The Three “Fs” that Led Me to a Product
Feedback, Focus, Form. On to the next stage.
On my previous post I wrote about the need for a content management system (CMS) that would enable journalists to easily create, share, and monetize multimedia stories that matter globally. During the first month of my fellowship here at the Tow-Knight Center I engaged in many discussions with my fellow entrepreneurs and our instructors about journalism (what else?) and our projects. I gave lots of feedback and also received lots of feedback. What did I learn?
1) Feedback is a gift.
Two basic questions started bugging me after spending time talking with colleagues, faculty and mentors:
- Can I as a non-technical founder give life to a prototype during the next two months so I can have a proof of concept? I heard from some that a CMS is a very ambitious (and expensive) project that needs lots of engineers and designers. It would take months to construct. I ought to do something that I can build with my own hands while I’m here. Others said that CMSs are boring!
- But among all those comments the most important question I heard was: Am I talking about a publication or a technology product?
Was I talking about a more advanced and reader-funded “News Deeply?” Or about a technology product that could be sold to publishers? The Tow-Knight faculty advised me that I should think beyond AthensLive and our need for a platform, and focus on solving a more general problem in the industry.
What did the feedback teach me?
2) Start somehow and from somewhere.
I went back to the three fundamental values of my CMS project: “Report. Follow Up. Get Paid.” I realized what they are about, and who they actually serve:
- Reporting. Reporting is reporting, no matter if we go back to writing on stones. Following up. It’s essential so we know how stories develop over time. Usually when a journalist follows up a story it turns into a book! And why does it turn into a book? Because the story needs a physical place to exist holistically, and because books are another source for revenue in the industry.
- So, getting paid. Yes, getting paid is great for all the obvious reasons but also because it offers incentive for following up a story.
But the problem was still there in the “follow up” part. What makes a journalist want to follow up a story?
A. Because their editor asked them to.
B. Because it’s interesting with lots of conflict.
C. Because they are personally interested.
D. Or… because their audience is demanding it!
What did this breaking-down of my project teach me?
3) Focus.
This is what focusing looks like:
“Report. Follow Up. Get Paid.” THREE parts.
F — O — C — U — S → “Follow Up.” ONE part.
As I mentioned above, in digital media following up a story is deeply intertwined with the relationship between the journalist and their audience (See, D☝️)
That was the seed for my next prototype: a tool that has to do with the follow-up of a story. Now I need to identify the audience’s actual needs and behaviors in order to create something that can actually serve them.
I am serving two communities: journalists and their audiences. Facebook says community is about “meaningful interactions between people.” Jeff Jarvis takes it further:
“I think that there should be meaningful, lasting, and trusting interactions among people, plural. Think of community not as a cocktail party (or drunken online brawl) where friends and strangers idly chat. Instead, think of community as a club one chooses to join, the sorts of clubs that society has been losing since my parents’ generation grew old.”
So now my goal is to develop a widget/ plugin to bridge this gap between journalists and their audiences. And trust is the only way to bridge this. Sustainability, the getting paid part, comes right after.
So what did I learn from focusing?
4) Serve the needs of a community.
There are many tools to use in creating stories. There are also tools for payments. But tools to let journalists know that you’d like to know more about their stories? Hmm.
Following up on a story is all about the feedback you receive. So journalists should be able to get real, constructive feedback with the help of technology.
News organizations have a very old-fashioned way to receive feedback for their stories: Readers send their comments using one-way communication methods. You email them or their writers, message them on Twitter, or leave a message on a Slack channel.
While technology is progressing incredibly fast, feedback methods for journalists remain archaic!
Journalists love feedback when it’s constructive, something that is not always the case in the raging war going on in most news comment sections. Feedback can trigger a discussion between the journalists and the users, who can provide them with fresh ideas, expertise or story tips.
My background is in people-powered media, so I value the relationship between journalists and their audience. This relationship is in the heart of storytelling, civic debate and sustainability.
Feedback leads to understanding your audience better. In community-based media this is a vital part of the operation. And when it comes to beat or specialized reporting—a genre of journalism that can be described as the craft of in-depth reporting on a particular issue, sector, organization or institution over time—feedback and following up is crucial.
And with projects like “Join the Beat, a force multiplier for beat reporting” at the @Membership Puzzle, tools that enable audiences to share feedback will be needed more than ever.
So following up stories also means that your audience follows and supports you. It’s about the relationship with your audience. Many people might lose interest after a few posts on the story but those who are truly interested will follow the story until the end and become highly engaged.
After all those dialectics what did I learn?
5) Don’t be a perfectionist. Just start creating/building.
So, what am I building?
I’m building a tool that allows journalists to receive feedback for their stories, and readers to talk to journalists about what they have just read, heard or watched. The tool will allow them to communicate privately without effort and efficiently. It’s all about the relationship and not because chat-bots are one of the hottest tech topics of the year.
This tool will allow journalists to know more about what their readership wants exactly, rather than general data about their readership.
Later it can allow content creators to get paid directly from their audience, or allow journalists to pitch stories straight to their audience.
Think of it as “Customer Care for Journalism” or a “Virtual Assistant” for content creators and their audience.
How am I building it?
Here at the CUNY J-school we have great resources. It’s not just that we are in the heart of NYC in the former home of the New York Herald Tribune, next to some of the largest news organizations in the world. It’s that there is a spirit of media innovation all around. I would be crazy not to take advantage of these great resources. Learning about chatbots from our adjunct professor John Keefe, a bot developer and app product manager at Quartz; asking user-centered design expert Hong Qu for help for wireframing; hearing from Christian Fahrenbach about the way Krautreporter has been communicating with its readers; finding my “North Star” with Jeff Mignon; and talking to Tow-Knight alum Valerio Bassan not only inspires me, but gives me all the tools needed to be “hands-on.”
The future of journalism is all about the relationship between the news consumer and the news producer, without any intermediaries. If robots can help us achieve this, then why not let them?
Because feedback is important, please write to me if you have any ideas or questions about how a chatbot that brings together journalists and readership can be more effective! Also, one of my first steps is to have some traction for my product so I can have a proof of concept, so please let me know if you are willing to be one of the beta testers with such a widget embedded on your website or publication!
📬 tassos@athenslive.gr
I’ve also created these two typeforms for your feedback:
If you are a creator of online content: 👉 click.
If you are a consumer of online content: 👉 click.
