the Washington Post’s Going Out Guide, a division of the entertainment section that previews what’s going on in the city.

Maura Judkis joins the IAJ crew on Jan. 19, 2013. (Photo by Megan Cloherty)

Maura Judkis joins IAJ crew on Jan. 19, 2013. (Photo by Megan Cloherty)

The weekend section is meant to thrive as an online and mobile resource, offering a handy navigation breakdown for users who want to get right to information on weekend events in music, theater, bars and clubs and museums around town. Judkis contributes to the GOG blog, the dining guide, the ‘Go Out Lists’ and the weekly live chats.

While she has a hand in all aspects of content for the ‘Going Out Guide,’ Judkis specializes in visual arts. Her mother and father are both artists. An example of her passion for getting close to artists in her reporting is evident in a story she wrote for the now defunct TBD.com on artist Victoria Gaitan.

Read a transcript of our interview with Maura Judkis.

“I had met her through the arts scene and she does these kind of spooky, sort of eerie portraits, and they’re often women who, she has the models put corn syrup in their mouths and they dribble it down the front of their body,” Judkis said when she met with Mike and Megan for the It’s All Journalism podcast taping on Jan. 19.
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#21 – ONA’s Joshua Hatch knows how to use data visualizations and so should you

WASHINGTON – Rethinking the approach to a story can be challenging even for the most weathered of journalists. Many of us know our medium and have not ventured too far beyond it when it comes to storytelling. Data visualizations are becoming a more popular way for journalists to do their jobs, either in finding a story in the numbers or as a supplement to a larger investigation.

Josh Hatch joined Michael and Megan for a taping on Jan. 5, 2013. (Photo by Megan Cloherty)

Since some of us are just venturing into the world of data vis, it may seem like a relatively new medium. But experts like Joshua Hatch have made a career out of specializing in data-driven reporting. Hatch is the senior editor of data and interactives at the Chronicle of Higher Education. He’s an Online News Association board member and adjunct professor of journalism at American University in Washington, D.C.

After working with data for years, Hatch understands its storytelling value. We discussed the best use of data is when it answers a question.

“You’re getting data you can then act on. So the same is true with … knowing the point spread of a game, or it might be what stock is tanking. So, I think a lot of times data is really a step towards answering questions, solving a problem, that sort of thing,” Hatch said.

“I think a lot of times data is really a step towards answering questions, solving a problem, that sort of thing.”

Hatch was kind enough to write us a how-to guide to aquainting yourself with the basics of data visualizations. For those of us who aren’t looking to become experts, he says it’s still important to understand the capabilities for story telling with data — not only to increase your knowledge base, but to better understand the challenges and lingo of the data experts in your newsroom.
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#20 – Love to hate the media? Download a daily dose of media criticism

A lot of people hate the media. That’s proved to be something of a boon for The Daily Download, the news and media-criticism website.

“We’re scum of the earth to a lot of people, so those are the people who like to read this,” joked Lauren Ashburn, the website’s founder and editor-in-chief.

Lauren Ashburn, editor-in-chief and founder of The Digital Download (Photo courtesy of Lauren Ashburn)

“We find that a lot of people in the industry who are at big jobs, they want to make sure they know what’s being said and who’s being criticized,” said Ashburn. “And so, that’s where a lot of our audience comes from. It comes from New York, Washington and L.A. But, there is a significant part of the middle of the country and regular folks who really hate media and want to weigh in on their mistakes.”

“We’re scum of the earth to a lot of people, so those are the people who like to read this.”

What has helped to drive traffic to the site — it has 700,000 unique visitors after just six months — is its ability to function as an equal opportunity offender of sorts, straddling the political fence with stories that rankle the rank and file of both the right and the left.

“One of the stories that did really well for us was by one of our columnists … David Zurawik, who’s the Baltimore Sun TV critic, and he did a piece for us talking about why Chelsea Clinton was a terrible journalist and why she was a ‘pretend’ journalist,” Ashburn said. “Matt Drudge’s site picked it up, and it just went on fire. Obviously, Drudge picked it up because he has the … right wing bent.”
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#19 – Jan Schaffer fosters innovation, media entrepreneurship

Jan Schaffer, the executive director of J-Lab, wants to help media entrepreneurs find new ways to succeed.

