The idea of backing up ideas and driving home a point with data visualization is emerging quickly.  And it’s no wonder that there’s a dearth of it when it comes to Philadelphia media.  But this article absolutely nails it.  Accompanied by the text of the article is a map of central Philadelphia with the neighborhood’s borders in red with multiple tabs to accentuate the [lack of] neighborhood necessities like food, health care and education.  Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, any time you can add quality data visualization, really flesh out the point you’re trying to get across, it’s worth like a gillion words.

I am continually amazed how the worlds of technology and journalism continue to collide. [Special Report: How the city serves Eastern North Philadelphia]

Coming off of the Online News Association conference a couple weeks ago, the idea of engaging our readers has taken on new meaning to me.  I’ve done a bunch of updates The Frankford Gazette to help that on.

• I should have done this long ago but I added the Social Profile Widgit from StudioPress for the Gazette’s social media icons.
• I switched the content panel from the right side to the left.  I need more space on the sidebar to add content rich stuff and making it bigger on the left hand side would mean our users with screen resolutions of 800×600 would barely see any post content.  So I put the posts on the left so they could be seen even with small resolutions and just let the sidebar float off the screen to the right.
• Keeping with the engagement aspect. I set up recent comments to be displayed.  I’m hoping that induces people to converse
• Following the decision to stop rehashing news from other sites, I’ve set up an Outside.in stream.
• I really like SeeClickFix.  I’ve gotten results from it when I wanted a wrecked car removed from Large Street.  I’m hoping that putting it in our sidebar will induce residents to use it.  I’m really annoyed that they display an advertisement underneath it.  It’s the only ad up there and just really ruins my flow.  My father says he doesn’t mind.
• I found a widget for displaying the Gazette’s community calendar.

Coming back from the Online News Association conference in DC, I really want to focus on engaging our readers(that means Frankford’s residents) and I think that really means putting together original content and commentary.  On top of that, we’re just spinning our wheels when we put efforts into tracking links about Frankford and then posting them on the site.  That’s effort that we could be putting into going after real leads and stories.  For example, there has been wine suppliers in the Globe Dye Works building for about 5 months now, and I haven’t gotten around to even talking to them.  But I have posted a week old link about Tony Payton coming to the aid of a drug addled girl.   I could have used that time to shoot off an email to wine guys.  It probably would have taken less time to put together too.

I think this is going to be hard, because we rely on aggregating links during slow times, and from a distance it looks like we’re doing something.  But it’s fluff.  And I think for us to offer something unique to the community, we need to add value to the conversation, and it’s original content man.  But we still need to be able to offer our site visitors the news that’s going on in Frankford, so I’ve thrown up an RSS widget to outside.in’s Frankford stream and placed it into our side bar.

I think this will be a real test to our citizen journalism skills.  We need to go out and get our own stories, and pull together our own commentary on the state of the neighborhood.  My fear is that we’re only going to be throwing up a post a week, when we really should be putting quality stuff up every other day.  So I guess we’ll see how it goes.

I just found what I could call a definition of citizen journalism on the Knight’s Citizen News Network’s website.  It’s listed as a qualifying question for getting onto their Google map of local media projects:

Does this site feature at least some citizen journalism (original reporting, analysis, commentary, reviews, photos, audio, video. etc. of local news, events or issues by people who are not employed by professional news organization)?

So we might infer that citizen journalism would provide original reporting, analysis, commentary, reviews, photos, audio, video. etc. of local news, events or issues by people who are not employed by professional news organization.  Good to know, we’ll try to keep that up.

I sat in on J-Lab’s pre-conference workshop yesterday about Plugging into a Networked Journalism.  The main topic was about how media outlets can leverage citizens into content providers.  While it seemed geared more toward the professional, I got a great glimpse at seeing what a media outlet is looking to see from community based news outlets like the Frankford Gazette(And what will keep getting me invited to conferences).

