More resources from 2010 AAJA Convention
The Online News Association has a link to all the presentations from its daylong Parachute Training session held during the convention.
News
Missed the 2010 AAJA National Convention? Here’s a taste.
Couldn’t make it to Los Angeles to attend the AAJA Convention? Or didn’t have a chance to attend all the sessions (or all the ones you wanted to attend were at the same time)?
No problem. Thanks to the wonders of technology, you can get a taste of the convention experience long after it’s over.
#AAJA Tweets — What the Hashtag has a transcript of all the tweets made during the convention.
Web tools and Social media — One of the convention highlights were several presentations from Robert Hernandez, a professor at the University of Southern California (and former senior news producer and director of development at The Seattle Times). Check out his handy site for interesting web tools as well as his Intermediate Social Media presentation (done with Justin Osofsky of the Facebook Development Network) . And here’s a great takeaway made by Hernandez during his presentations: “You are a lazy journalist if you only use social media. You are a lazy journalist if you don’t use social media.”
Presentation bits and pieces. Sacramento-based multimedia journalist Cody Kitaura has a great post that includes a variety of audio, quotes and links from several convention presentations.
AAJA Voices. The student multi-platform project was a great success thanks to great professional mentors and top notch leadership from AAJA Seattle’s own Marian Liu. The site is chock full of video, photos and stories from the convention and around LA. Don’t know where to start? Check out this video by three-time Northwest Journalists of Color scholarship winner Peter Sessum on the convention experience of AAJA Seattle student member Katelin Chow. (And it’s worth noting that Peter practices what he preaches about social media — he was among the top 10 tweeters during the convention!)
Got photos? Share and check out convention photos on the AAJA Seattle Facebook Group or on AAJA Seattle’s Flickr page. (There is also a link to the Flickr page on the right side of the webpage.)
Finally, it’s never too early to think about next year. The next AAJA National Convention will be in Detroit on Aug. 10-13, 2011. Check out the video below.
2011 AAJA National Convention Heads to Detroit from Annabelle Udo on Vimeo.
Heading to LA for the AAJA Convention? Check this out! — UPDATED
UPDATE: The AAJA Convention Blog is on Tumblr. Check it out for regular updates.
The 21st Annual AAJA Convention: Back to the Future begins in Los Angeles this week.
Here’s some tips to help you get the most out of the experience.
A cheap way from LAX to the Convention hotel
Here’s a handy tip from Kevin Leung of the Los Angeles Times:
Consider taking the FlyAway bus to Union Station in downtown and then
taking the Red Line subway to the Renaissance (Hollywood & Highland
station). It’s cheaper ($7 for bus + $1.50 for subway) than taking a
shuttle and probably faster (you are not being driven all over L.A. to
drop off other passengers).
The bus stops are just outside the baggage area. Make sure you take the
one to Union Station; there are separate buses to UCLA, Van Nuys and
Irvine. They run 24 hours.
The Red Line runs approximately 5 a.m. to midnight.
Plan out your convention
A full schedule can be found here.
It’s not all work in LA
Check out this handy guide from the AAJA-Los Angeles chapter. The guide offers information on popular dining and night spots, recreation areas and events happening during the week.
Be generous!
Check out the highlights of this year’s silent auction. A bottle of champagne from Robin Leach’s collection? Oh yeah!
Get connected with social media
Mark your AAJA Convention posts with the hashtag #aaja.
Here are some Twitter users to follow while you’re at convention:
@aajajcamp — J Camp, a multicultural high school journalism workshop, is currently in session through Wednesday at Loyola Marymount University. Athima Chansanchai (@TimaMedia), AAJA Seattle’s National Board Representative, is J Camp trainer this year.
@aajavoices — Check out AAJA Voices, the convention’s student news project, directed by AAJA Seattle member and Seattle Times reporter Marian Liu (@marianliu). AAJA Seattle student member Peter Sessum (@petersessum) is on this year’s Voices Staff.
@aajaseattle — AAJA Seattle’s Twitter feed.
