Notes from Facebook for
Reporting and Storytelling, May 16, 2012
Poynter NewsU Webinar
with Facebook Journalism director Vadim Lavrisuk
Follow the Twitter convo at the #nuwebinar feed
Recent Facebook
Statistics
• The average Facebook user spends 26 minutes on the site
per day.
• The amount of Shared Content on the site has doubled in
the past two years. 450B pieces of content are shared daily. The average user shared
150 items/month.
• There are 900M active monthly users on Facebook. 500M use
mobile apps.
Useful for
Journalists and News Organizations
• Facebook search is a Rolodex of 850M, searchable by place
and keywords
• Sources increasingly respond quicker to Facebook content
as it humanizes Journalists.
• Journalists can now use one profile to distinctly share
personal and professional information by using the Subscribe features.
Subscribers are not Friends and can only see posts directed to them via the
Public Only button when you status update.
• Facebook’s social discovery program will recommend those
who Like the Times Colonist Page to also Subscribe to anyone on Facebook who
lists the Times Colonist as an employer.
• Reporters who publicly post behind-the-scenes photos and
videos of their work increase subscribers the most quickly as it lends a more
credible and human edge to their professional work.
• Posts with a journalist’s or news organization’s analysis receive 20 per cent more
hits.
• Posts with 5 lines of text and a thumbnail receive 60 per
cent more hits.
• There is an 85 per cent increase of clicks on links on
Saturdays!
• The highest traffic times on Facebook are (EST) 7, 8, 10
a.m. and 4, 5, 12 p.m., Midnight and 2 a.m.
• Facebook drives a lot of traffic to news websites (and
advertisers) with a 500 per cent increase in referrals in the past two years.
• $$$News organizations can monetize their Facebook presence
by using a sponsored Social App, such as the Washington Post does.
Billion-dollar software companies such as Zinga exist on this.$$$$
• News organizations can increase their Likes (ie. Targeted
readership) by offering premier content and interactive polls, contests and
posts if the reader Likes the page.
• Real-time news updates on Facebook (and Twitter) drive
readers to news sites throughout the story development and encourage them to
respond with response and valuable content.
• The Timeline feature can be used to document the news
organization’s rich history by adding important dates and content, as well as
to document an unfolding project.
From Bombay, with love: My time with the Dirty Wall Project in Saki Naka slum community, Mumbai
We step out of the autorickshaw onto the side of a dust, traffic and waste-filled road. The people, dogs and cars move around each other like notes in a symphony that miraculously do not collide – at least not as often as you’d think. The brown veil of pollution hangs low, intensifying every shallow breath, sweet and sour scent to this newcomer’s senses. We follow a clearing through a garbage dump of sorts and come upon the entrance to the Saki Naka slum community in the Andheri East area of Mumbai.... Read the full post on the Dirty Wall Project website: http://dirtywallproject.com/blog/?p=2721&pid=image-1392
I’m laying on a bed watching my newborn nephew squirm and stare like a little shrimp with wide inky eyes, not yet quite part of this world, a tiny fish plucked from the water. We’re in the home I grew up in and helped build, in the room where my father spent his last days just over eight years ago. Today would have been his 60th birthday, so we’re baking a cake – angel food, obviously. Here I am again, listening intently for another’s breath and heartbeat. This one is so small yet strong. He is his grandfather’s namesake, David, born on his father’s 30th birthday – a breath of life and joy in a family that’s seen too much loss and sorrow in the past 10 years. I am reminded, bitterly, of the days and weeks spent in this room, slipping in and out of sleep as I watched my father die from cancer. I remember the endless episodes of Law and Order, reading him the Lee Valley tools catalogue, massaging his swollen feet and the ever-present soundtrack of CBC radio. I remember sitting vigil for days when he first slipped out of consciousness. I dozed off and awoke to