It's All Journalism

With so many changes going on in social media these days, journalists need to be doing one simple thing, according to Natalie DiBlasio. They need to listen. "I've found that one thing I'm really trying to do right now is, on top of chatting on all of these different apps that are coming up, is doing a lot of listening and figuring out how the audience is using different platforms to communicate with themselves and to share news, and, also trying to figure out who is successful in reaching audiences in different places," she said. DiBlasio is currently in her second stint working for USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com). Her first time around, she spent three years as a breaking news reporter. She then left for a year to edit a running magazine, which grew out of her passion for marathons — she competed in 13 in the last two years. Earlier this fall, DiBlasio returned to USA Today, this time as a digital editor, training with the paper's social-mobile team. "We've got this particular group at USA Today that really focuses on making sure that all of the work succeeds on mobile platforms, like tablet and your cellphone, and social, so Facebook and Twitter and Periscope and everything that's being invented as we're talking," she said. Right now, where DiBlasio is doing a lot of listening — and watching — is Periscope, the live-streaming video app. "I'm really interested in that and trying to figure out how we can use that for better storytelling," she said. She's been spending a lot of time watching Periscopes posted by journalists and non-journalists to get an idea of the many different ways to use it to tell stories. "Seeing everyday people use social the way that they want to use it helps us as journalists figure out innovative ways that we could use it too," she said. After training for about a month in Washington, D.C., DiBlasio recently left to join the paper's digital team in San Francisco. "My focus is going to be to make sure that none of our great work is overlooked and also to try to be another set of eyes, to make sure that we're not missing any stories that are really digital first stories or social first stories that have captured an audience that we would miss if we weren't tuned into social media at the time that they were blowing up," she said. — Michael O'Connell (mailto:moconnell207@gmail.com) On this week's It's All Journalism podcast, Producer Michael O'Connell talks to Natalie DiBlasio of USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com)'s social-mobile team. She talks about how journalists can tell their stories across multiple platforms and the challenges of keeping up with the latest technology. She also discusses her love of breaking news and her experiences running in 13 marathons in two years.

Way back in January, Medium posited that 2015 could be the "Year of the Podcast (https://medium.com/write-with-impact/this-is-why-2015-could-be-the-year-of-the-podcast-64c890b16388#.g49m4r9an)". Now, in the year's final days, Serial (https://serialpodcast.org), what many viewed as the "it" podcast in its first season, has returned for a second. This time it's focusing on the story of former Taliban prisoner/accused Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl. Historians can decide whether 2015 was a pivotal year for podcasting or not. The platform has been around for awhile and more people seem interested in listening to podcasts or launching their own. For journalists, though, many questions remain about the viability of the platform as a sustainable storytelling medium. With less fanfare perhaps than the return of Serial, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University seeks to answer some of those concerns. It just released a new Guide to Podcasting (http://towcenter.org/research/guide-to-podcasting/), which details several sustainable models for journalists looking to podcast. "Podcasting is kind of like an antidote to the Internet Age, in many ways, because when you're constantly looking for hits and fast traffic, podcasting is a different type of medium that engenders a different type of relationship with audiences," said Vanessa Quirk, author of the guide. "It's one that I think is very valuable and will be important to kind of offset a lot of what's been happening in digital media." Quirk has a lot to say about why many journalists should — and some shouldn't — consider podcasting. If you've ever considered taking the plunge, read this guide. — Michael O'Connell (mailto:moconnell@federalnewsradio.com) On this week's It's All Journalism podcast, Producers Michael O'Connell and Amber Healy talk to Vanessa Quirk, author of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism's Guide to Podcasting (http://towcenter.org/research/guide-to-podcasting/). She discusses the challenges journalists face in creating sustainable podcasts and shares some of the technical barriers that have slowed the wider adoption of the medium as a storytelling device. The guide is also available for digital download (https://towcenter.gitbooks.io/guide-to-podcasting/content/why_podcasting_matters/the_growth_of.html).