@aajala — Follow the AAJA- Los Angeles chapter, who is hosting this year’s convention.
@aaja — the official Twitter stream for AAJA National.
Foursquare
Get the latest things to do while you’re at convention by adding AAJA to your Foursquare friends list.
Official Convention Facebook Group
Want a great convention experience?
Be a rockstar! [Thanks to the 10,000 Words blog]
AAJA Seattle radio and television members win awards
Congratulations to Susan Han, a senior producer for the Seattle Channel, who received two regional Emmy awards.
Her weekly Seattle Channel public affairs program, City Inside/Out, was recognized in two categories – political/government program and interview/discussion program.
Han is a 2007 graduate of the AAJA Executive Leadership Program in New York City and co-chaired the Northwest Journalists of Color scholarship fund-raising campaign with me that same year. Prior to joining The Seattle Channel, Han worked at KCTS, the PBS affiliate in Seattle.
And congratulations to KBCS 91.3 FM in Bellevue on winning the 2010 Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) national journalism award in the category of Radio-AAPI Issues!
Past KBCS producer Irene Noguchi and KBCS News & Public Affairs Director Joaquin Uy won awards for excellence in news coverage of Asian American and Pacific Islander issues for a story that originally aired in April 2009. The story looked at the challenges facing unemployed AAPI senior citizens looking for work in the Great Recession and how they get help from the Seattle-based National Asian Pacific Center on Aging, which received a $1.6 million federal job-training grant.
You can listen to the story by going to http://kbcs.fm/site/PageServer and scrolling down.
Joaquin Uy is a long-time AAJA member and supporter of the Seattle chapter. If you haven’t contributed to their pledge drives, please keep them in mind in your charitable giving this year! Another AAJA connection: Former AAJA Seattle chapter president Derek Wing is director of communications for NAPCA.
Sanjay Bhatt is president of AAJA’s Seattle chapter. He is also a reporter for The Seattle Times.
Meet the 2010 Northwest Journalists of Color recipients!
[AAJA Seattle members at the 2010 Northwest Journalists of Color reception, June 8 2010. From left to right AAJA Seattle president Sanjay Bhatt, NJC co-chair and AAJA Seattle secretary Venice Buhain, Rachel Solomon, Mary Pauline Diaz, Katelin Chow, Peter Sessum, NJC co-chair Mai Hoang, AAJA Seattle treasurer and past NJC chair Nicole Tsong. Photo by Naomi Ishisaka.]
Katelin Chow
Katelin is a sophomore at the University of Washington where she studies Journalism and political science. She’s interested in all types of journalism, including television, print and radio—Katelin would eventually like to produce broadcast stories, whether for a local TV station or an online publication. This past February, Katelin interned with NBC Universal at the Vancouver Olympics, where she worked as a runner for operations and production logistics, as well as a logger for curling production. Katelin has also worked with The Daily since she started at the UW, and has written stories, copy-edited, produced
video stories and has also helped start the paper’s new TV-show, The Daily’s Double Shot. Earlier this month, one of Katelin’s stories for The Daily was recognized as one of the top three in SPJ’s Region X for General Television reporting. She is a student in the University Honors program.
Mary Pauline H. Diaz
Mary Pauline is finishing her sophomore year at Seattle University, studying Theology and Religious Studies. Her name roughly translates to “humble overthrow,†reflecting what she hopes to offer the world and how she views the media’s impact potential. Originally from Aurora, Colorado, Diaz was Entertainment Editor for Seattle U’s student weekly The Spectator and has written for Ignite Your Faith Magazine, myUsearch.com and her own music website, TheOvercast.net. Diaz is a Filipina-American—her parents and siblings immigrated in the 1980s, and she is the only member of her immediate family born in the United States. She is grateful for their models of commitment to justice and empathy, and she hopes to bring that to a career in print or online journalism. In all things, Diaz seeks to explore and honor true human experience.
Peter Sessum
Peter fell into journalism almost by accident. It was the only humanities course open when he signed up for his first quarter of classes.
