5 Ways Journalists Are Using Google+

by Meghan Peters

Social networks have proved to be incredible distribution platforms for real-time news and continue to fascinate journalists as communication tools. It’s no surprise that many media professionals have jumped quickly on the Google+ band wagon to explore its potential for journalism.

Some are updating personal accounts while others have created profiles for their organizations. They’re in experimentation mode, testing out which features are most beneficial for messaging and engaging with their audiences.

Google+ has yet to be defined. For the news industry, it will become what the early adopters of the field make of it. Here are a few ways we’ve seen media professionals using the platform and what that might mean for the future of Google+ in journalism.

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Talking About Google+

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It’s no surprise that Google+ users want to talk about Google+ — and journalists are no exception. Many have been posting tips and tricks for using the platform, such as how to get a more accurate circle count and ways to bring your Facebook stream into your G+ stream.

Even conversations about Twitter and Facebook seem to steer right back to Google+. For example, Matthew Ingram of GigaOm started a discussion about ads hitting Twitter feeds. While some responses stayed on topic, many started talking about whether Twitter users would run to G+ or if Google would begin including ads in streams.

As journalists continue to join the platform, further discussion and collaboration around Google+ as a communications tool will shape the way it’s used for creating and distributing news content.

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Hosting Audience Hangouts

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Sarah Hill, an anchor for KOMU-TV in Columbia, Missouri, has been inviting her Google+ fans to join her in Hangouts, the network’s video chat service. KOMU hosts a Hangout during the 5 p.m. newscast to give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the newsroom. She then interviews people in the Hangout on-air about their reactions to the day’s news.

“G+’s video chat feature is turning into KOMU’s own version of a satellite window,” Hill said. “It’s free. The video and audio are of air-able quality — no lugging gear to 9 different places to get 9 different opinions. You simply invite 9 viewers to your Hangout and the news comes to you.”

One chat brought in people from Pakistan, New Zealand, Orlando, New York, LA, Missouri, Iowa and England. Hangout participants were floored by Hill’s ability to multitask.

“It was quite amazing. There’s Sarah broadcasting on live TV with one earpiece listening to us folks on G+, the other to the TV station folks; she’s probably reading a teleprompter as well,” wrote Christopher Scott, a viewer from New Zealand who joined in. “She even welcomes new folks to the Hangout and chats to them like she’s home enjoying a drink with friends. I was seriously impressed.”

Only 10 people are allowed in a Hangout, so spots fill up quickly and some commenters are bummed when they miss out. Still, Hill’s experiment illustrates the reach of the Google+ community.

“It’s like we have viewers from around the world on a video speed dial,” she said.

Hangouts could be a great way for journalists to get audience reactions to news events in real time or find story ideas by asking Hangout participants what’s important in their communities.

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Engaging Readers

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Despite Google telling brands the platform isn’t ready for them yet, media organizations have quickly jumped on board. Like many of the early adopters from the journalism world, Canada’s top news source CBC has been posting links to stories with prompts that solicit reader feedback. They truly tested the engagement waters with a caption contest. The contest was also posted on Facebook, Twitter and the CBC website.

“We’ve noticed that there’s a bit of a competition to be witty right now on Google+,” said Kim Fox, senior producer for community and social media at CBC. ” We figured our daily photo caption challenge would play into that, and it has, outperforming other platforms.”

Fox said she’s seen smart dialogue and a deeper level of engagement with the content on Google+. She and her team plan to avoid replicating their Facebook and Twitter posts, and figure out what works for the Google+ community specifically.

With the natural enthusiasm for engagement and intelligent conversation, Google+ could become a place for journalists to generate solid feedback from their audiences. It’s important journalists grasp the full potential of the platform. From there, they can optimize its features to create a social dialogue around news content.

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Analyzing News Coverage

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Google+ is fostering rich conversation about journalism. It’s cultivating a community of thought leaders who rely on each other for feedback about their opinions on news events and the media industry.

When tweeting news commentary, a journalist is limited to 140 characters. Unless the discussion has a hashtag, it’s tough to see the full scope of the conversation as respondents may not be following all involved. With Facebook, conversations on journalists’ personal profiles don’t take off because many don’t friend professional contacts. Even if the journalist has a public page, his or her discussions are competing with updates from their fans’ friends and other pages because of the news feed algorithm. Google+ brings conversations back to the top of a stream when new comments arise. Though Facebook has a number of groups self-organized by journalists, grouping and sharing to professional contacts is more intuitive on Google+.

It also seems Google+ posts inspire more engagement than those on Facebook. For example, Mashablestarted discussions on both platforms about a study that claims 34% of iPhone users think they have 4G. The posts were published at roughly the same time and had similar prompts, posing questions about the study’s results. On Facebook, there were 57 likes and 40 comments, while the Google+ post had 183 +1′s and 116 comments. Granted this is only one post of many, but it’s still quite telling.

Though starting discussions about the news and their analysis of the news is nothing new for journalists, Google+ seems to be a more natural platform for these conversations.

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Showing Personality

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The media industry’s focus on journalistic objectivity makes some reporters more apt to withhold their opinions, beliefs and other details about their lifestyle. But Google+ is about people and has become a place where journalists can let their personalities shine.

Amidst the news links and discussions, streams are peppered with jokes, photos and anecdotes about life. Not unlike his Twitter feed, Jeff Jarvis is making people laugh with zings like “LAX Continental terminal isn’t 3rd world, it’s 5th or 6th. Expect to see pigs and goats running through.” Others are re-sharing posts from followers they can relate to, such as Evonne Benedict of Seattle’s KING-5, who was touched by a story from a fellow University of Washington alumnus.