Way back in January, Medium posited that 2015 could be the "Year of the Podcast (https://medium.com/write-with-impact/this-is-why-2015-could-be-the-year-of-the-podcast-64c890b16388#.g49m4r9an)". Now, in the year's final days, Serial (https://serialpodcast.org), what many viewed as the "it" podcast in its first season, has returned for a second. This time it's focusing on the story of former Taliban prisoner/accused Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl. Historians can decide whether 2015 was a pivotal year for podcasting or not. The platform has been around for awhile and more people seem interested in listening to podcasts or launching their own. For journalists, though, many questions remain about the viability of the platform as a sustainable storytelling medium. With less fanfare perhaps than the return of Serial, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University seeks to answer some of those concerns. It just released a new Guide to Podcasting (http://towcenter.org/research/guide-to-podcasting/), which details several sustainable models for journalists looking to podcast. "Podcasting is kind of like an antidote to the Internet Age, in many ways, because when you're constantly looking for hits and fast traffic, podcasting is a different type of medium that engenders a different type of relationship with audiences," said Vanessa Quirk, author of the guide. "It's one that I think is very valuable and will be important to kind of offset a lot of what's been happening in digital media." Quirk has a lot to say about why many journalists should — and some shouldn't — consider podcasting. If you've ever considered taking the plunge, read this guide. — Michael O'Connell (mailto:moconnell@federalnewsradio.com) On this week's It's All Journalism podcast, Producers Michael O'Connell and Amber Healy talk to Vanessa Quirk, author of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism's Guide to Podcasting (http://towcenter.org/research/guide-to-podcasting/). She discusses the challenges journalists face in creating sustainable podcasts and shares some of the technical barriers that have slowed the wider adoption of the medium as a storytelling device. The guide is also available for digital download (https://towcenter.gitbooks.io/guide-to-podcasting/content/why_podcasting_matters/the_growth_of.html).

The Washington, D.C., area is a paradise for media types, and it’s about to get better. Two organizations, Arlington Independent Media and Takoma Radio, are launching low-power FM stations soon — Arlington’s WERA (http://www.wera.fm/) goes live on Sunday, Dec. 6, and Takoma Radio’s WOWD (http://takomaradio.org/) will hit the airwaves in 2016 — with the common goal of putting neighborhood voices on a community radio station. Lauree McArdle, operations manager for AIM, has been in Arlington for 13 years but her relationship with radio goes back to her college days. For the past few years, she’s been dedicating most of her efforts at AIM to the creation of 96.7 WERA. Most of AIM’s instruction has been geared toward TV and film production and editing, but “it just seemed to be a natural fit to add radio. People are looking for that local content and information on Arlington, specifically. Being a hop, skip and a jump from D.C., most of the news is D.C.-oriented or national news, but I think people are looking for something more specific to Arlington.” Marika Partridge, the mastermind and driving force behind Takoma Radio, has spent her whole career in radio, moving from Alaska to the D.C. area to continue her work with NPR. “I wasn’t even aware of what LPFM was,” she said. “When I heard in 2011 that the giveaway was going to come around again, I had all the background for saying yeah, we want that. … It was too sexy to resist.” The “giveaway” was a narrow window of opportunity presented and controlled by the Federal Communications Commission, which asked for nonprofit, community-oriented organizations to apply for permits to build antennas and transistors to operate low-power FM radio stations. Once the applications were filed and approved, the groups got to work preparing for their new stations. For WERA, that meant building an audio room inside the offices of Arlington Independent Media and offering audio production classes; for WOWD, it meant creating partnerships with other organizations for content production and finding a home for the transmitter. The content for both stations will be all local, all the time, with voices from their respective neighborhoods filling the airwaves. “It’s a mix of everything. There’s music, there’s talk, there’s advice, there’s sports. I think we’re even going to have a Pokémon show,” McArdle said. “It’s truly what I see as what the community wants. It’s a mixture of things. There’s a lot of variety that’s coming in.” And the stations won’t be what’s considered passive or easy listening by the larger radio industry, because some shows, at least on Tacoma Radio, won’t be in English, or even French or Spanish, but might contain dialects that are completely foreign to many ears, Partridge said. But both WERA and WOWD will be 100 percent local, 100 percent of the time, something most listeners have never experienced before. “The programming will come out of the community. We can’t really say what it is yet, because the people will emerge with the programming,” Partridge said. For more on WERA, read here (http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/news/2015/sep/01/arlington-independent-media-expanding-radio/); for more on WOWD, go here (http://www.geeksandbeats.com/2015/11/the-future-is-retro-low-power-fm/).

