Poynterevolution

When we redesigned Poynter Online last month, we unveiled Poynter Groups -- a new way to connect with other journalists and have conversations.

Now you can follow those conversations by getting a tweet anytime someone posts a new blog on Poynter Groups by following @Poynter on Twitter. In addition to updates from Poynter groups, when you follow @Poynter you'll get a tweet anytime we post a new article to the Poynter site, too (Al's Morning Meeting, Romenesko, etc.).

The new Poynter Online is up and running, ready for what we trust will be your easier and more enjoyable use. We hope you'll begin by taking this Flash tour.

By Bill MItchell
Director of Poynter Online

On Saturday, Aug. 23, we'll debut the new Poynter Online. We've prepared this page to alert you to:

• Highlights of the new design
• Our three redesign goals
• The project history

By Ellyn Angelotti
Interactivity Editor and Adjunct Faculty

As we've mentioned in previous Poynterevolution posts, we're getting ready to enhance Poynter Online with a new way for you to connect with Poynter and one another using Poynter Online Groups -- our new online network.

We want these groups to be a venue for compelling journalism conversations. To help us make this happen, we want to identify those who are already driving meaningful conversation on Poynter Online. We are looking for users who pose thought-provoking questions, provide valuable analysis and share powerful insight through their comments on Poynter articles.

We envision these users playing a special role in helping us create and sustain conversations in Poynter Online Groups in the coming weeks. 

Share your nominations (Yep, you can suggest yourself) by posting a comment below. If you'd rather recommend someone privately, you can email me at eangelotti@poynter.org.

By Ellyn Angelotti
Interactivity Editor and Adjunct Faculty

In October of 2007, we introduced the WebSpeak column, a feature to help improve journalists' comfort with the rapidly evolving lingo of online journalism.

RELATED

* A glossary of online news terms (Online Journalism Review) * Journalism Glossary Wiki (journalism.co.uk)

Since then, Staff Development Editor Dana Eagles and Online Producer Danny Sanchez of the Orlando Sentinel have defined nearly 50 terms -- from blogroll to sockpuppetry -- creating a robust online glossary of online journalism-related terms.

So now we'd like to ask you all, what else would you like to know?

• Take a few minutes and peruse our glossary of words that journalists encounter when working in online journalism (navigate through all terms by using the "More" button at the bottom of the column page).
  
• Post a comment to this article with any other words or concepts that you would like us to help you understand or define.
  

By Bill Mitchell
Director of Poynter Online

The new version of Poynter Online, coming later this summer, will enable registered users to maintain an online home that will automatically generate a customized url as follows:

www.poynter.org/bill-mitchell. (It'll look better than that when we launch; this is just a placeholder design.) Here's what the existing personal pages look like.

When we introduced personal pages with our current site back in 2002, we heard from many users that they did not like having the pages show up in search results because of the personal info they included, e.g., e-mail addresses and phone numbers. As a result, we blocked search engines from spidering the pages. 

As we prepare to launch the new personal pages, we're looking for advice about how public to make them. We think members without an existing online personal page will appreciate having a customized url where they can display links to their work, their resume, etc. But we're not sure how to proceed with the search engines.

Our going-in thinking is that we should enable search engines access to the personal pages, but remind users they can choose not to display such info as e-mail address and phone numbers.

Another option would be simply to continue blocking personal pages.

What do you think?

Now that the election primary season is over and the national conventions are weeks away, journalists have time to do more than simply follow breaking news from the campaign trail.

We now have time to evaluate it.

The week of June 13, The Poynter Institute is teaming up with PolitiFact (a project of Poynter's St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly) and NewsTrust to review the media's political coverage. We hope to find the best journalism on the topic of "Media and Politics."

Here is your chance to review the journalistic coverage you are consuming. For the next week, we'd like to encourage you to participate in our news hunt by signing up for NewsTrust. Each day you can review and/or submit two or three stories or videos you find online.

Throughout the week you can also view the top-rated "Media and Politics" stories reviewed by NewsTrust users. (Here's the RSS feed if you want to add it to your reader). To the left of this text, you'll see a widget featuring a constantly updated report of the three articles NewsTrust users rated best in their reviews.