find him gone – literally, not there. The bed was empty. Confusion and panic ensued. His slippers were also gone. Could someone barely 100-lbs, on intravenous morphine, who hadn’t spoken or woke for three days just get up and take off? Apparently, yes. Dad had an abrupt second wind and seeing me asleep took advantage of his chance to escape. It was Saturday, you see, perhaps his last. This meant it might be his last chance ever to hit a garage sale. We found him trucking down our street, coming from the multi-family, cul-de-sac yard sale a block away, with a ‘90s Casio keyboard and various trinkets in tow. I have no idea where he got cash. He was eccentric, defiant and amusing to the end. I am reminded of the labour of death. The waiting, the pain, the love, the unabashed humour about bodily functions and frailties. The fear and taking over of inevitable physical change. The departure. The arrival. Is the labour of death not so different from the labour of birth? Change of any kind is laborious, especially when the focus is on the endings – of a life, a love, a career, a path. Cultural mythologist Joseph Campbell said. “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” He also said, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” This is why change is so hard – it breaks us. When, and if, we’re able to put ourselves together do we become “stronger in our broken places,” as Hemingway suggests? Leonard Cohen sings: “There is a crack in everything/That’s where the light gets in.” And if it doesn’t get in do we remain broken, static in our shadowy traumas, surges of fear lashing in our bellies like live wires? This is the journey, the individual adventure. The decision to take a one-year sabbatical from my job as a newspaper reporter stemmed equally from opportunity and physical exhaustion. I’ve sometimes compared Island life to Calypso’s Isle in Ulysses, a sensual womb of comforts and support at its best and a stagnating time warp at its worst. As hard as it is to leave, even for a short while, it can only be best. This year is as much for professional development as it is personal. Courses, conferences and fellowships are being considered. But a more experiential form of learning calls first. This stems from an interest in how people receive and share information that matters most and what new forms of storytelling emerge. After only a week back in my hometown Sechelt, I’m reminded of the intriguing travel of news in small communities. Stories break with “Did you hear?” at the mall, the hardware store, in grocery parking lots. A few graphs in the local rag or even the big-city dailies can’t compare to the build and unraveling of personal connections, detail and emotional responses to tragedies or hot issues. It’s good to immerse yourself in new communities every now and then – especially for a journalist. We spend our working lives gathering intimate details about others in short intense exchanges to invite interest, dialogue and change – yet we strive to maintain an emotional distance to be objective, to get the job done. When the distancing seeps into your personal life is when it’s time to change, to challenge perspective. Tomorrow, I’ll leave for Amsterdam to meet a dear friend from journalism school. One week later, I’ll leave for India – I’m not sure for how long or what exactly will unfold. I am fortunate to arrive in Mumbai and spend time with a Victoria friend, Kane Ryan, his parents, and the Dirty Wall Project – a charity supporting one of the many slum communities with the mantra “See a need and fill it.” For the past year I’ve followed Kane’s blog, http://dirtywallproject.com/blog/, a frank, earnest and visually stunning portrayal of his work, colleagues and community. I plan to connect with a certain newspaper night security guard, who works two jobs to support his family in Victoria and a rural school in Northern India, as well as a high school friend of my father’s who left Canada to become a Hari Krishna in the ‘70s and work with inner city kids in Bangalore. One of the most-difficult items to leave will be my laptop, which I’m trading for a moleskine notebook – where poems and drawings will replace tweets and third-person status updates…. Until an internet café calls – which I’m sure it will often.