The Washington, D.C., area is a paradise for media types, and it’s about to get better. Two organizations, Arlington Independent Media and Takoma Radio, are launching low-power FM stations soon — Arlington’s WERA (http://www.wera.fm/) goes live on Sunday, Dec. 6, and Takoma Radio’s WOWD (http://takomaradio.org/) will hit the airwaves in 2016 — with the common goal of putting neighborhood voices on a community radio station. Lauree McArdle, operations manager for AIM, has been in Arlington for 13 years but her relationship with radio goes back to her college days. For the past few years, she’s been dedicating most of her efforts at AIM to the creation of 96.7 WERA. Most of AIM’s instruction has been geared toward TV and film production and editing, but “it just seemed to be a natural fit to add radio. People are looking for that local content and information on Arlington, specifically. Being a hop, skip and a jump from D.C., most of the news is D.C.-oriented or national news, but I think people are looking for something more specific to Arlington.” Marika Partridge, the mastermind and driving force behind Takoma Radio, has spent her whole career in radio, moving from Alaska to the D.C. area to continue her work with NPR. “I wasn’t even aware of what LPFM was,” she said. “When I heard in 2011 that the giveaway was going to come around again, I had all the background for saying yeah, we want that. … It was too sexy to resist.” The “giveaway” was a narrow window of opportunity presented and controlled by the Federal Communications Commission, which asked for nonprofit, community-oriented organizations to apply for permits to build antennas and transistors to operate low-power FM radio stations. Once the applications were filed and approved, the groups got to work preparing for their new stations. For WERA, that meant building an audio room inside the offices of Arlington Independent Media and offering audio production classes; for WOWD, it meant creating partnerships with other organizations for content production and finding a home for the transmitter. The content for both stations will be all local, all the time, with voices from their respective neighborhoods filling the airwaves. “It’s a mix of everything. There’s music, there’s talk, there’s advice, there’s sports. I think we’re even going to have a Pokémon show,” McArdle said. “It’s truly what I see as what the community wants. It’s a mixture of things. There’s a lot of variety that’s coming in.” And the stations won’t be what’s considered passive or easy listening by the larger radio industry, because some shows, at least on Tacoma Radio, won’t be in English, or even French or Spanish, but might contain dialects that are completely foreign to many ears, Partridge said. But both WERA and WOWD will be 100 percent local, 100 percent of the time, something most listeners have never experienced before. “The programming will come out of the community. We can’t really say what it is yet, because the people will emerge with the programming,” Partridge said. For more on WERA, read here (http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/news/2015/sep/01/arlington-independent-media-expanding-radio/); for more on WOWD, go here (http://www.geeksandbeats.com/2015/11/the-future-is-retro-low-power-fm/).

