New media and monks

A few big ideas from today’s NINA Fall Conference. Speakers Steve Buttry and Curt Chandler were outstanding, by the way.

Curt’s five tips for becoming a better online journalist:

1. Make a Facebook page and use it every day for a month.

2. Showcase a piece of reader-submitted content.

3. Record some family history and share it.

4. Interact with your Web site by contacting the newsroom with a news tip, and by buying an ad.

5. Read and share a great story every week

And a quote: “ Make the story people care the most about the story we do the best each day.”

Obstacles and monks

At his lunchtime keynote, Steve talked about overcoming obstacles, both in covering a big story and in successfully innovating as a newspaper. A few of his thoughts that I scribbled down:

“Part of our DNA in this business is, we’re going to get the story, no matter the obstacles. That’s the approach we need to take toward innovation.”

He talked about visiting the Guttenberg museum in Mainz, Germany – how emotional it was for him to see original Gutenberg bibles and the history of print. The museum also has pre-Gutenberg Bibles, each handcrafted by monks. Moveable type presented a huge change.

“But their product was a message that they believed in their souls to be the word of God.”

And Gutenberg had given them a new method to deliver that message to the world.

Today, we have a technology that will change the world just as moveable type did in the 15th century. Our product is not ink on paper. It’s vital information. As long as we understand that, then we’ll figure this out.