A Pulitzer-Prize-winning business editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, she left her daily journalism gig in 1994 to become one of the pioneers of the growing civic-journalism movement.

Jan Schaffer, executive director, J-Lab (Photo by Megan Cloherty)

In 2002, she launched J-Lab to help journalists develop new projects with innovative technologies.

“I think journalism is very much in flux,” Schaffer said. “A lot of legacy news organizations have been disrupted. But at the same time, a lot of media entrepreneurs are coming up with entirely new media products that are very exciting. They are filling the gaps that have been created by old media, where old media has pulled out of areas or pulled reporters off the streets. So, there’s a lot of innovation going on and a lot of entrepreneurship going on.”
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#18 – Kate Gardiner: Time for journalists to take back their audience

Social media is not a fad.

Kate Gardiner, a New York-based journalist and social media consultant, said journalists need to recognize that truth and continue to use social media to build communities online where they can better serve and interact with their audience.

Kate Gardiner, shown here in 2009, is the founder of Distill Media. (Photo courtesy of Insider Chicago)

But Gardiner has one caveat.

“I think that we have to start driving our audience back to our freaking websites, though,
because we have managed to put ourselves in an awkward position in terms of Facebook, where we’re paying to play with people who were our consumers in the first place. We kind of give them to them,” she said.
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#17 – Clinton Yates, Washington Post Express and Root D.C., enhances his reporting on multiple platforms

WASHINGTON – Get motivated by the change that’s happening in newsrooms, or get left behind. That was part of the conversation during our talk with Clinton Yates, local news editor for the Washington Post Express, writer for The Root DC and co-host of the 3 Wise Men podcast.

Yates talks about getting his start in the business in sports before realizing his passion for sharing his own experience in editing. (Photo by Megan Cloherty)

“Is there pressure to get along other platforms? I guess. But if you don’t feel the pressure and you’re in the business, I don’t really know what you’re there for,” Yates said in the podcast recorded on Dec. 8.

He has the mindset of a multimedia journalist but came about it in a very organic way, by taking on each platform as his career branched off to new mediums.

Read full transcript of Clinton Yates interview.

Yates grew up in the District, an experience that shaped his voice as a reporter. Having personally experienced the transitions of the city in the past few decades, Yates entered the world of journalism with a confidence normally found in beat-weary 30-year reporting veterans.

Knowing the city’s evolution informs Yates’ reporting and gives him perspective he says he would never ignore.

“If you don’t remember what it is that you know, there’s no real point in reporting. At least not to me. It’s not just to me about walking into a room, hearing what someone says and writing it down. It’s a lot more than that … Especially, if you’re going to be reporting in your home town. That’s the whole advantage that you have being from here. You know things that have happened before you walked into the room,” he said.
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#16 – Jim Brady talks digital first, sustainability and fearless journalism

Journalism’s demise is greatly exaggerated.

At least, that’s how it looks from where Jim Brady, the editor-in-chief of Digital First Media, is standing.

“I was just saying to somebody in New York yesterday, there isn’t one person sitting in this newsroom in Thunderdome that thinks journalism is dead,” Brady said, referring to Digital First’s shared-services team based in New York City.

Jim Brady, editor-in-chief at Digital First Media, talks about Project Thunderdome on Saturday, Dec. 8, 2012, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Megan Cloherty)

“Not one,” he said. “Everyone of them knows it’s going to make it. They don’t know exactly what it’s going to be and how it’s going to get there, but none of them are sitting there gloom and doom.”

As one of the pioneers of new media, first at WashingtonPost.com and then TBD.com, Brady has heard all the negativity about journalism’s future.

“I’ve been to too many conferences where the tagline of the conference should be just ‘We’re all going to die,’” he joked.

“I’ve been to too many conferences where the tagline of the conference should be just ‘We’re all going to die.’”

But with his current venture, Project Thunderdome, which launched last July, Brady is helping to build a different type of newsroom — one that can thrive in the digital environment.
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It's All Journalism

The broccoli of media-focused podcasts.