Reporters used to have little choice but to ask fellow reporters, friends or advocacy groups for good examples to highlight issues in their work. Thanks to the Internet, that’s no longer the case. Journalists now can crowdsource information, anecdotes, insights and real-life data on situations, which help to bring to life concepts that could otherwise seem abstract or hard to understand. Jan Schaffer, founder and executive director of J-Lab (http://www.j-lab.org) and fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University (http://towcenter.org), explains that crowdsourcing is a way to gather information in a precise, targeted way to help fill in the gaps. The Tow Center last week released a guide on crowdsourcing (http://towcenter.org/research/guide-to-crowdsourcing/) and took great pains to provide a definition for the concept. Crowdsourcing, from a journalistic standpoint, is “the act of specifically inviting a group of people to participate in a reporting task,” Shaffer said. “That can be a newsgathering task; a data collection task, an analysis. It has to be through a targeted open call, a solicitation for input.” It’s not just harvesting information from social media or picking out specific notes from the comment section of related articles, but something a little more precise. There are unstructured call-outs, like the open invitation to readers to share their stories in the comment section of articles or voting on a handful of options to help a reporter determine a follow-up piece. Structured call-outs are more specific and ask readers or listeners to provide information on a specific topic. Pro Publica, for example, has recently embarked on a project (https://www.propublica.org/getinvolved/item/vietnam-veterans-agent-orange-propublica-investigate) detailing the difficulties facing Vietnam Veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange when they try to get medical treatment. “They so target the Agent Orange community, they’ll go on the websites of ships where these veterans served around Vietnam and tap into the community that way,” Schaffer said. This kind of research wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago. “I think that it’s really the creative web technologies that have emerged, and the Internet, that has allowed crowdsourcing to take off,” Schaffer said. “Now you can really keep track all along the way of how you reach out to your audience, how do you organize what they give you, how do you maintain contact with them. A key part of crowdsourcing is not just taking what they have to offer and saying thank you very much; it’s continuing a two-way conversation so you build that community and you tease out more contributions, so people give you stuff.” On this week's It's All Journalism, producers Michael O'Connell and Amber Healy talk to Jan Shaffer, founder and executive director of the J-Lab, about a new crowdsourcing guide she helped write for the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

Reporters used to have little choice but to ask fellow reporters, friends or advocacy groups for good examples to highlight issues in their work. Thanks to the Internet, that’s no longer the case. Journalists now can crowdsource information, anecdotes, insights and real-life data on situations, which help to bring to life concepts that could otherwise seem abstract or hard to understand. Jan Schaffer, founder and executive director of J-Lab (http://www.j-lab.org) and fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University (http://towcenter.org), explains that crowdsourcing is a way to gather information in a precise, targeted way to help fill in the gaps. The Tow Center last week released a guide on crowdsourcing (http://towcenter.org/research/guide-to-crowdsourcing/) and took great pains to provide a definition for the concept. Crowdsourcing, from a journalistic standpoint, is “the act of specifically inviting a group of people to participate in a reporting task,” Shaffer said. “That can be a newsgathering task; a data collection task, an analysis. It has to be through a targeted open call, a solicitation for input.” It’s not just harvesting information from social media or picking out specific notes from the comment section of related articles, but something a little more precise. There are unstructured call-outs, like the open invitation to readers to share their stories in the comment section of articles or voting on a handful of options to help a reporter determine a follow-up piece. Structured call-outs are more specific and ask readers or listeners to provide information on a specific topic. Pro Publica, for example, has recently embarked on a project (https://www.propublica.org/getinvolved/item/vietnam-veterans-agent-orange-propublica-investigate) detailing the difficulties facing Vietnam Veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange when they try to get medical treatment. “They so target the Agent Orange community, they’ll go on the websites of ships where these veterans served around Vietnam and tap into the community that way,” Schaffer said. This kind of research wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago. “I think that it’s really the creative web technologies that have emerged, and the Internet, that has allowed crowdsourcing to take off,” Schaffer said. “Now you can really keep track all along the way of how you reach out to your audience, how do you organize what they give you, how do you maintain contact with them. A key part of crowdsourcing is not just taking what they have to offer and saying thank you very much; it’s continuing a two-way conversation so you build that community and you tease out more contributions, so people give you stuff.” On this week's It's All Journalism, producers Michael O'Connell and Amber Healy talk to Jan Shaffer, founder and executive director of the J-Lab, about a new crowdsourcing guide she helped write for the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

Stephanie Forshee and Rosie Downey are two young journalists who are enthusiastic about the career path they've chosen. They're so enthusiastic, in fact, that they've decided to create a resource for other young journalists — and maybe a few older ones. In Other News: Reporters on Reporting is a book Forshee and Downey are writing based on a series of interviews they've conducted with a dozen or so award-winning media professionals, including Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael J. Berens (now with the Chicago Tribune, formerly of The Seattle Times) and Mara Leveritt, author of Devil's Knot. The project is being funded through a Kickstarter campaign (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1918132216/in-other-news-reporters-on-reporting), which runs through Dec. 11. On this special mid-week episode of It's All Journalism, Producer Michael O'Connell talks to Stephanie Forshee, one of the authors of In Other News: Reporters on Reporting. She talks about here career path from music student to working journalist. She also shares what inspired her and Downey to take on a project like this and what are some of the lessons they've learned along the way.

Stephanie Forshee and Rosie Downey are two young journalists who are enthusiastic about the career path they've chosen. They're so enthusiastic, in fact, that they've decided to create a resource for other young journalists — and maybe a few older ones. In Other News: Reporters on Reporting is a book Forshee and Downey are writing based on a series of interviews they've conducted with a dozen or so award-winning media professionals, including Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael J. Berens (now with the Chicago Tribune, formerly of The Seattle Times) and Mara Leveritt, author of Devil's Knot. The project is being funded through a Kickstarter campaign (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1918132216/in-other-news-reporters-on-reporting), which runs through Dec. 11. On this special mid-week episode of It's All Journalism, Producer Michael O'Connell talks to Stephanie Forshee, one of the authors of In Other News: Reporters on Reporting. She talks about here career path from music student to working journalist. She also shares what inspired her and Downey to take on a project like this and what are some of the lessons they've learned along the way.

Madalyn Sklar could probably be considered a Twitter super-user. An early adopter of nearly every social media platform since MySpace, she hosts the weekly #TwitterSmarter Podcast (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/twittersmarter-podcast-madalyn/id1000134807). And every Thursday at 1 p.m. ET, you can find her answering questions and sharing social media tips on the #TwitterSmarter chat on Twitter. On this week's It's All Journalism podcast, she talks about how to make a better profile and use lists to improve the scope of subjects you cover and the number of people with which you're engaging. She's also a big advocate of using Twitter chats to meet people and promote yourself. One of the biggest faux pax someone can make on Twitter is setting up an auto-direct message that gets sent out whenever they get a new follower. "I get plenty of them where people follow you, and as soon as you follow them back, next thing you know, they send you a direct message and they're promoting themselves," Sklar said. "You don't know them and they're promoting themselves. They're like, 'Hey, why don't you also go over to my Facebook and go like me and go over to my LinkedIn and follow me and go buy my course and go buy this and that.'" Sklar said people should take a more social approach to interacting on Twitter. "You can go meet so many amazing people if you put yourself out there," she said. "But if I were to see you at a cocktail party and I go and introduce myself, you don't know me. I don't know you. You're not going to sit there and say, 'Well, Madalyn, I want you to go buy this. I want you to go buy that.' That's what people are doing with their direct messages." That type of behavior is a quick way to get ignored, unfollowed or even blocked. "So many times, I'll see people on Twitter," she said. "They'll follow me. They'll retweet something or favorite something, so that prompts me to go look at their Twitter." When she examines their profile and sees the types of tweets they're writing or sharing, they haven't tweeted for days or weeks. "If they're not engaging with other people and they're not tweeting and they're not sharing information, it makes me not really interested in following them," Sklar said. "If you want people to follow you, put out really good, engaging tweets that will draw people in. ... I think people should focus a little bit more of their energy on tweeting and engaging with people. I think that's really important." On this week's episode of It's All Journalism, Producer Michael O'Connell talks with Twitter coach and blogger Madalyn Sklar about how people can use Twitter more successfully. She hosts the weekly #TwitterSmarter podcast. If you want to hangout with Sklar and swap social media tips, join her every Thursday at 1 p.m. ET for the #TwitterSmarter chat.

Madalyn Sklar could probably be considered a Twitter super-user. An early adopter of nearly every social media platform since MySpace, she hosts the weekly #TwitterSmarter Podcast (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/twittersmarter-podcast-madalyn/id1000134807). And every Thursday at 1 p.m. ET, you can find her answering questions and sharing social media tips on the #TwitterSmarter chat on Twitter. On this week's It's All Journalism podcast, she talks about how to make a better profile and use lists to improve the scope of subjects you cover and the number of people with which you're engaging. She's also a big advocate of using Twitter chats to meet people and promote yourself. One of the biggest faux pax someone can make on Twitter is setting up an auto-direct message that gets sent out whenever they get a new follower. "I get plenty of them where people follow you, and as soon as you follow them back, next thing you know, they send you a direct message and they're promoting themselves," Sklar said. "You don't know them and they're promoting themselves. They're like, 'Hey, why don't you also go over to my Facebook and go like me and go over to my LinkedIn and follow me and go buy my course and go buy this and that.'" Sklar said people should take a more social approach to interacting on Twitter. "You can go meet so many amazing people if you put yourself out there," she said. "But if I were to see you at a cocktail party and I go and introduce myself, you don't know me. I don't know you. You're not going to sit there and say, 'Well, Madalyn, I want you to go buy this. I want you to go buy that.' That's what people are doing with their direct messages." That type of behavior is a quick way to get ignored, unfollowed or even blocked. "So many times, I'll see people on Twitter," she said. "They'll follow me. They'll retweet something or favorite something, so that prompts me to go look at their Twitter." When she examines their profile and sees the types of tweets they're writing or sharing, they haven't tweeted for days or weeks. "If they're not engaging with other people and they're not tweeting and they're not sharing information, it makes me not really interested in following them," Sklar said. "If you want people to follow you, put out really good, engaging tweets that will draw people in. ... I think people should focus a little bit more of their energy on tweeting and engaging with people. I think that's really important." On this week's episode of It's All Journalism, Producer Michael O'Connell talks with Twitter coach and blogger Madalyn Sklar about how people can use Twitter more successfully. She hosts the weekly #TwitterSmarter podcast. If you want to hangout with Sklar and swap social media tips, join her every Thursday at 1 p.m. ET for the #TwitterSmarter chat.

The days of women being catcalled on the street by construction workers are long gone. Now, some women find themselves the subject of unwanted attention, hostility, even death threats while sitting behind their computer screens, doing their jobs or posting their opinions. What little protections are in place to protect women, and especially women writers and journalists, are insufficient and do nothing to discourage these kinds of attacks from online trolls, said Michelle Ferrier, associate dean of innovation at Scripps College of Journalism at Ohio University (https://www.ohio.edu/scrippscollege/index.cfm). And it’s just getting worse. A report from the Pew Research (http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/10/22/part-1-experiencing-online-harassment/) published in revealed that a full 25 percent of women have been sexually harassed online, while 26 percent have been stalked. “I think it points to a problem that’s very gendered and focused around women and the Internet as a tool for communication,” Ferrier said. Women whose online presence is rooted in written communication are particularly at risk for this kind of treatment. Another group, Women, Action and the Media (http://womenactionmedia.org/twitter-report/twitter-abuse-infographic/), looked exclusively at Twitter activity and found that among writers, 27 percent of women had experienced some kind of hate speech directed at them, while another 22 percent were the subject of doxxing, where their personal, private information had been published online, leaving them susceptible to having their identity stolen or, worse, vulnerable to personal, physical attacks in their own homes. It’s not that these women are “making” themselves easier targets online. “I think they’re the typical targets,” Ferrier said of women in general. “When you think about the kinds of issues we have in society, the physical world, they translate into the technology we have built online. Gender bias in society translates into the kinds of intimidation women experience online in these kinds of platforms and forums.” That these trolls largely stay anonymous provides them a sense of safety in their own identity while attacking another “without repercussion, without consequence,” she said. “I think there’s another aspect as well. If you think about this as a young teenager, a boy in a basement who has self-esteem issues, doing this in his free time because he gets a power trip off of it. That might be partly true. But what we’re seeing is a concerted effort by groups online to shut down powerful women’s voices, and that includes women who have an opinion.” Ferrier points to a female reporter in Europe who asked, innocently enough, why more women shouldn’t appear on currency and, as a result, received many death threats. For every woman whose story of online intimidation, threats of death or rape or physical harm become public, there are hundreds more who live in fear and silence. In April, the Knight Foundation gave Ferrier at $35,000 grant to start Troll Busters (http://www.troll-busters.com), an online suite of services she’s developing to support targets of online harassment, particular women writers, journalists and publishers. Not only is she looking to provide assistance and tools for women in online media, she’s hoping to flood those women who have been targeted with positive messages through one component of Troll Busters called HeartMob. There’s a twofold goal here, Ferrier said. “What I hope it does as well is send a message to trolls that someone outside the person they’re targeting is watching and collecting information,” she said. “Perhaps it puts them in a little bit of fear they’ll be found out.” —

The days of women being catcalled on the street by construction workers are long gone. Now, some women find themselves the subject of unwanted attention, hostility, even death threats while sitting behind their computer screens, doing their jobs or posting their opinions. What little protections are in place to protect women, and especially women writers and journalists, are insufficient and do nothing to discourage these kinds of attacks from online trolls, said Michelle Ferrier, associate dean of innovation at Scripps College of Journalism at Ohio University (https://www.ohio.edu/scrippscollege/index.cfm). And it’s just getting worse. A report from the Pew Research (http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/10/22/part-1-experiencing-online-harassment/) published in revealed that a full 25 percent of women have been sexually harassed online, while 26 percent have been stalked. “I think it points to a problem that’s very gendered and focused around women and the Internet as a tool for communication,” Ferrier said. Women whose online presence is rooted in written communication are particularly at risk for this kind of treatment. Another group, Women, Action and the Media (http://womenactionmedia.org/twitter-report/twitter-abuse-infographic/), looked exclusively at Twitter activity and found that among writers, 27 percent of women had experienced some kind of hate speech directed at them, while another 22 percent were the subject of doxxing, where their personal, private information had been published online, leaving them susceptible to having their identity stolen or, worse, vulnerable to personal, physical attacks in their own homes. It’s not that these women are “making” themselves easier targets online. “I think they’re the typical targets,” Ferrier said of women in general. “When you think about the kinds of issues we have in society, the physical world, they translate into the technology we have built online. Gender bias in society translates into the kinds of intimidation women experience online in these kinds of platforms and forums.” That these trolls largely stay anonymous provides them a sense of safety in their own identity while attacking another “without repercussion, without consequence,” she said. “I think there’s another aspect as well. If you think about this as a young teenager, a boy in a basement who has self-esteem issues, doing this in his free time because he gets a power trip off of it. That might be partly true. But what we’re seeing is a concerted effort by groups online to shut down powerful women’s voices, and that includes women who have an opinion.” Ferrier points to a female reporter in Europe who asked, innocently enough, why more women shouldn’t appear on currency and, as a result, received many death threats. For every woman whose story of online intimidation, threats of death or rape or physical harm become public, there are hundreds more who live in fear and silence. In April, the Knight Foundation gave Ferrier at $35,000 grant to start Troll Busters (http://www.troll-busters.com), an online suite of services she’s developing to support targets of online harassment, particular women writers, journalists and publishers. Not only is she looking to provide assistance and tools for women in online media, she’s hoping to flood those women who have been targeted with positive messages through one component of Troll Busters called HeartMob. There’s a twofold goal here, Ferrier said. “What I hope it does as well is send a message to trolls that someone outside the person they’re targeting is watching and collecting information,” she said. “Perhaps it puts them in a little bit of fear they’ll be found out.” —

First Boston had the Big Dig; now the local NPR station, WBUR (http://www.wbur.org), is undergoing its own massive construction project. WBUR's Executive Editor for Digital Tiffany Campbell, fresh off a collaboration with It’s All Journalism at the Online News Association conference, said that “the redesign,” as it’s known internally, is at the “end of the beginning” of what will be a lengthy overhaul of WBUR’s digital presence. “I think we’ve done something really special,” she said of the project, which began earlier this year. “We’re working on a beta version of our site right now that we hope to release to the public soon,” one that will still run WordPress on the backend but which will be geared to be “super-fast on mobile.” The experience for listeners has to be immersive, engaging and easy to use. The audio player on most newssites is not much more than a rectangular box tucked into a corner that could’ve otherwise been used for a story, Campbell said. It deserves a better design with more prominent, attractive placement. “Our next big opportunity is on mobile,” she said. “We want to be able to not just replicate the experience of a radio. We need to be that solid, for sure. … We want to bring the serendipity back into it,” and make listening to the station, whether online or off, as varied and rich as the environment for streaming music. Roughly 60 percent of WBUR’s audience is mobile, but there’s still a strong group that listens to the station via their desktops. That means the station has to “do everything” and upgrade the service available to all users, regardless of how they come by WBUR. “In some ways, it’s very freeing. Designing for mobile is exciting in the sense that you get to pare down and think about how people use your product in a way we weren’t really thinking about when we were building a site around text and images," Campbell said. It’s a similar challenge for websites centered heavily on video, she added, going from “a lot of boxes” and trying to break out of that mode to incorporate new things. There’s also the challenge of making “super-fans” happy while creating a welcoming website for “drive-by traffic,” or listeners who arrive at the site from social media, Google or other avenues. It’s important to connect the new site with the station’s personality, connecting listeners with “what we do, what our model is or who we are” without looking like “any other blog post on the Internet. … We want to make the same connection digitally that we do on the air.”

First Boston had the Big Dig; now the local NPR station, WBUR (http://www.wbur.org), is undergoing its own massive construction project. WBUR's Executive Editor for Digital Tiffany Campbell, fresh off a collaboration with It’s All Journalism at the Online News Association conference, said that “the redesign,” as it’s known internally, is at the “end of the beginning” of what will be a lengthy overhaul of WBUR’s digital presence. “I think we’ve done something really special,” she said of the project, which began earlier this year. “We’re working on a beta version of our site right now that we hope to release to the public soon,” one that will still run WordPress on the backend but which will be geared to be “super-fast on mobile.” The experience for listeners has to be immersive, engaging and easy to use. The audio player on most newssites is not much more than a rectangular box tucked into a corner that could’ve otherwise been used for a story, Campbell said. It deserves a better design with more prominent, attractive placement. “Our next big opportunity is on mobile,” she said. “We want to be able to not just replicate the experience of a radio. We need to be that solid, for sure. … We want to bring the serendipity back into it,” and make listening to the station, whether online or off, as varied and rich as the environment for streaming music. Roughly 60 percent of WBUR’s audience is mobile, but there’s still a strong group that listens to the station via their desktops. That means the station has to “do everything” and upgrade the service available to all users, regardless of how they come by WBUR. “In some ways, it’s very freeing. Designing for mobile is exciting in the sense that you get to pare down and think about how people use your product in a way we weren’t really thinking about when we were building a site around text and images," Campbell said. It’s a similar challenge for websites centered heavily on video, she added, going from “a lot of boxes” and trying to break out of that mode to incorporate new things. There’s also the challenge of making “super-fans” happy while creating a welcoming website for “drive-by traffic,” or listeners who arrive at the site from social media, Google or other avenues. It’s important to connect the new site with the station’s personality, connecting listeners with “what we do, what our model is or who we are” without looking like “any other blog post on the Internet. … We want to make the same connection digitally that we do on the air.”