This was a beautiful event to witness: A surprise wedding proposal planned by a stealth chorister and hundreds of fellow singers. Beautiful. The Gettin’ Higher Choir did more than sing about love and happiness at an afternoon concert Sunday. The more-than-200-member group helped a fellow chorister in an elaborate surprise proposal to his girlfriend, also in the choir. Choral director Shivon Robinsong invited Niilo Van Steinburg and Sara McLaughlin to introduce themselves to the audience before the choir was set to sing “Love and Happiness,” a song by Kimmie Rhodes and Emmylou Harris. Robinsong told the crowd they like to invite choir members to tell their stories every now and then. Unbeknownst to McLaughlin, the invitation was a ploy to get the couple stage front — a ploy planned by her boyfriend, Robinson, co-director Denis Donnelly and hundreds of singers. McLaughlin told the audience: “Just after we started dating, Niilo thought we could join the Gettin’ Higher Choir as something we could do together as a couple.” Van Steinburg said he enjoyed the choir so much he wanted to try conducting it — right then. Robinsong obliged and Van Steinburg took the podium, lifting his hands to a wall of voices singing the name “Sara.” He asked to Donnelly to help him the second time and as they sang his girlfriend’s name, he got down on one knee and offered her a crystal rose singing, “Will you marry ...” with the choir. The “me” was sung by Van Steinburg alone. The audience, which included many of the couple’s family members who had travelled for the surprise, went wild. McLaughlin said yes and the couple sang “Love and Happiness” side-by-side with the choir and soloist Kim E. Willoughby, gazing into each other’s eyes. Afterward, McLaughlin said she almost didn’t make the performance because of a cold. She had no idea what her partner was planning as he cleverly used the rose to propose instead of her grandmother’s heirloom ring and Yukon gold that they’d discussed in the past. Robinsong said this is the first surprise proposal the choir has performed, but it is not the first romance to blossom in the group. Several couples have met in the Gettin’ Higher Choir and some have married. “Too many to even count,” Robinsong said. “Something about singing together really opens up the heart. Plus, people look very beautiful when they sing.” The Gettin’ Higher Choir was founded in 1996 by Robinsong. It is an non-auditioned community choir with a mission to raise funds for community projects in Africa and B.C. Sunday’s concert was the second in a series to raise money for the Power of Hope, a non-profit arts program for youth. Texas singer Rhodes was scheduled to perform at the concerts but cancelled two weeks ago because of her husband’s illness. Luckily, Willoughby and Cortes Island singer/singwriter Rick Bockner stepped in to save the day. For more information on the Gettin’ Higher Choir, visit: gettinhigherchoir.ca spetrescu@timescolonist.com
In reporting some stories, words are not enough. Or, they can only convey part of the story. This is what attracted me, a newspaper reporter, to using video as a medium online. It’s disheartening sometimes to hear veteran journalists in my field dismiss the web without considering its use in sharing comprehensive, heartening stories in the public interest. I wish creativity would replace cynicism, because we could all use their expertise and ideas.
This video was created to accompany a print feature about budget cuts to weight loss surgeries in B.C. I worked with fellow reporter, Katherine Dedyna, as she gathered facts and focus. Her story focused on the larger issue – wait times – and went into incredible detail. This is the benefit of print reporting.
I chose to focus my video on two people affected by obesity and show their lives and emotions. This is the benefit of video. It is one thing to describe the difficulties a 500-plus lb 26-year-old man faces. It is another to see him walk, breathe and hear the pain in his voice. Just as it is one thing to describe a weight-loss surgery success story, it is another to see a young mother who once weighed 328 lbs touch her toes and jump on a trampoline.
The video was shot on a Kodak Zi8 and edited in iMovie.
My nonna Chiarinna Bevacqua taught me to make gnocchi – sort of – on a recent trip to Prince George, B.C. Nonna is from the Calabrian village Mangone in Italy. She came to Canada in the 60s with her five children to be with my nonno, Felice Bevacqua. He had left Italy to work on the railroad in Prince Rupert several years earlier and struggled to save the money to bring his family over. The generous Italian family he was boarding with put away a portion of his rent for years until there was enough money for the whole family to make the trip.
