Mar 22nd, 2011
Guest Speaker: Steve Buttry
Steve Buttry, Director of Community Engagement at TBD, came to speak to our Comm. 361 class today about utilizing social media and digital online tools across various platforms.
Copyright: tbd.com
Buttry started off his presentation by giving out free goodies from TBD. Hats and iPhone 4 covers with the TBD logo on them. Smart and easy advertising!
He then showed us a website that covered the horrific 35W bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis. The article, titled “13 seconds in August”, is an interactive photo that allows viewers to scroll across the whole bridge and get individual stories and information on all the tragedies. It also has an excellent form of crowdsourcing in which readers can e-mail the StarTribune with any information regarding the disasters that are missing information.
He than made a profound statement in which he said “As a writer, YOU have control.” he then said to think of any story in this regard, “How do you want to explore this story?”
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Gather sound, interviews, videos, pictures and anything else that’s going to effectively ADD to your story in a positive way.
He then showed us a story that was done by the DesMoinesRegister on the Parkersburg, Iowa tornado. It used an interactive map with before, after and remodeled photos of houses and buildings. There were also lots of videos that helped the story out. It basically became a vehicle for self-guided stories and opened the story up to more individual smaller stories. Check out the story here.
The coolest tool that he showed us was GlastoTag. It’s basically a website where photos are uploaded from big events and people can tag themselves in these pictures from the event. VERY COOL!
We then discussed the ever popular Twitter. When asked how Twitter has changed his journalism and he made a few great points:
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Made him get to the point of a story faster.
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Made him a better writer.
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Instant feedback is better than waiting for next day responses.
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Instead of going to a quote in a story, he can go to a Twitter tweet.
Finally, he ended his presentation with some great quotes for aspiring journalists.
“Always be curious. If a question occurs to you, ASK somebody.”
“Never say no for somebody else. Try it out first.”
“Curiosity and trying new things will make you stand out when applying for jobs.”
