Does your newsroom know its community?

Take about a minute and look at Mark Glaser’s 10 steps to saving newspapers in the digital age (via CyberJournalist). And then take note that the thread running through each of these steps isn’t about cutting costs as much as it is about being innovative in the effort to engage the local community.

Because I’m a good netizen, I won’t reprint the short post here and deprive CyberJournalist of the traffic, but I will say that Glaser is right on target in telling news sites to focus on what businesses want, rather than viewing them as an endless source of advertising dollars. And his recommendation to engage the community in face-to-face meetings recalls Gina Chen’s fine Save the Media post on how journalists can create communities of readers.

Save these online journalism classes

Fire up your bookmark folders, I’ve got a good ‘un today: Online Journalism Blog has a number of useful online classes, PowerPoint-style. Topics covered include writing for the Web, podcasts, blogging practices (including points both for and against frequent posts), Twitter for beginners and managing feeds.

Connecting news with communities

A quick rundown of what The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times and a group of hyperlocal sites are doing to build audiences.

The New York Times takes a look at hyperlocal sites EveryBlock, Outside.in, Placeblogger and Patch,

Alan Murray, deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, offers his philosophy of what reporters need to do to grab eyeballs:

The art of a good blog is figuring out the right mix between the piece that you know is going to get maximum search-engine hits to the piece that really defines what you’re doing that’s uniquely valuable. That second piece might not bring in as much traffic, but it’s the piece that’s gonna keep the traffic once you get it in the door. So all of that, which is part of the job of building a community, building an audience — those are totally new skills.

Meanwhile, The Washington Times is embracing citizen journalism — in print:

Online journalism — the handbook

If you yearn to learn the 10 things the online journalist must know …

If you ache to discover the seven kinds of stories you should be doing often …

If you would move heaven and earth to know the basics of online reporting …

Then today is your lucky day. Ladies and gentlemen, I dutifully point you to the Bighow Online Journalism Handbook. Enjoy.

Lead or get left behind

Assistant news director at WPIX gives journalism students 18 new video cameras. Students are asked to send in material that they feel is newsworthy to the station. They won’t be paid, of course. Which makes the response below not merely predictable, but tiresome:

Jim Joyce, sector vice president for NABET-CWA, which represents 10,000 broadcast technicians, camera operators, reporters and producers, said the union negotiated terms with ABC on its program and supports the attempt to interest young people in news.

Citizenside is citizen journalism that pays

Journalism.co.uk looks at Citizenside, an online market place that allows users to upload and sell their news images to media professionals.

Individuals who send Citizenside an image grant the company exclusive rights for three months to market that document. After Citizenside is paid, users will receive their payment 60 days later. The website claims that its members receive up to 75 percent of the selling price, but after searching through the FAQ, I couldn’t find a commission rate card to explain when that 75 percent would apply.

Examiner.com has "no use for professional journalists"

Yesterday, a friend forwarded me a job posting on JournalismJobs seeking contributors to Examiner.com’s Tampa Bay outlet. And after spending a considerable amount of time on the site, I decided I needed a second opinion to confirm my reaction that the whole enterprise is an unqualified mess.

I found it.

From a TechCrunch article published last October (via the Washington Post):