This story is a note shared on Facebook by my friend Amy Osborne, a doctor working in Haiti during the horrific recent cholera outbreak. I met Amy a few years ago when a group of friends and I invited her to speak at a fundraiser about her experiences as a midwife in Darfur. She has the storyteller's gift, a great heart and courage to help others. She inspired me to donate to the Cholera Treatment Centres set up by Médecins Sans Frontières in Haiti. I hope you do the same: http://www.msf.ca/
i was hunched down by a bed, making a patient drink ORS when Deska, our driver, came up and tapped me frantically on the shoulder. he tells me in French (most people here speak creole) that there is an emergency. i follow him to the other ward and find a teenage boy lying half-naked on one of the cholera beds. i think to myself that he must be mortified to be lying there, so exposed, his naked buttocks hanging over the hole cut in the cot so his diarrhea will simply fall into the bucket placed below his bed. as i get closer i start to see that he's not mortified because he's barely conscious. his eyes have sunken into his head and the skin on his face is pulled taut over his now-prominent cheekbones. i rush over and feel for a pulse in his right wrist. it's not there and his hand is cool. i grab his other wrist and there's still no pulse. i tell deska to run for one of the doctors and he goes. i feel the boy's neck and i can't feel his carotid pulse. i know he's alive because his breathing is fast and furious. i ask one of the nurses for a stethoscope and she tells me there are none. i ask her to start an IV in one arm and i'll start one in the other. she gets to work and can't find a vein- he's severely dehydrated. another nurse comes in and i ask her where the doctor is. she shrugs. I tell her to start the next IV and i go run for a doctor who i'm hoping, at the very least, will have a stethoscope and, at most, will be better at starting IVs on severely dehydrated patients than we are. i find Kanako and she goes to find one of the elusive doctors while i go back to check on the boy. his breathing is slowing down. his brother, who has clearly been told in my absence that ORS is the key to survival, is trying to pour ORS down his throat. i want to tell him to stop because the boy is barely unconscious and can't swallow, but i also know that it's too late for this boy and i think the brother needs to feel that he did something. i notice something white coming out of the boy's mouth and i look closer- white foam is bubbling out. it begins to pour out of his mouth and both nostrils. at first i wipe it away, but then i notice that he's not choking on it because he's no longer breathing. i sit back and just watch it flow out. the doctors arrive and one of them stands back and observes (he has a tendency to be less than inclined to touch cholera patients) while the other doctor does a few half-hearted chest compressions. we haven't been able to find a vein and there is nothing more to be done. it's over.
there is little time for compassion in a cholera outbreak. the "corpses" are highly contagious and need to be quickly cleaned with disinfectant and then put in a body-bag to be buried. i want to give the family time to grieve- they just lost a 19-year-old boy- but the families of the other patients want him gone immediately. someone runs for a body-bag. i pull the sheet over his face as people are gathering around to gawk. his mother is in shock and doesn't seem to believe that he's really gone. she goes over and pulls the sheet down. she touches his face. she pulls the sheet down further and touches his stomach. then she touches his feet, one at a time. i don't know what she's looking for, but she doesn't find it. she sits down beside him and looks incredulous. I am about to be the only person in the room to cry so i step out onto the balcony and take deep breaths. i manage to pull it together.
Someone arrives with the bag and Kanako lays it out on the bed next to his. together we open it and his mother and brother take his arms and legs and lift him into it. Kanako and i reach in and take his hands and lay them on his chest. then we zip the bag closed, over his still open eyes. he doesn't look dead. he looks like even he can't believe that he's gone- that one day he was a normal teenage boy and the next day he died the most degrading death a human being can ever experience.
cholera is merciless. it robs you of any and all dignity you once had. untreated, you can lose up to 20 litres of fluid a day in the form of diarrhea and vomit. you will lose all of your strength and you will literally lie in a pile of your own diarrhea until you die. the management is simple. you need fluids. it's just that easy. cholera treatment centers (CTCs) are easy to set up. it just takes resources- people and supplies. it just takes someone actually caring.
why this STILL hasn't been properly implemented here, I have no idea.
I don't know why I have such a strong belief in justice. but i do. as a Christian, a Libra, a woman, a human being... I have this intrinsic belief in justice- that the world is just. or more realistically, that it can and should be just. in spite of all of the places i've been and the things i've seen that have shown me time and again that life is anything but just, i still believe it can be. and what's happening here isn't just.
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