When Traditional Media goes into the Blogging Bussines

Are blogs in news organizations different than blogs owned by individuals? .. why a media organization needs a blog while it has its own tools to reach out to audience? Can blogging turn into a successful business model?

These questions and others were my main interest in the last 2 weeks as I went through the daily blog published by propublica.org.

Although Propublica started its blog last March, the new section achieved great success according the traffic numbers.

Propublica hired Marian Wang who is a young enthusiastic journalist who have excellent experience with new media tools in order to enable other investigative reporters to focus on their work.

By focusing on Wang’s work and with guidance from my mentor Eric Umansky who is the editor responsible for the blog posts, I understood how a media organization like Propublica can use blogging as a tool to increase online traffic.

The blog simply acts as a round up for any given big news story, by bringing the most important stories published and high quality work to readers following a certain beat.

Blogging is not just a new way for people to share their diaries and their opinions about what happens in the world but it is a very effective tool to gather people who share the same interest and provide them with a daily or a weekly post that meets their interests.

Using blogs traditional media organizations can highlight their content by referring to previous stories and reminding the readers with it, or by highlighting new stories that might not be attractive enough for readers who didn’t click the headlines.

Culture of sharing

The best thing about blogging is that a blogger should practice the culture of sharing and using open web sources with his readers, there is no problem for a blogger in a media organization to post links out of his news organization, he can even refer to videos or podcasts created by some amateurs.

Blogging forces the media organizations to be more loyal to their audience by offering them the best around the web which is a drastic change in the old policy when newspapers and TV channels were competing to mark every story as exclusive.

The great concept of blogging can help many media organizations in Egypt including news websites where I used to work to develop their contents where blogs for long time was understood as space for biased opinions.

Great panel

In relation to blogging, I was fortunate enough last week to attend a panel organized by the Asian American Journalists Association in City University in New York.

Five female professional bloggers formed the panel to discuss one title “To blog or not to blog? That is the question”.

The Five bloggers told the audience about how they started as amateur bloggers and turned later into professional ones.

Blogging can be profitable in a way that allows a blogger to be independent and to work only on his blog relying on advertisements.

The five success stories were totally different and diverse, however it was easy for the audience to notice the common elements in every story.

Blogging needs commitment and time to gain success and I was inspired to start my own blog after returning back home in Arabic language.

Paying the Price of Democracy

During the last 2 weeks, I had a different experience in my journey to learn techniques of investigative journalism.

I joined a team of propublica journalists who investigate problems happened to home owners who had Chinese drywall in their houses.

Although my role in the team is minor, it is enough to notice what is happening and how the journalists play their role as watchdogs for the whole society.

The first thing I learned is to form a timeline for the whole crisis that hit American home owners in more than 13 states.

The great thing about forming timelines in investigative journalism that its role in not only to tell the readers what happened in a chronicle order as I used to do when I was in Cairo but also to find out as many details as possible about which governmental agency moved before the other and after how long time they put their plans into action.

The timeline reveals too the actions made by victims or civil society organizations and it gives the audience and the journalist the ability to judge and evaluate how is responsible for any crisis and which factors affected and when was the time of involvement of everyone.

It was a great chance for me to learn how the freedom of information act can be implemented as my colleagues managed in getting all the governmental documents related to the angle of their investigation including official mail between different agencies.

In addition to the official documents, the research power of investigative journalism enabled the team to have all media clips published about the same issue since the beginning of the crisis using searching software.

After collecting all this material journalists like me and my colleagues “had to pay the price of democracy” as I said in my own words to my colleagues.

We found ourselves facing at least 20,000 page of documents related to the crisis, and we had to set some targets to determine what type of information we need from these documents.

My main task in the last 2 weeks was to go through these documents, highlight information and to make suggestions on what can help us reach better results.

After weeks of work I told my colleagues my joke “ I hate democracy, because in some cases when democracy is not there a journalist will be very satisfied to publish a one page press release from a governmental officer about any issue, while knowing that this is the best amount of information he can get”.

Seriously, having laws that allow people to know all information available for governmental officials is a huge responsibility on American journalists and it simply means that they have no excuse to stop producing investigative journalism whatever factors affecting the industry.

And it means that journalists in many countries around the world have to fight to get the same right for the sake of the public.

Lessons Behind Pulitzer and Magnetar

I was lucky enough to join propublica.org in the second week of April, this week in particular witnessed 2 important events in the history of this nonprofit organization.

The first event was publishing of the Magnetar story under the title “The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going”, this financial story which was produced after cooperation with NPR radio helped Propublica to get thousands of hits, it revealed some harmful practices by hedge funds just 10 days before the Goldman Sachs scandal, the story made record numbers of clicks on the website.

The second event was winning the Pulitzer Prize by Sheri Fink for her story “Deadly Choices at Memorial”.

These 2 events really affected me in my first week in Propublica, first of all I had the chance to read a draft of the final story before it was edited many times.

It was clear for me how the editor wanted the story to be focusing on facts and empty from opinions and how it was important to use certain words in the text to avoid accusing the hedge fund with wrong doing which might cause legal problems.
The first lesson I learned 2 days after publishing the story was how to prepare a follow up story for a big one with several feedback.

I was fortunate enough to attend the follow up meeting .. I didn’t participate in this meeting by expressing my opinions, however I preferred to concentrate and watch how the editor in cheif and the managing editor are acting and what kind of discussions they had with Eric Umansky the story editor and Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein the reporters who wrote the story.

I admired the chief editor attitude, he doesn’t speak a lot, he watches the whole meeting and he commented 3 times only, every comment was adding to the conversation new aspect, he didn’t give orders, he asked questions as “can we do so? or can we check that” or comments like “ usually this happens” and “are you readyto deal with that”, a very successful approach to add to the conversation while leaving the lead to the managing editor.

One important follow up story was answering the readers’ questions and discussing comments, I was assigned by Amanda Michelle the Editor of Distributed Reporting to collect all the feedback on the story in social media and websites that published the story.

After collecting the feedback which was in the form of questions and comments , the reporters had the chance to write a new story under the title “Your Magnetar Questions, Answered” after using the questions and comments that we collected.

The second lesson I learned in Propublica is the importance of good atmosphere for success.

Happiness and joy were in the newsroom as Fink won her Pulitzer, all editors and reporters gathered for a very short celebration in the center of the newsroom.

I learned that when one journalist won something it is not a personal prize but a great recognition for the newsroom efforts, although other propublicans were finalists in other categories of Pulitzer Fink’s prize were enough to make everyone happy .. I think it is a very important factor for success to make sure all journalists in the newsroom are focusing on their job they should feel secure and there should be no tensions or negative internal competition between reporters and editors to get more published space.

During my work in different printed newspapers in Cairo I always noticed how internal tensions waste energy and distract journalists from doing their job for the sake of the public.

I will remember this lesson to take it back with me to Egypt specially when I have the chance to get managerial role in the newsroom.