So here are some takeaways that relate to the Frankford Gazette:

• This conference has reinforced the notion that content is king.  Before and after pics are cute, but original reporting is what separates the FG from “niche blogs”.
• The Gazette’s first mission is improving the community, and that requires engagement.  My father does a great job of keeping the community calendar active to benefit Frankford’s residents, but from a self sustaining angle, we need to keep our readers engaged.  That means having a conversation with them and not just throwing out information.  If they comment, we respond.  And always encourage them to submit content ideas and tips.  Sounds intuitive, but we’ve been kinda just speaking to the wind lately.  We need our visitors to help us out more.
• Social media is a great engager but our readership is weak in it for some reason.  As far as I can see, not a lot of Frankford residents use twitter, nor do residents(outside of students) have Facebook accounts.  Most likely cause many residents are poor and don’t have computers? I dunno.
• have to get away from this one column blog format and look more like a professional news outfit
• we have to push the political more.  I heard a great quote yesterday, “if you’re not getting into fights, you’re just a publist”.  Frankford is mired in political infighting, it’s probably the biggest issue past crime and we dodge because it’s hard.  We have to get in the mix.

And here are some discoveries for which my father and I(more my father than I) deserve pats on the back:

• journalist organizations are very keen on training citizens to become regular contributers to their sites, but they have a very hard time sticking it out.  We started without any external influence and without any support or training, and are still running steady after 3 years.
• our content has triggered further coverage by professional news outlets of issues that affect Frankford.  Last example being coverage of Overington Park’s tree vs dog issues were first covered by us.  We have been regularly used as resource brokers by outside journalists looking to contact residents and organizations inside of Frankford for stories.
• most cities have news outfits that are looking for content partners, we’re a potential content partner that has no news outlet to partner with, what is wrong with Philly?

I’d also like to throw my two sense in to the question of whether a site needs to make money to be sustainable.  There is no money in the Frankford Gazette.  There’s no shot of money even on the horizon.  But we continue with the site for the same reasons that people attend civic meetings or go to park cleanups: they believe it makes their neighborhood better.  I hate civic meetings, but I like wordpress, so this how I contribute.

For reasons I’m still coming to grips with, I decided to buy a house in June of 2007.  I suppose the urge to be near my parents, it’s closeness to the Market Frankford El leading to my work, and it’s cheapness per square foot, let me to buy a house in Northwood, which I think everyone would agree is the nicest section in 19124.

Knowing that I was about to return to the home of my forefathers, around May of that year, my father started sending me all these links about Frankford from local online news outlets.  Mostly they came from philly.com and the Northeast Times.  I guess he was bringing me up to speed on the area’s issues, but I told him I didn’t really have time to look at it all, and I told him to blog about.  I remember that he knew what a blog was but didn’t know how to create one.  And all I had to do was point him to blogger.com and off he went(http://frankfordgazette.blogspot.com/).

He co-opted the name Frankford Gazette from Frankford’s own daily newspaper that thrived at the turn of the 20th century, which went silent decades ago(and I think had ended up being owned by the Inquire).

I didn’t pay much attention to his efforts at first, that is until he started talking about getting contacted by Frankford’s CDC, the local civics, politicians, etc.  And then I started seeing that he was getting readers, and information contributors.  And that was that.  I love a winner, so I hopped on.

Neither he nor I knew nothing of citizen journalism.  Kinda still don’t.

[link] http://frankfordgazette.com

As I told him during our meeting, I think most of the interest that the Gazette gets from journalists is because they’re curious about how we’re doing it, rather than what we’re doing. They don’t care so much about Frankford, but they’re extremely interested in what motivates us and what we might need to continue doing it. By now, I smile every time I hear a non profit come up to us and say “we’re not really ready to give you any money, but if we were, what would you do it?” It’s so neat to find ourselves in this “media revolution” since it wasn’t our objective at the start.

Anyways, he notes how we’re all up on getting into the collaborative. As advocates for Frankford, there’s not really any downside for us. We don’t make any money off of what we do, so we don’t have any incentive to be proprietary with it. And whatever happens with this central website concept, I can’t imagine it being more work for us to do.

The PhillyCoder idea takes way more time than The Frankford Gazette, since not only do I have to blog, I have to write programs for the blog, so it’s kinda starving right now. But I am running and doing other things to amuse myself, so I thought I might start up yet another blog to talk about anything under the sun. I like running, maybe I’ll talk about running.

I’m saving myself the headache of hosting it on my own and just started a wordpress hosted blog. It’s sooooo much easier.