Help finding each other on Twitter

Justin Woodburn says it'll be easier to find me on Twitter if you A) use an address other than your umontana address as your own, and B) put my non-umontana address in your address book. Once you're all following me, you can look at my profile and choose to follow each other from there.

I sent you my non-UM email in an email to your UM email.

Jaffee's weekly committee roundup

The big news in this week's committee round up comes at the end of the report, next year's budget (2010) has stalled and 3 percent across the board cuts are being sought. If you want to know how mad this makes some people, talk to my cousin who is on the cemetery board. She's spitting mad because the cemetery has worked hard to squirrel away money for a new back end loader or some such piece of equipment and the city, she says, wants to take that money bucket away. So, there's news a-brewin' when $$$s at stake. Be sure to read Keila's story in today's paper, she covered it, disproving the popular myth that the Missoulian doesn't cover committee meetings.

Let Amy G. help you with Twitter

Amy Gahran is a remarkably energetic journalist and Twitter enthusiast. Let her introduce you to Twitter, its strengths, weaknesses and how best to use it for good, not evil. This post discusses how to grow a useful -- not annoying -- Twitter posse. If you like what you read, she's got a tremendous amount of helpful information on her blog.

Twitter tips links

Here are some links to stories about Twitter that may help you control and safely and wisely use this new newsgathering tool.

The first is a hilarious cautionary tale about why it has proven a bad idea to Twitter the funeral of a three-year-old as a news story (and other pitfalls the Rocky Mountain News has encountered using the tool.)

This describes Amy's philosophy on growing a high quality Twitter posse.

The next two are mostly aimed at those of you who think you might like a long term relationship with Twitter, if only you learn to control it before it controls you. Naturally, there has evolved a practice of Twitter spam. This is how to control the spam should it stalk you.

And this one is for those of you who really get into it and want to separate tweets from your Tweeps from tweets from news organizations.

Now, honestly, I have other work to do (Good luck, Tweeps.)

A chance to practice on Twitter and meet a fantastic journalist

Environmental journalist extraordinaire Mark Dowie is going to speak tonight at 7 pm in DAH316. He's going to talk about the toll conservation efforts sometimes take on indigenous communities internationally. I am going to try and cover his talk via Twitter, so get yourselves set up by tonight and you can watch me stumble through the very thing I will be asking you to do next Monday.

I highly recommend coming to see Dowie yourself (and join me in Twittering if you dare.) He is a renowned investigative journalist whose books include, Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the 20th Century, and Conservation Refugess: The 100-year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples. (This photo is one of his and illustrates in part tonight's subject.)

Getting started with Twitter

Ready for this grand Twitter experiment?

• Go to Twitter.com and get yourself an account. Let your screen name be something we will recognize (you can change it later if you want to be mysterious, but for our purposes, let's accept a journalistic standard of transparency.)
• While you're there, go to Settings, then Devices, and set up your phone so you can send and receive Tweets on your mobile device aka phone. Don't forget to verify your phone. Twitter's phone number is a shortcut: 40404.
• While you're at it, you might as well set your phone up to access mobile Twitter. Only do this if a) your phone has a mobile web browser, and b) you have a ton (or unlimited) amount of minutes. The biggest downside to using the mobile Twitter site is it could easily eat a lot of minutes. Twittering itself doesn't take up minutes, it counts against your txt message limit. This might be a time to boost that txt limit to infinite.
• Take some time to browse the FAQ and quick commands pages. Sure, this all seems like it could be incredibly annoying. But don't worry, you can turn Twitter on and off with a text message command, plus you can shut out particularly annoying people individually if it comes to that. For now, let's try to stick this out and create a Public Affairs Reporting community and and see what this trend is all about.
  

Jaffee's weekly committee roundup

Councilman Bob Jaffee has posted his weekly roundup of city council committee happenings. Read it for an inkling of the issues likely to shape upcoming council meetings. (No, no one talked about sewer rate hikes.)

Read Ray Ring and marvel

Ray Ring is an extraordinary reporter. He works for High Country News and has a knack for getting to the heart of complex issues in compelling ways. Here is a story he wrote a few years ago, I was reading it to prepare for the panel discussion this weekend because both Ray and Gayla Benefield will be on the panel.

Whether or not you attend Saturday's talks or not, read this story that asks why Montana's environmental community was not more involved in exposing asbestos poisoning in Libby. This is not breaking news, yet it reads with a sense of urgency and timeliness.

Look at how it is constructed and think about how many people he talked to -- those who appear in the story and those who merely informed it. What makes it so readable? What words and anecdotes does he use to create an image of this community? What makes this a news story rather than an academic consideration of the question of the effectiveness of environmentalists? Enjoy.

What do people need to know and how do they know it?

What does it take to keep the wheels of democracy turning? The experiment rests on the back of an informed populace. So what happens if people stop being informed? Why might that happen? Whose job is it to care and what happens if nobody listens to those who do?

Come be part of the conversation about information and a democracy in the age of old media compression and new media expansion. The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy is holding one of three community meetings here on Saturday. I'd love you all to attend. I think it will be a good look at some issues facing the media today -- and tomorrow, when it belongs to you.

You may cover one or more of these sessions as a beat story, either for this week or next. Write on the top of your story which you want to apply it toward. Next week your trend stories are due so you only need to do one beat story and this could be it.

The agenda includes:
9-10:30 -- Ag and small communities (Gallagher Business School Room 104)
10-12:30 -- Environment and Natural Resources (UC Theater, 3rd Floor)
1:30-3 -- Underserved Communities (UC Theater, 3rd Floor)
3:15-4:45 Political information (UC Theater, 3rd Floor)

What's going on? Committee roundup and police log are here

Here, to satisfy your new, insatiable curiosity about what is going on in Missoula, are the police log for Wednesday and Bob Jaffee's weekly committee roundup.

Police log for Friday, Sunday and Monday

Here are the daily police activity logs for Oct. 3, 5 and 6. If I find the fourth, I'll post it later.

Facebook beats porn, analyst finds

The final paper for this class will be one that reports news that is strongly supported by basic data analysis. We'll talk more about those stories, and their less structured counterpart, the bare-bone trend story soon. For now, listen to this story from About the Media, which discusses how one researcher has shown that social networking web sites are more popular than pornography sites, and why.

Finish your beat reports and think about city council

On Monday, we'll start covering the city council in earnest. That means you should:

• Know where city council meets.
  
• Be ready to attend the meeting Monday night in order to file a news story by midnight.
• Familiarize yourself with the agenda before class meets so we can talk about what might be newsworthy.

Also on Monday, your second beat report is due. Please print it out and staple the pages together. This beat report should be far richer than your first. It should show that you are thinking about your beat in interesting ways, anticipating what news will come up in the next couple of months, what trends are going on on your beat, what data is kept on your beat that might come in handy when deciding what your number story will be.

Format changes

Here is the correct format to use when filing your candidate information boxes. Follow this example in terms of what is all caps and bold, too, please. And remember to get a photo! Thanks.

House District ##: First Last Name

REPUBLICAN
AGE: 71
OCCUPATION:
HOMETOWN:
FAMILY:
EDUCATION:
POLITICAL OR PUBLIC SERVICE: