Archive for May, 2010
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Why not have it with us?
Posted by Lisa Rowan in Events on May 28, 2010
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been inviting bloggers to meet with us at informal sessions around the area from Barracks Row, to Takoma Park and Clarendon. It’s inspiring to talk shop with passionate writers and creators who care about their communities, and it’s always fun to chat over a beer or two.
But it’s about time we let more people in on the secret.
To help kick off Digital Capital Week , we’d like to invite you to meet us for brunch at Mie N Yu on June 12 at 11 a.m. Bloggers, local news junkies, aspiring journalists, neighborhood activists, social media fans, you’re all invited! Learn more about our blogger network and enjoy a delicious brunch…and maybe a mimosa or two. Please RSVP before we run out of space—we can only meet so many of you at once!
See you at the pancakes!
EDIT 6/1, 9:15 a.m.: Holy moly, folks! We’re out of tickets already, despite our announcement just before the holiday weekend. Either you guys are really hungry, or you’re really excited. I’m sort of hoping for both.
If you’re a blogger who wanted to attend but missed out on the RSVP, let us know.
A leap of faith: How I ended up at TBD
Posted by Mandy Jenkins in People on May 25, 2010
Six weeks ago, when I was first interviewing for this job here at TBD, I had no idea what I was in for. In fact, I still don’t know (and that’s part of the fun). I have mornings when I sit at my desk and think, “How did I get here? What the heck am I doing?”
I left behind a relatively stable position (by newspaper standards, anyway) in the same newsroom as my husband and several of our friends to move to a new city to work for a website that doesn’t yet exist in a position with no posted job duties. Was it crazy? Of course!
Before coming here, I’d felt like I was standing in place. I worked in newspapers for the past six years and I felt, despite our best efforts, we were often slow, insulated and out of touch. It happens when you’ve been in business for a couple of centuries.
I’d first read last fall that Jim Brady was putting together a team of journalists to try covering local news in a new way. He wanted to make a newsroom that could admit it didn’t have all the answers on every story — and wouldn’t hesitate to call on the community itself to help fill in the gaps. Instead of appointing its own neighborhood experts, this new site would bring existing experts in the blogosphere into the fold as partners.
At that time, we’d been toying with some of the same ideas in Cincinnati, even starting a couple of blog networks of our own. TBD seemed to be taking that community-influenced approach one step further by making it integral to the entire newsgathering process. It was a new way of doing old business and I was intrigued.
When Brady hired Steve Buttry, an editor and new media blogger I’d been following for quite awhile, to head up the new site’s community engagement efforts, I knew he meant business. The same day Steve’s hire was announced, I sent him DM on Twitter, telling him I wanted in. I also I sent an epic, Jerry Maguire-esque e-mail to both editors explaining my desire to break out of newspapers and try something new. I said I was willing to take a risk if they’d be willing to take a chance on me. Lucky for me, they listened. The rest is (blog) history.
Now we’re hard at work building the kind of news operation we always wanted to read. I can’t say what the future will hold or what TBD will look like on launch day, but I hope you, as readers and potential partners in this crazy endeavor, will be willing to take a chance on us, too.
Fun times at our first blogger meetup
Posted by Lisa Rowan in Events on May 21, 2010
Last night we held our first info session about the TBD blogger network that will highlight content from local blogs and websites. We had a lot of time talking to the writers about what they do and how we can work together. Bonus: snacks! Thanks to everyone who came out to learn more about us. If you want to be a part of our next info session, let me know. Check out more photos on our Flickr page.
The crowd spills out onto the Ugly Mug's patio during our first meetup.
How to get a job at TBD, or someplace like it
Posted by ctouhey in Uncategorized on May 21, 2010
Steve Buttry, TBD’s Director of Community Engagement, has some tips on landing your next job in digital journalism.
Why TBD?
Posted by Jeff Sonderman in Crowdsourcing, Media, Partnerships on May 20, 2010
It's about the people.