We sometimes forget that journalists are people too. Google+ is a good reminder that for media professionals, there’s more to life than the news.

Overall, the future of journalism on Google+ has yet to be determined. What are some other ways you’ve seen media professionals using the platform? What effect might it have on the news industry?

Image courtesy of Sarah Hill.

Why are reporters being attacked?

By Ashley Fantz, CNN

(CNN) -- Attacks against journalists send a message.

"It clearly conveys that the government is not in favor of democratic reforms because journalists represent free speech, and free speech is crucial to democracy," said Kelly McBride, a media ethics teacher at the Poynter Institute, a U.S.-based professional journalism training center and think tank.

"The point of silencing a journalist is to pull the curtain over what's happening," she said. "The other reason is to create fear, to intimidate other reporters."

Journalists from Egypt, Great Britain, the United States, India, Australia, Greece and other countries have reported being jumped, beaten, detained and interrogated this week while reporting on the uprising against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

At least one Swedish journalist was reportedly stabbed. One was marched back to her hotel at gunpoint. Many said their cameras and other equipment were smashed. A few are reportedly unaccounted for. First-hand accounts of the crackdown are lighting up Twitter. One of two correspondents from Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper tweeted a chilling timeline leading up to their apparent detainment.

In a one-day span, attacks on reporters included 30 detentions, 26 assaults and eight instances of equipment seized, and plainclothes and uniformed agents reportedly entered at least two hotels where international journalists were staying to confiscate media equipment, said the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based organization, on Thursday.

"Mubarak forces have attacked the very breadth of global journalism: Their targets have included Egyptians and other Arab journalists, Russian and U.S. reporters, Europeans and South Americans," CPJ said in a news release.

The Egyptian government has publicly criticized the violence and denied involvement, but on Thursday, Vice President Omar Suleiman said international TV reporters are part of the problem.

"I actually blame certain friendly nations who have television channels, they're not friendly at all, who have intensified the youth against the nation and the state," Suleiman said in a TV address.

"They have filled in the minds of the youth with wrongdoings, with allegations and this is unacceptable. ... They should have never done that. They should have never sent this enemy spirit."The attacks and harassment of journalists seem to be part of an organized effort, said State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley. In a tweet early Thursday, he said: "There is a concerted campaign to intimidate international journalists in Cairo and interfere with their reporting. We condemn such actions."

State Department officials told CNN they have information that Egypt's Interior Ministry was behind the journalist detentions, citing reports from the U.S. Embassy in Egypt.

But in an interview with CNN, Crowley stopped short of naming the people behind the violence and harassment. "I can't tell you who is directing it but with the increasing number of instances of people roughing up journalist(s), cars attacked, offices broken into, journalists detained, these do not seem to be random events," he said.

Crowley suggested the attackers' endgame is intimidation, to make reporters afraid to file stories about an anticipated increase in anti-Mubarak protesters likely to take to the streets this weekend.

The violence toward journalists in Egypt seems more brazen and systematic than in any recent conflict, said Mohamed Abdel Dayem of the CPJ. Since 1981, it has tracked attacks and deaths of reporters targeted for doing their jobs. The only conflict in recent times that compares to the current situation, Dayem said, is the Algerian civil war in the 1990s.

The high number of attacks in Egypt might be, in part, because there were already a large number of reporters working in Cairo bureaus before the protests against Mubarak began, McBride said. News organizations, at least until recently, considered Cairo a convenient and friendly base from which to travel to more hostile areas in Africa and the Middle East.

Of course, that doesn't lessen outrage right now about the way reporters are being treated. But will it matter a week from now, a month from now? Will it affect the outcome of the movement to democratize Egypt?"It's such a fast-moving story, it's impossible to know the answer now," said Barbara Cochran, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. She was a vice president for news for National Public Radio and an executive producer of NBC's "Meet the Press."

She's covered several violent uprisings throughout her career, including China's Tiananmen Square protests in 1989."This is not like any other face-off between a regime that refuses to leave power and a people refusing to back down," she said.

"How it's covered, whether journalists will feel secure enough to cover it, will matter."Newer technology -- the Web, Twitter, Facebook, smaller and cheaper recording devices such as Flip Cams -- has liberated reporting in many ways, Cochran said. But it also made journalists easier targets.

"When I was working, you could get into a country, do the reporting and get out without anyone sending a tweet out about your presence," she said. "And there wasn't a huge rush to report immediately, as there is now with news agencies competing to be the first to report online what's happening."

The story in Egypt is also unique because the Egyptian government managed to shut off access to the internet, blocking information that bloggers might have provided.

Consider that without Twitter or other social media tools, 2009's popular protests against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over contested election results would have been largely underreported, McBride and Cochran said.

Foreign journalists were blocked from entering the country. Ultimately, Ahmadinejad remained in power."I thought Iran would (be the country) in my mind that hit rock bottom (in how it treated reporters), but what Mubarak is doing is unspeakable," said Dayem.

In denying that the Egyptian government is behind the violence, Mubarak told ABC News on Thursday that the Muslim Brotherhoodis to blame.

But there are other regions where sustained violence toward journalists has been raging for years, and little change has come of it. In Mexico, for instance, cartel violence continues despite the disappearance or death of more than 30 reporters since 2006, CPJ reported.Egypt, perhaps, seems different to Western audiences, said McBride.

"Cairo resonates with us. It's an ally, tourism is big there. Most people considered it safe. I think part of why this story has captivated an audience is because they are saying, 'This is not the Egypt I thought I knew.' "