At the time, Peter was making his return back to school after spending a year and a half working counter narcotics for the State Department in Afghanistan. He thought he could do more good with a degree since the department supervisors didn’t listen to the contractors without college degrees. But he quickly decided that he could do more good reporting overseas and bringing back the stores that aren’t being told than he could working for the State Department.
Despite the recent change in the face of journalism, Peter remains optimistic. He doesn’t feel like he has to compete with 500 other graduating journalism students next year. Instead, Peter, who is currently a student at the University of Washington, believes that he only needs to find one editors that is looking for someone like him. With a lot of experience overseas, knowledge of the way military works and plans to take Arabic classes starting in the fall, Peter feels he will be competitive to report overseas.
Peter won two awards in the 2009 Region 10 Mark of Excellence Awards — first place for in-depth reporting and second place for general news reporting.
Rachel Solomon
Rachel is a junior studying journalism at the University of Washington. She grew up in Redmond, Wash., and started working at The Daily, the UW’s student newspaper, as a copy editor the day before she started her first quarter of college. She has since worked as a beat reporter, features editor and news editor, and has interned at Seattle Metropolitan magazine and the Ballard News-Tribune. Rachel is interested in pursuing a career in radio journalism after she graduates. She loves the intimacy of the medium and how no matter how many people are listening, it always feels like the host or reporter is having a conversation with only you. Her dream job would be to follow in the footsteps of her idol, Ira Glass, and work for This American Life.
Keep an eye out for jobs in mobile news, product development
Just days after attending a panel discussion on mobile advertising, I spotted a blog post on Poynter about news organizations hiring people to develop strategy for delivering news on mobile devices. Apparently, the Orlando Sentinel, CNN.com and Philly.com have each dedicated resources to paying attention to their presence on cell phones – particularly smartphones like the iPhone – with an eye toward capturing more traffic and eventually ad revenue.
And if you know how to develop mobile apps, well… let’s just say you’ve got full employment for the foreseeable future. Gannett and News Corp. are looking for mobile app developers, while The Washington Post is searching for someone with the right chops to be their new mobile product manager.
The folks in the Poynter blog post have some interesting points about the mobile platform. For years now, newspaper editors have talked about how their journalism is “platform agnostic,” which means they don’t define themselves by how they distribute their content. The leading news organizations have been cultivating their skill at leveraging the unique strengths of those platforms on big breaking news stories. The web story has immediacy, virtually infinite flexibility for updates and crowdsourcing, and viral distribution. Print has the weight of that first draft of history, lovingly composed page designs, and longer, in-depth reportage for those who make the time to appreciate it.
I love this quote:
“Having a mobile manager has helped everyone realize how we have to treat content differently on the platform,” said Roger Simmons, director of content/East Coast for Tribune Interactive. “I love the fact that at any given time the top stories on the newspaper front page, website and mobile site might all be different — all tailored to the needs and expectations of our readers.”
The next platform – mobile – offers newspapers a second chance to avoid the mistake they made with the web, according to Ken Doctor, the author of Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get. The prevailing norm on mobile is one of paying for useful content, unlike the web browser.
“For local newspapers, this is the biggest opportunity in a decade for a do-over,” Doctor said at the ASNE convention this year.
And just the other day, the chief marketing officer of Unilever told an audience at the International Advertising Festival that the Number 2 advertiser worldwide plans to double spending on digital marketing this year. The company spent only 4 percent of its $864 million in measured media last year on Internet spending, according to an article in Advertising Age. But the company is rapidly moving to shift its marketing spend to be proportionate to the amount of time people spend with digital media.
So you do the math: How much time do you spend consuming content on your television? at your PC? on your iPhone?
Mobile apps: A source of real revenue for news orgs?
On Thursday night, I attended a panel discussion on mobile advertising put on by TiE-Seattle, a not-for-profit group dedicated to fostering and supporting entrepreneurship. TiE-Seattle is part of a global network born in the early 1990s when Silicon Valley entrepreneurs of South Asian heritage decided to hold regular meetups.
The panel discussion certainly had some noteworthy speakers, but more on that later.
