Stephanie Romanski

I know I’m not alone in this battle. And maybe use of the word “battle” is incorrect. But sometimes it sure feels like one. But there must be hundereds of newsrooms like mine where the reporters are slow to try new technology and often hold up their “Oh great, more work” placards whenever something new is introduced to them.

I can sympathize. For a mid-size paper, we really have a tiny newsroom. Five news reporters, two full-time photogs and three sports guys. We cover Central Nebraska. That’s a lot of ground to cover for eight people. And so I feel this huge burden of guilt whenever I want to ask them to use a new tool for getting the info out. I like my newsroom and the people who work it, and the last thing I want is to add to their workload.

But there are some tools out there that would either be minimal work, or perhaps even ease the workload. It’s just a matter of finding a way to make them understand that. Twitter is such a great tool. How cool would it be if we could tweet a breaking news story before anyone else? Just takes a simple cell phone text and wham-bam we beat the competition.

Or how about tweeting the scores from a local ballgame? Or texting/tweeting updates from a volatile city council session or high profile court hearing? Drive by a terrible accident? Send a tweet, let the followers know to avoid a certain intersection during high traffic.

It’s so easy. And so far, in my 4 years here, getting Twitter introduced and used by anyone other than me has been one of my biggest obstacles.

Ryan Sholin wrote an interesting article in which he says “…stop thinking about Twitter as a place on the Web, and start thinking about it as a platform for publishing.” I like that thought because it underscores one of the major problems in overcoming this obstacle: Twitter perception.

Twitter is a silly name. “Tweet” is a silly name for referring to the updates. It doesn’t sound professional. And when trying to explain the service to the newsroom, I get giggles everytime I say “tweet.” So the perception is that Twitter is just a flash-in-the-pan social media-whosit-thingie that will go the way of using Blogger to post news updates.

I’ll tell you who my biggest obstacle is, and that is our head sports editor. Nice guy, good writer, but looks upon the web as a denizen of basement-dwelling freaks who should come into the light more often. Nothing I say can change his mind, and so unless the order comes down from on high, I don’t think he’ll ever listen to me.

The rest of the newsroom… well, we have two reporters who have been willing to try new things, such as using the handhelds to grab video or even blogging (though one gave up blogging when his traffic dropped after we switched layouts and he couldn’t be featured as prominently as before.) The others seem indifferent.

Yesterday I sent an email to them asking them, again, to do what they can to check in on the comments their stories generate. One replied back asking me basically if I’d just do it for them and let them know when there’s a good one they can look at. I blinked a few times, and scratched my head. I think they missed the point.

But today, my publisher emailed them and backed me up (yay!) and also pimped the use of Twitter as something they need to be doing. After I fainted, I quickly threw together a quick Twitter For Dummies page and sent it to them in the hopes that the publisher’s email combined with the message that they must help us interact with our readers would get them interested in learning more about Twitter.

That was early this morning. It’s nearly time to go home now, and I haven’t heard a peep from any of them. And this is where I stand right now. I’m almost thinking that I should just set up Twitter accounts for each of them, go around and give them training whether they want it or not. I’m really frustrated. And I know I’m not the only one experiencing this problem.

If anyone finds their way to my little blog here who has any advice that doesn’t involve nagging the newsroom until they all hate me, I would greatly appreciate it. I can nag if I have to, but I’d rather not.

[UPDATE 081308] One photographer is now on his way to Twitterdom! he tweeted his first tweet this morning, and is set up to tweet from his phone. I asked his old friend and fellow photog, who is a regular tweeter, to give him some encouragment and help if he needs it so yay! I’m hoping for a domino effect here. While I was helping to get him set up, the other photog wandered in to watch and asked a question or two. Fingers crossed!

I think when the new/old videographer starts back up next week, I’m going to ask him to sign up as well.

Okay so it’s only day four of a six week tournament, and time will tell if we can hold our readers’ interest for that long (we did for Movie Madness, so it stands to reason…) but I’m over the moon about the results of the tournament so far.

As of this post:

• Pageviews for Music Madness site: 5, 126 – Average per day: 583 – Today alone: 644
• We’re up to 21 Twitter followers for @gimusicmadness
• The 4th bracket closes tomorrow but all total so far, we’ve had over 1,000 votes in the polls, far exceeding the Movie Madness turnout.
• We had a great turnout last Thursday for the Liveblog with the guys, so much so that they wanted to continue it on Friday (traffic dropped, but I think that’s because we didn’t plan and therefore pimp a second day of chat.) The discovery by our senior columnist that Cover It Live was so powerful and yet so easy to use had him dreaming up other applications we can use it for, so even if the turnout had sucked, that alone would have made it worth it. Anytime I convert someone in the newsroom to new things is a total victory for me.
• We had some server stress the first day, (which was a good thing if you think about it ) but Wordpress is holding up magnificently, and handling large volumes of voting really well.
• We sold three sponsors, so yay it’s made a little money!
• The combination of print and online to make this thing work has been seamless thanks to good planning. Daily teasers in the paper, house ads and banners, Twitters, and blog posts – at least three of those options were completely free publicity (I don’t know if I can make that claim about print stuff, Do you count cost of ink and space on A-1?

The final bracket voting ends tomorrow at noon, and then I have a wee break where I’ll be building the polls for Round Two. It will be interesting to keep an eye on the interest level in the tourney, both in-house and from our readers. Six weeks is a long time.

And I can’t believe Van Halen’s “Jump” is moving on. I really hate that song.

A slightly bumpy start when it was discovered that the four guys featured in our liveblog for Music Madness were still working with Firefox 1.5. Yeah, I said 1.5. So Cover It Live wasn’t working for them. After a desperate plea with the IT guy to upgrade them to 3.0 (and a lovely little serenade from two of them who love having that version ) the chat has been going strong all morning!

We’re in a slow patch right now as the guys, you know, do real work, which is good because I’ve got a million balls in the air trying to keep this going. Got a new sponsor for it, had to make a banner for them, they filmed a roundtable discussion yesterday that I had to get embedded, and of course, keeping the chat and twitter going.

Good thing I’m a Queen Multitasker.

But I’m very pleased with the results so far. We’re nearing 100 votes in the first bracket, the promotion we’ve done leading up to this is paying off (using Twitter, radio call-ins, house banners, and a spread in print.) And of course, the liveblog is a hoot. Still impressed as ever with Cover It Live – use it whenever you can – it’s free!