Wanna know what I heard?

News is often spread by good old fashion word of mouth. It's not unusual to hear sports news before you even get a chance to check out ESPN.com or watch SportsCenter for the day. It's a common occurrence to have someone say to you, "Did you hear about so and so?" or "Guess who got traded?" Now there is a Web site where you can do just that, but instead of sharing the news with just your friends, you will be sharing it with hundreds of online readers.

9neighbors.com is a new Web site where users can submit news stories and then users can vote on the stories they find important. Users can share information about their city or share a particular news story that they find interesting. Then users can vote for stories that they think are interesting, helpful or in any way newsworthy. The site's focus is the Boston area and is currently covering the towns Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline and Newton.

And it wouldn't be a Boston area Web site if sports didn't find their way into the mix. Out of the top five streams on the site, two of them are sports related, the Celtics and the Red Sox. Most of the posts are links to Boston.com and articles on their sports page, but it is interesting to see what readers think is the most important or interesting part of current sports news. Check it out and maybe it will lend you some information so you can say, "Hey, wanna know what I heard?"

I'll have a degree, but will I have a job?

Let's take a little break from sports coverage and take a deeper look at the current state of print journalism and what the future has in store. Tomorrow I’ll be sure to report on some sports headlines: Mirabelli’s gone, Beckett’s a no go for Japan and much more.

Since I came to college and entered the journalism school, class discussions have constantly focused on the state of journalism and in particular print journalism. It isn’t breaking news to anyone that newspapers are in trouble. People are losing jobs and departments are shrinking, if not disappearing all together. The advent of online news outlets, where you can pick and choose your news and customize your news-gathering to fit your needs, has completely shook up the money making print paper. Everybody knows this and the dialogue about it is abundant, but necessary.

I tuned in to “Radio Boston” WBUR 90.9 and listened to a program which explored the question, “What’s the future of Boston newspapers, and Boston news media?” It was hosted by David Boeri and featured commentators Stephen Kurkjian of The Boston Globe and Dan Kennedy, journalism professor at Northeastern and Media Nation blogger. The focus was on Boston media, but of course it also pertains to national media as well. Here are a few things that I found interesting and jotted down:

1. There is the same number of news consumers as there has always been; they just aren’t consuming news in the same way.

Although this was a very simple and maybe obvious point, it really hit me. We constantly talk about newspapers losing readership, but we forget that people still want to read the news, they are just going to other places to find it. I am the perfect example. I love to read the news, but there are few times that I actually buy the paper. I can get all of my news for free online and I can check several media outlets. I would say that I am a Boston Globe reader, just not in the traditional sense. They haven’t lost readership, their readers are just going to their Web site. Newspapers need to find a way to make readers want to read the print paper again or they have to….


2. Find a way to make the newspaper’s Web site profitable.

If the medium where consumers get their news is changing, then it needs to be profitable, because if it isn’t -dun dun dun- news will fail to exist. The problem may not be that dramatic, but big wigs at newspapers need to get a handle on web advertising and try to find a way that it can make money. Martin Baron, the editor of The Boston Globe, called in to the show and said that they [members of the Globe staff] are trying to figure this out. He said that the Web site is generally new, 11 years old, and doesn’t bring in money. It is something they are still trying to figure out. Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at The Poynter Institute, writes about the profits of newspapers and websites. Check out this article in which he accesses newspapers and news sites profits in 2007 and this one where he analyzes a new 2008 study of advertising and news profits.

3. Change and adaptation is key.

There was a lot of talk about The Boston Globe, which makes sense since it is the major newspaper and media outlet in the Boston area. The commentators spoke about the way the paper has changed with the times and become a local news focused paper, when at one time it had much more national coverage. Buyouts and layoffs resulting in cuts in national and international departments and bureaus might be partially to blame for this change, but the Globe is doing the best thing for the paper. People can get their national news from any news site online, but they can only get their local coverage from their local paper. This guarantees readers in some capacity,online and/or print. For example, I am a huge Boston sports fan. I read the Globe everyday because that is where I can get the best Boston sports news, which I can't get anywhere else. They have changed their focus over the years, according to the commentators, but it is only for the better.

This was a very insightful discussion, one that journalists are having everyday within their own newsrooms. If the discussion continues, perhaps an answer will come or it might just need to sort itself out. The silver lining is that people want news and that will never change, we just need to find a resourceful way to give them what they want and see both parties prosper.

BostonNOW: Direct to the Web

I pick up BostonNOW everyday. I made the big switch from the Metro to BostonNOW about six months ago and it was solely because BostonNOW has a better crossword puzzle. Never underestimate the power of the crossword because now I'm a loyal BostonNOW reader when I hop on the train.

BostonNOW isn't anything mind blowing, but I do admire their persistence in trying to make the commuter paper into a strong web presence. Every brief and article, unless it's a wire story, has a link that you can go to. The link brings you to the story online and allows you to comment on the story. I'm not sure how well this will work. I read BostonNOW as a quick read if I don't have time to read a major newspaper, catch the news or hop online before I leave my apartment. This rarely ever happens and I have usually scanned NYTimes.com, Boston.com and/or CNN.com before I even get out of my pajamas. But the effort is commendable and I really like what they are trying to do.

The paper is also pushing for citizen journalism in more ways than just through comment boards. BostonNOW is looking for citizen journalists that can write about various topics that the paper is trying to cover and the paper would pay them for their services. I’m not sure how much you can really call this citizen journalism, I guess it depends on the way it is presented and written, but it seems kind of like a freelance position with a new age title to me. The paper's website also features online polls, cell phone access and downloadable copies of the paper.

BostonNOW is still relatively new so I think there effort to bring readers to website is excellent. And if there is a lesson to all small newspapers in this somewhere, maybe it’s to feature a great crossword, you never know how you will bring in a new reader.

Boston.com Photo Galleries

Like most journalism majors, I am a bit of a news junkie and as a sports fan, a sports news junkie. But even the most diehard of fans can sometimes get a bit worn out and would prefer a quick news brief over a two pager with a jump. Boston.com gets this. They get it more than ESPN.com, which has great features but has yet to really see the beauty in constructing a news article out of photographs and briefs.

Boston.com understands how to do this perfectly. Sometimes I will click on a link thinking it’s a news story and it will bring me to a photo gallery, which is often a pleasant surprise. This means less reading for me!

Now should every story be done like this? Obviously not, but it's a great way to create a countdown or rank importance of things without having to fumble through an article. There doesn't have to be expert commentary, just the reporters’ ideas and it can be done in a really fun way. It is a great way to explore ideas without them having to be hard facts and sometimes I feel like I learn as much if not more from a story constructed like this.

Here is a great example of a story, “10 offseason questions for the Patriots,” that works way better in this format than I believe it would in a standard article.

I really like the way this photo gallery was done. It is a quick read, but it highlights important facts. If you want to learn more about a certain aspect you can do so, but this is a great overview. It also incorporates the readers by featuring a poll at the end asking for the readers’ opinion.

To me this is quality journalism. It isn’t a Pulitzer Price winner, but it does what journalists should do, raises questions and educates readers.

King of the Mailbag

Bill Simmons, aka The Sports Guy, is a columnist for ESPN the Magazine and for ESPN.com. He is a native Bostonian and constantly shows his undying love for all that is Boston sports in his lengthy columns. He doesn't just have a fan base in New England, but across the country, making him one of the most popular ESPN personalities.
Simmons is a great writer and his style is something I have never seen done so well before. He mixes incredible sports knowledge with clever remarks and pop culture tidbits. His words flow and he makes a subject that you may not think you would ever find interesting into a column that you read to the very last paragraph.

The great thing about Simmons is that he plays off of his readers and invites them into the conversation. He asks them to give players nicknames, coin new sports phrases and weigh in on the sports debate of the day. Simmons is not the traditional, here is my opinion, take it or leave it columnist. He knows that his columns get better with help and who is better to help than people who know or at least love sports.

Simmons does a regular mailbag column where he takes selected reader questions, comments, rants and raves and constructs a column where he and the reader interact. This is interactive journalism at its finest. His articles and columns get hundreds of letters because the readers know that their voices are being heard. Check out his latest mailbag or check out previous articles and columns.

Only Animals Would Pick The Giants!

Boston. com has a great blog dedicated solely to Super Bowl coverage titled "Double Coverage." It's a great read and has pretty much everything you could ever want or need to know about the upcoming game, the competing teams and everything in between. And when I say EVERYTHING, I mean it.

Check out this story about Princess the game predicting camel. That's the best thing about blogs, things that you would never see in the paper, unless it was a slow news day, can be found on a blog. Sometimes that's a bad thing, but fun stories like this should be told and blogs are the perfect place to showcase them.

P.S. Princess picked the Giants. Clearly not the smartest camel in the desert.

A Time for Innovation

While browsing the internet sports news universe this morning, I came across this interesting column that ran in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram by sports columnist Gil Lebreton, titled "Super Bowl may have outgrown the media that helped create it." It is a fun read, but part of the story really intrigued me. Libreton wrote,

"Newspapers and radio stations still cover the game in record numbers. But whereas, as recently as Super Bowl XIX, a reporter could actually sit down and interview one of the two Super Bowl quarterbacks, the media crush now is so thick, you're lucky to have 10 minutes with the special teams coach."

I had never really thought about it like that before. As much coverage as there is of the Super Bowl, it really is limited. At first this scared me: what will stories include if access is so limited? Will it be pure speculation? Maybe I shouldn't have jabbed the press for creating such a stir over Brady's walking boot and high ankle sprain. If they had better access to the sources they needed then maybe the story would have began and ended in the same news day.

But here is the thing. This may be the perfect time to experiment with new media techniques and technologies. User generated content, more analysis and comparisons using video and audio, blogs and polls, profiles and scorecards and so much more could be experimented with. If only certain media outlets can interview the big names, other media needs to create new content that will draw readers in. Innovation and invention often occurs when the traditional or accepted ways of doing something are taken away. Smaller media outlets would benefit to start the experimentation and draw in readers with features that larger outlets didn't think of doing when they were interviewing the star QB.

Voicemail Message Boards

Have written message boards already started to bore us? Message boards have been around for some time now and Boston.com has just introduced a brand new kind of message. For their Super Bowl coverage, the site has invited readers to call a number listed on their site and leave a voicemail. They encourage you to leave the most creative, smack talk voicemail intended for the New York Giants or praise for the New England Patriots and they will put the most original up on the site.

Check it out!

The site also has other message boards targeted toward the Super Bowl, but are also looking for photos and videos. Are written messages no longer interactive enough? I'm only 21, but I remember when they were revolutionary.

People love to hear their own voice and maybe seeing their words in the comments section is no longer enough. Boston.com is relying on reader contributions and this means they have to do new and inventive things to have readers participate. As Youtube.com has proven, people like to give their opinions and document them. Photo sharing and video sharing are not necessarily new concepts, but the way the site is asking for so much user generated content is. Boston.com is creating a community and the sports section is the perfect place to have a neighborhood.