First, the WHY.
As in, why might mobile advertising be an important subject for journalists, especially those in print media, to think about?
Even if more people than ever are consuming what journalists create, the revenue that pays for the people, the equipment and the overhead is shrinking. (It’s no surprise publishers like the New York Times are planning to erect paywalls for their content starting next year.)
I thought newspapers might be stabilizing in 2010 after two terrible years, but the former media executive and bearish pundit Alan Mutter recently raised alarms again that the newspaper industry is still in trouble, having missed out on the recovery in advertising spending in the first quarter of 2010. His chart says it all: “Newspaper and magazine [ad] sales in the first quarter dropped respectively 9.7% and 3.9% at the same time television expenditures advanced 10.5%, Internet rose 7.5% and radio gained 6.0%.”
Auto and retail advertising historically have been important sources of newspaper ad revenue, so it’s disturbing to hear that even as auto and retail sales rose in the first quarter, spending on newspaper advertising for these verticals plunged. Clearly, some big car advertisers (i.e. Ford, Mercedes) are testing other ways to deliver ad impressions to potential customers.
Motor Trend magazine earlier this year launched an iPhone app with Mercedes-Benz sponsorship. According to an article in eMarketer, the iPhone app was part of an integrated marketing campaign in which Mercedes wanted to convey the message that the E-Class represents the next generation of Mercedes-Benz design and technology.
Advertisers like Mercedes-Benz are eager to deliver their messages to the booming number of mobile customers. Get the stats here.
Publishers are branding themselves too with apps. The alternate weeklies in Seattle, The Stranger and Seattle Weekly, have happy hour apps.
The question is can newspapers, most of which have weak engineering capacity and change-resistant cultures, come up with apps compelling enough to make the upfront development costs payoff? The Miami Herald’s iPhone app for baseball fans has been a hit. My own employer, The Seattle Times, has an iPhone app.
The challenge for media organizations is not simply migrating their content to mobile devices (just as they migrated it to the web), but leveraging the unique strengths of mobile for content AND advertising.
Mobile devices offer multiple “sensors” — such as location (GPS), touch, balance (accelerometer), visual (camera) and aural (mic). Unlike PCs, mobile offers advertisers a unique end-user; most of us don’t lend out our cell phones. All of these factors create interest for advertisers, who want to deliver a message to a specific audience that is going to stand out and be memorable in today’s information glut.
That brings us back to the TiE-Seattle event on Thursday night.
TiE-Seattle’s panel was composed of marketing and business types:
- Mario Ribera, who leads Microsoft’s mobile advertising and search monetization business in North Ameria
- Larry Jordan, director of the mobile web (web2go) for T-Mobile
- Bill Bryant, a venture partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, an early stage venture capital firm, and
- Robert Mumford, senior director of business development for Amdocs Interactive Product Business Unit.
(Interestingly, the panel moderator, Kevin Keating, was a former journalist for the Spokane Spokesman-Review and is now founding partner of Lucid Communications, a strategic marketing firm based in Seattle. Keating opened the discussion by noting that research firm Garnter forecasts mobile advertising will reach $1.6 billion this year.)
Google and Apple are staking claims to mobile advertising by controlling the platforms that serve up mobile ads.
“It’ll lend a lot of credibility to the space,” Jordan said.
Similarly, Ribera views 2010 as the first year that mobile is seriously considered part of the marketing mix. Two-thirds of the campaigns his group is doing now, he said, are “integrated media buys,” with ads deployed on three marketing channels — mobile, web and keyword search.
Publishers, take note: The CPMs for mobile ads are higher than banner ads on websites, Ribera tells me.
But Bryan is skeptical of claims that mobile will eat the lunch of television, the dominant media for brand awareness advertising. (Think Super Bowl.) “Advertising is not an infinitely large bucket of money,” he said.
There’s consensus that mobile is gaining advertiser interest by delivering targeted messages through text messages (SMS), keyword search, and interactive apps.