Exactly what TBD.com will be is a big question these days.
But while the whats whos and hows of TBD are still taking shape, I’m going to answer what I think is a more interesting question — why.
Why TBD? How is it different?
I came to TBD from the world of newspapers to help develop a new kind of news. Some principles are the same online as offline — such as accuracy, fairness, public service (I refuse “objectivity“). But some are drastically different. I’ve distilled five beliefs that depart from traditional media thinking and guide what I’m doing at TBD (Speaking for myself here, but I’d bet a month’s Metro fares that my colleagues mostly agree).
• Communities can cover themselves, through blogs and other online tools. We’re not hiring hundreds of professionals to come into your community and decide what you should know about it. You can do that better than we can. We just want to help you.
• Users are smart enough to make their own decisions. You’re adults, I trust you to judge what’s credible and what’s acceptable to you. I don’t need to censor the world in the name of protecting you from it.
• Transparency and disclosure are necessary to empower users and build credibility. You the users have a right to know what we do and how we do it, and to be part of the news process.
• Collaboration, not competition. Others who do journalism in the D.C. area are not the enemy — they are potential partners to help serve users.
• News is a conversation, news is personal, and storytelling has a voice. The distant, formulaic, third-person style of traditional newspaper writing has no place here. We are talking with you, not at you. And we expect you to talk with us.
Following and acting on these beliefs makes better journalism. More relevant, more open, more compassionate, more democratic, more fun and more complete. That’s why TBD.
To get TBD spot, community host Daniel Victor worked through failures and a misplaced e-mail
Posted by Daniel Victor in People on May 19, 2010
Daniel Victor
I spent four years as a reporter at The (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot-News, and I met and heard from a lot of stupid readers. Stunning, really. Unimaginable morons.
But all along, I had this sneaking suspicion: Maybe there are a few news consumers out there who won’t fill me with stabby rage. I already knew there were a lot of people much smarter than me, and maybe they read the news, too. Maybe a cub reporter isn’t the end-all expert on everything from national economic policy to the inner workings of the Derry Township School District.
It’s how I formed the principle that governed my reporting, and ultimately led me to TBD: My readers know way, way more than I do, and there’s no shame in acknowledging that. Limiting your knowledge pool to a Rolodex cuts off a lot of good information. It became a personal quest to show that real people — I grew to like that term better than “readers” — can be wonderfully valuable in shaping the news for the better.
I started by creating a small social network for residents of Hershey, Pa. to discuss local issues and lend their knowledge and experience to my reporting.
It failed.
Then I created a blog that solicited story ideas from real people, put those ideas in poll form, and allowed the real people to vote on which story they most wanted to see us write.
It failed.
Had I not gotten this job, I planned to pitch a blog that would crowdsource my reporting on a weekly micro-issue in the Harrisburg area.
I imagine it would have failed.
Luckily, Lisa Rowan followed me back on Twitter after she was hired as the first of our community hosts. It had been 13 days since I sent Steve Buttry my application, and I hadn’t heard a peep. I was debating whether I should pester him further — he had always quickly responded to my messages in the past, but I was sure he was quite busy — and Lisa assured me that yes, pester him I should.
And it’s a good thing, because it turns out my application fell victim to the job seeker’s worst nightmare: It got lost in his in-box. He never saw it. But we had Twitter-known each other for a long time, and he had me come in three days later for an interview.
Turned out, my aforementioned failures didn’t bother him. As a community host, I would no longer be reporting, but would instead be figuring out the various ways to connect real people to the news process. I had some ideas, and even a few success stories from my time in Harrisburg, but I asked him what would happen the next time I failed.
People would laugh at me, he said. They would tease me: “Hey, remember when you had that awful idea? That was hilarious. You really thought that would work?”
And then I’d get to work on the next one.
