Engagement
Mike Wheeler and David Danto: OpenTheRoom.org—Driving Citizen Engagement at the local level
Mike and Dave demonstrated emerging technologies that automate the broadcasting of public meetings and sports events. Camera operators can be redeployed to drive engagement of the content with their community through social media. Michael Wheeler is a managing partner of Westerly Partners, LLC, an investor advisory that provides strategic, financial and technology solutions to early … Continued
Relaunching a newsletter: Failures, successes and what we learned
Sixth in a series to help newsrooms curate effective newsletters
The end of the beginning: Viar and virtual reality may change the order in which a story is told
While the amazing visual impact of 360-degree virtual reality is a hot topic in the journalism world, a less obvious aspect of VR could change the very nature of storytelling. From city council reports to fairy tales, we tell the story in a linear fashion. Although we may vary the elements within the story, the … Continued
The Ann Friedman Weekly: How one freelance journalist created a massively successful newsletter
Second in a series to help newsrooms curate effective newsletters. Newsrooms can no longer afford to distribute poorly curated newsletters. Yet executives from many modern newsrooms say they lack the financial and staff capacity to do otherwise.
Why send a newsletter at all?
E-newsletters have become a primary engagement, dissemination and revenue-generating tool for modern newsrooms. With benefits ranging from reader loyalty to audience insights to new revenue, it’s easy to see why. What’s harder to see is the “why not,” though it’s equally important. Email used to be a method for filtering the internet. Far from the … Continued
One more time with feeling: A new way to look at the presidential debates
With apologies to gone-viral Ken Bone, most Americans have decided who they’ll be voting for on Nov. 8. Some have already cast their vote. Therefore, this year’s three presidential debates may be more for show than substance. It’s probably also fair to say that most folks who watched the first two debates viewed the responses … Continued
RJI Fellow developing bot-driven engagement to build community, extend news coverage
Coverage. It’s what we promise as news organizations. We cover stories, communities, events and people. Every news organization should make one promise to its community: We’ve got you covered. But we don’t, not by a stretch. Our coverage is actually becoming more gap-filled and uneven by the day. I won’t spend much time here writing … Continued
RJI Fellow’s ongoing e-newsletter personalization experiment yields surprising results
Tracy Clark, a 2015-2016 RJI Fellow, believes newspapers with editor-selected email newsletters would have better engagement rates if the content were personalized to each user’s interest. She is in the midst of a pilot study with a large U.S. newspaper, which is simultaneously publishing two email newsletters: one includes editor-selected news content, the other features reader-selected stories. The personalized newsletters are based on Clark’s Reportory platform. This is a progress report.
Mobile long-form journalism: The future is (even more) visual
Three RJI Research Scholars spent the past year studying the effectiveness and sustainability of long-form digital journalism. This is the fifth in a five-part series based on 53 interviews with millennials to gauge this audience’s reception to long-form journalism delivered on mobile platforms.
Study: Millennials spent more time on text and video, but gave more praise for photos, infographics
Three RJI Research Scholars spent the past year studying the effectiveness and sustainability of long-form digital journalism. This is the fourth in a five-part series based on 53 interviews with millennials to gauge this audience’s reception to long-form journalism delivered on mobile platforms.