But marketers are learning that user behavior is not the same on the mobile screen as it is on a PC. Mobile users have more urgent demands for information when it comes to search.
For example, Ribera noted, most mobile users of the Bing search engine complete their task within an hour or a day, whereas most PC users take up to a week. Mobile search keywords tend to be more conversational and abbreviated than PC search keywords.
(I love the fact that audience members added their knowledge to the discussion: C.N. Chiu, a consultant for MobileWebGo in Portland, Ore., said Spanish-speaking users are six times more likely than native English speakers to use mobile search.)
What does all this mean for news organizations and journalists? Based on what I learned from these speakers, here’s a few thoughts.
1. News organizations should charge for their apps, but they should be sure the apps do more than simply copy what is delivered on the PC screen. Get creative and offer something that’s entertaining, educational or utilitarian. Give the user a satisfying experience. This is not unrealistic as mobile payment use is growing. (If it’s a sponsored app, then obviously the news organization wants to make it a free download to maximize its distribution.)
2. Text messaging still has the greatest reach on mobile devices, but location-based services are the hot new thing. (Uh, Foursquare, anyone?) Could news organizations license to location-based services their news stories about a location, so urban explorers can not only find deals on shoes but also learn more about that neighborhood?
3. There’s great demand for quality video on mobile devices but a whole host of technical issues need to be worked out. But once those issues are worked out (and it won’t be long), inventory will sell out quickly. The new iPhone takes 720p high-def video and the $5 iMovie app turns the device into a video editor. Start to build mobile video into your multimedia workflow so you’ll be in a position to sell ads with them. Think Webiscenes, not Webisodes.
4. Because mobile users’ information needs are typically more urgent, certain kinds of content will be a better fit for the mobile device: Movie and restaurant reviews, breaking news alerts and sports stats. But news apps, because they must be downloaded by the user, involve intention and thus can also be designed to appeal to a niche editorial interest — and carry higher advertising rates.
Please add your comments! And contact us at aajaseattle@gmail.com if you have ideas for speakers for our next Innovation Salon, which will focus on monetizing digital news content.
Ethnic media web project, “Sea Beez,” launches
On Wednesday evening, a new ethnic media web project held its launch party at The Seattle Times.
The project is led by AAJA member Julie Pham, who is managing editor of the family-owned Northwest Vietnamese News.
Sea Beez has its seed funding from the City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods and represents the newest “hive” for New America Media, the nation’s first and largest collaboration of 2,000 ethnic media organizations reaching 51 million adults. The NOLA Beez launched in January. The other hubs are LA Beez and San Jose Beez. LA Beez is part of a New America Media’s Digital Divide initiative, funded by the Ford Foundation.
Our AAJA Seattle chapter, the Seattle Association of Black Journalists and Chen Communications all co-sponsored the party.
About 80 people attended the event. They included ethnic media executives:
The evening began with networking and attendees admiring The Seattle Times’ Pulitzer Prize winning stories. Thanks to AAJA student member Peter Sessum for shooting photos.
The evening gave AAJA student members, like Andrew Doughman, a chance to practice networking and connect with editors looking for freelance contributors.
During the presentations, Julie explained the overall goals of the Sea Beez project.
Sandy Close told the audience that all of the “hives” have a Queen Bee, looking at Julie with a smile. Great work to all involved!
AAJA Seattle student members in action!
When I was studying journalism at Western Kentucky University in the early 2000s, I was eager to soak every experience I had in college from writing for the school paper to interning at newspapers all over the nation. Though I have been out of school for several years, I still remember fondly how much I grew through all the opportunities that was open to me while I was in college.
So I find great pleasure in hearing about how AAJA Seattle’s student members have made the most of their college experience:
Peter Sessum, the 2008 and 2009 recipient of the Northwest Journalists of Color scholarship, won two awards in the 2009 SPJ Region 10 Mark of Excellence Awards.
Sessum earned a first place award in in-depth reporting and a second place award in general news reporting for work he did at The Triton Review, the school paper at Edmonds Community College. Sessum’s story on blood donations was also selected as a finalist in the in-depth category for the national Mark of Excellence Awards.