Not a stalker, I swear: How I scored a spot on the TBD community engagement team
Posted by Lisa Rowan in People on May 19, 2010
I earned a reputation at my last office. My position, “senior media researcher,” called for me to watch the newspaper industry slowly crack and crumble in front of me. If you’ve been laid off in the last three years, I know who you are. I know the main phone numbers for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal by heart. I’ve been called a stalker. But it was just my job.
I remember when Steve Buttry joined the Gazette and began to develop the “complete community connection” in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I had followed him on Twitter for some time, as a good source for media industry news. I almost dumped him one day in the fall while cleaning out my Twitter list, but something told me to keep him around. As usual, my gut was right. When I learned this winter that he was coming back to D.C. to work on a new local news project, I knew it would be an interesting ride for all involved.
So I tweeted at him, asking to come along. Ten minutes later, we were talking on the phone. It seemed too good to be true, but I pretty much fell out of my chair anyway.
But tweeting was just the beginning.
It quickly became clear that in order to join the unnamed project, I would have to prove that I could do more than ask for a job in fewer than 140 characters. Steve wanted ideas. He wanted to know what I thought someone in community engagement needed to succeed: qualities, talents, skills. He encouraged creative responses. Feeling the pressure and wishing I could have integrated glitter into a creative response, I spent hours Photoshopping the station names out of a Metro system map (Sorry, WMATA) in order to display the ways in which journalism, culture, and a little bit of PR intersect to form community engagement. Every “Metro line” focused on a different element of the job description that I, essentially, was making up as I went along. They all intersected in the middle. Get it? I thought it was crafty.
Not only did I have to sell myself to Steve Buttry; I also had to sell the position to myself. I had some doubts about getting involved in a job that had few clear duties. And joining a start-up — let alone one in journalism — came with a daunting set of risks. I’ve seen enough media failures in the past few years. I didn’t want to be a part of one.
Ultimately, my decision was settled by a few questions: Did I love D.C. ? (Heck yes.) Did I want to be a part of the city and spend a lot of time with the people who live, work, and play here? (You betcha.) Did I get sucked in by the shiny bright lights in the newsroom? (A little.)
So here I sit, in the middle of the newsroom. As we move toward launch and develop the site over time, I’ll continue to face risks.
But remember when everyone said that Twitter would never have a practical purpose?
How to get lost in the pile, or not
Posted by jwestfall in Uncategorized on May 17, 2010
So we’ve been hiring around here. Or, at least, we’ve been trying. Somewhere in the ballpark of 600 to 800 people are vying for a variety of jobs here. (It’s hard to account for the many duplicate applications sent by the overeager.) A lot of the positions are filled, but a lot of them aren’t.
Be assured that if you sent something to us, at least one person with a say has taken a look at it. Your stuff isn’t falling into any cracks. It is being used for @byJulieWestfall’s #resumetip series. And @abeaujon’s mini-series. And occasionally by @jimbradysp, who doesn’t believe that Microsoft Word is a skill. We’ve been going through them all quite thoughtfully, weeding out the red heads, the too-many-exclamation-points, the can’t-use-spellcheckers, and applicants of similar ilk.
If you haven’t heard from us, any of several explanations could apply. Perhaps you specialize in an area that we’re not interested in exploring. Perhaps you’re too good and too expensive for our budget. One secret: We place a lot of emphasis on the cover letter, the ultimate test for a writer. It requires taking a rote format and injecting it with humanity, ingenuity and humor, all while shunning the cliche and conveying new information in a small space. It’s hard, not unlike what we’re trying to do here.
Then again, you might have written a stellar letter but misspelled “proofread” or put a “C” in Editor Erik Wemple’s name.
Talk to TBD on The Internets
Posted by Mandy Jenkins in Crowdsourcing on May 14, 2010
If you’re a blogger or Twitterer in D.C., Northern Virginia or Maryland and you’ve gotten indication some weirdo is following you — that’s probably me. I promise I am not a stalker (at least not right now). Instead, consider me an alien looking to learn your ways and language.