Displayed in the widget (which you can embed on your own blog or Web site), you can see:

• The article title
• Where the article was published
• When it was published
• The type of content (news analysis, opinion, press release, etc.)
• A brief user summary of or commentary on the article
• How many stars users have awarded to it (and its average rating)
• A link to other reviews
• A direct link to the review page for you to review it yourself
  

Here is an example of what a basic story review looks like. Click on the image to start the news hunt and review your first story:


Poynter's interest in quality journalism, PolitiFact's search for truth in the presidential campaigns, combine with NewsTrust's functionality to rate online content for its quality, will help identify some of the best practices in political coverage this primary season. We need your help, though.

Join us on the news hunt and, for the next week, help us review our industry's work. Next week, we'll report back what we find.

Additional resources

• An introduction to NewsTrust: Assessing Users' Trust of the News
• Results from NewTrust's most recent News Hunt with The Huffington Post on John McCain coverage.

By Ellyn Angelotti
Interactivity Editor

Journalists have been able to tell if users Digg their work, or even if users think the stories news organizations write are del.icio.us, but now they can find out how much users trust the news they are producing.

1. Activity on the site (how many stories a member has reviewed)
2. Experience in journalism (self-reported)
3. Ratings from other members
4. Transparency of the member's shared information
5. Validation: NewsTrust checks a member's validity by verifying basic information and examples of expertise and bias

How could Poynter use NewsTrust?
Many Poynter faculty and staff have already joined NewsTrust and made suggestions for improvements for future development. During a recent staff meeting we walked through the story review process as a group.

We are also partnering with NewsTrust and PolitiFact to host a news hunt on the topic of "Media & Politics." During this week-long online event, Poynter and PolitiFact users can sign up for NewsTrust and submit links they find or review stories that fall into the subject area of "Media & Politics." At the end of the week, we will share the stories with the highest rating (and journalistic value based on NewsTrust criteria) from the articles that are submitted.

In the future, we may post a bookmarklet at the end of our stories, enabling Poynter Online users to easily review stories from our site.

How could journalists use NewsTrust?
-- To get feedback. If journalists want feedback about a story, they can post a link to NewsTrust in the "Stories for Review" section. When you post a story "for review," the NewsTrust community will do just that.

-- To find examples of good journalism. If a journalist is looking for credible sources or stories on a given topic, NewsTrust is one option that brings together content on a variety of topics.

How do I get started using NewsTrust?
Visit this sign-up page. It will walk you through the sign-up process. You can then visit the "News from Poynter" page or find stories on your own to review.

Want to review a story? The NewsTrust staff walks you through the process in this video tutorial.

After you have a chance to try out NewTrust, let us know what you think about the site.
* How do you think NewsTrust's function differs from other online rating sites, such as Digg?
* If your work were to be reviewed on NewsTrust, what kind of feedback would help improve your work as journalist?

By Sara Quinn
Visual Journalism Faculty

As a descriptor, "visual journalism" covers a lot of ground -- particularly as journalists pick up new tools and cross-train around the newsroom. A new Poynter Online column, "Visual Voice," is a weekly feature that will highlight great work by designers, photojournalists, graphic artists, Web producers, illustrators, cartoonists, copy editors and more. We'll offer tips for concept and craft and share discussions about what it takes to collaborate in the ever-changing newsroom. Watch for Visual Voice each Wednesday, the successor to Poynter's "Design Desk" column.

By Mallary Tenore
Poynter Naughton Fellow

In the left rail of his Morning Meeting column, Al Tompkins links to sites that he's "diggin,'" or finds interesting. The sites highlight compelling multimedia projects, reporting resources and new tools for journalists.
 
To help make this resource more useful for Al's Morning Meeting readers, we are now saving all of the sites to our Poynter del.icio.us page. For a full list of the sites, visit http://del.icio.us/poynter/Al's_diggin'_sites. We will continue to update the del.icio.us page as Al adds new links to the rail in his column.   

We also post related sites to our Diversity at Work column to the Poynter del.icio.us page. You can find these sites at http://del.icio.us/poynter/diversityatwork.