Sessum is now a student at the University of Washington and writing for its school paper. AAJA members will also see him in action at the 2010 AAJA National Convention in Los Angeles as a member of the AAJA Voices staff.
Another winner in the regional Mark of Excellence Awards was Yong Kyle Kim. He won a third place award in online in-depth reporting for a project on pornography on campus for the website of the Whithworthian, the school paper at Whitworth University in Spokane. Last summer, Kim was able to attend the 2009 AAJA National Convention in Boston as a recipient of the Founders Scholarship. Kim blogged about his convention experience on this website, reporting on a session about the dangers of international journalism and what news recruiters look for in students. And if all that wasn’t enough — Kim is currently in the middle of a year abroad in Sydney, Australia studying journalism at Macquarie University.
Gerald Patriarca, a student at Seattle Pacific University, recently was profiled in the university’s paper for his internship with KOMO-TV’s problem solvers team. The article, which also mentions his previous internship at KING 5, also quotes Akiko Oda, an AAJA member who interned at KOMO-TV before graduating from University of Missouri this month. And not only is Patriarca learning from his experience, he’s inspiring other students to do the same.
Who wouldn’t be inspired by these students awesome stories? I certainly am!
Photos: AAJASeattle.org file photo, Yong Kyle Kim’s website and Danielle Knight, The Falcon newspaper at Seattle Pacific University.
2010 membership drive a great success
Thanks to great organizing and outreach by our AAJA Seattle board and volunteers, we ended our 2010 membership drive on March 31 with 87 members! Last year we had 83 members. This growth is truly an accomplishment, especially at a time when organizations like ours are struggling to maintain their membership levels.
I expect membership will tick up further as the National Convention in Los Angeles approaches. Early bird registration deadline is April 16!
To join or renew, visit AAJA’s membership page. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter (@aajaseattle) and on Facebook.
We have events every month and fellowships and scholarships to support your career goals. We also have an incredible community; just come to one of our events and see for yourself. We are always open to your feedback and ideas.
Here is a list of our 2010 members as of March 31. Thanks again for supporting AAJA’s mission and our chapter!
Byron Acohido
Sanjay Bhatt
Frank Blethen
Ryan Blethen
David Boardman
Paula Bock
Venice Buhain
Brent Champaco
Aldo Chan
Sharon Pian Chan
Athima Chansanchai
Brian Chin
Shawn Chitnis
Tiffany Chong
Katelin Chow
Jocelyn Chui
Nicole Ciridon
Carina del Rosario
Reiko Endo
Michael Fancher
Patricia Foote
Myriam Gabriel-Pollock
Karen Gaudette
Shalini Gujavarty
Susan Han
Candace Heckman
Kristi Heim
Mai Hoang
Gregory Huang
Carolyn Huynh
Naomi Ishisaka
Karen Johnson
Mimi Jung
Ranny Kang
Christine Kim
Doug Kim
Yong Kim
Cathy Kiyomura
Yuko Kodama
Sonia Krishnan
Yoko Kuramoto-Eidsmoe
Hien Le
Owen Lei
Caroline Li
Eric Liu
Marian Liu
Sam Louie
Alex MacLeod
Sharon Maeda
Mark Malijan
Lori Matsukawa
Glenn Nelson
Assunta Ng
Danny O’Neil
Samantha Pak
Sona Patel
Gerald Patriarca
Julie Pham
DaoAnh Relyea
Margaret Santjer
Peter Sessum
Mai Ling Slaughter
Ernest Sotomayor
Alex Stonehill
Eddie Suguro
James Tabafunda
Calvin Tang
Terry Tazioli
Valerie Topacio
Nicole Tsong
Janet Tu
Lori Uno
Joaquin Uy
Ava Van
Tan Vinh
Sarah Wallace
Deborah Wang
Mark Watanabe
John White
Christina Wong
Nicholas Wong
Rita Wong
Tanya Woo
Sunny Wu
Jadine Ying
Teresa Yuan
David Zeeck