In my first week on the job here at TBD, I’ve found being the social media producer for a website that doesn’t yet exist in a city that doesn’t know you is pretty daunting (whodathunkit?). I’m the new kid in school, lurking invisibly in your hallways and avoiding wedgies.
It’s an odd reversal. I moved here from Cincinnati, OH, where I felt confident in my place in the local Twittersphere. I knew a lot of people and they knew me — from the Twitterati types in the local bar scene to the media hounds and PR flacks, I was virtually surrounded by potential sources and tipsters. Now I’m starting over — and that takes time and plenty of cooperation.
If you’re interested in what you’ve heard about TBD so far, let’s start talking. Get your say in on what you want out of TBD — I’m all ears (or, I guess…eyes?).
I want to hear about your social media circle – what you like, what you can’t stand and what you want out of all those stolen moments you log on the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. Tell me what kind of tools, mobile apps or info you wish you were getting — and we’ll see what we can do to fix the problem. Share your favorite people, blogs and tweetups — and I’ll check them out.
For my part, I’ll keep you up to speed on what we’re doing here — and make sure you’re the first to know when we’re rolling out new stuff (like the TBD official Twitter account – coming soon to a Tweetdeck near you). I’ll try my best to answer your questions about what we’re planning — or anything else you might care to wonder.
If at any point you randomly have an idea, complaint or tip you want to be sure we hear about, you can always just drop #heytbd in a tweet to shout it out to the world.
Volpe to Join TBD
Last week, FishbowlDC managed a nice little story about TBD involving personnel. This startup news site, reported Fishbowl’s Betsy Rothstein, snared a fine journalist from the Washington Post: Paul Volpe, the top web editor for the paper’s national section, was headed to TBD for a key leadership position.
Noted Rothstein, “He joins TBD armed with WaPO’s plan for taking on rival Politico — invaluable information in what is fast-becoming a bitter showdown between the city’s most powerful and rich.”
Never has FishbowlDC more squarely nailed a story. The suggestion that TBD is hiring Volpe to serve as a spy for its Allbritton sibling Politico is just simply dead-on. We at TBD aren’t so interested in Volpe’s killer web skills — we just want him to dish to Harris and VandeHei about how to keep the Post at bay. We at TBD don’t really want the guy to assist us in building databases and directing coverage — we just want a summary of Post memos on national politics. We at TBD don’t want his experience building out whole swaths of web turf — again, it’s all about corporate espionage and underhanded tactics.
We have a new color on our Google calendar set aside for these “Volpe Downloads” with top Politico officials. The sessions are expected to last into summer, at which point Volpe perhaps can get free to do a bit of TBD-related work. And we asked him to dish for us on his plans:
TBD: Of what do you think the current TBD.com blog could use more?
PV: Based on what I gather from all the new media blogs I’ve been reading to prepare for the digital revolution I think it’s safe to say that what TBD.com needs is more Tweets — Tweets and widgets.
TBD: You’re coming from the Washington Post to TBD, an outfit launched by the company that makes Politico. What does this mean for your commute?
PV: Great question. I think the big media angle has been overplayed. I see this more as a local story focused on economic development — it’s really about putting Arlington residents to work in Arlington.
TBD: How hyper do you get about hyperlocal?
PV: I used to get very hyper about local but then my doctor prescribed something geo-targeted for the condition; I only hope that working at TBD doesn’t lead to any adverse effects.
TBD: Your title at the Washington Post appears to be National Innovations Editor. Is that too much pressure? Would you have preferred National Inertia Editor?
PV: Actually, the title gave me a rather unfair advantage in the newsroom in that it made all my ideas seem more forward-looking. I argued unsuccessfully to port over that part of my title — making it something like “managing innovator” — it’s possible they thought I was kidding.
TBD: What are your goals for TBD?
PV: In the short term I hope TBD will contribute to the development of a smarter, savvier, more engaged local audience. But I’ll know we’ve succeeded once we take local and make it global (glocal is how I’m hearing it described around the latte machine).