Resource:
JReporter
- Links: Website | Fact Sheet | Video
- Tags: Audience Engagement, Local News, Mobile, Mobile Tools, Revenue
A new software tool developed by JJCS gives news organizations a direct means to facilitate community engagement and contribution in a time when many are struggling to find a way to efficiently and inexpensively cover hyperlocal.
JReporter, an application that works with the Android and iOS interfaces, allows a licensing media company to solicit content, whether it is text, video, audio or stills, from local citizens via geo-targeted messages. The user can then submit content to the news organization through the app, which integrates with the media company’s CMS.
The app offers local news organizations inexpensive content that they can subsequently turn around and monetize through digital ads. The app will ideally allow media outlets to cover more hyperlocal events, ranging from school board meetings to high school football games, that may otherwise not be cost-efficient…
From a journalism standpoint, the application makes sense as a way to foster community engagement and promote the local media’s role as the “place where the community comes to learn about itself” — a phrase JJCS has trademarked. At the very least, this content can be used to develop a searchable archive. But whether the app can develop a strong enough user base to drive ad revenue, both via resulting Web content and directly on the mobile app, through proximity-based messages from local merchants, will ultimately determine its success.” Source: Street Fight Daily
News organizations face four problems:
Dwindling Reporting Staff • Lack of Content Ownership
Ineffective Revenue Streams • Lackluster Customer EngagementJReporter makes it easy for customers and reporters to send breaking news video,
stills and audio directly into your editorial content management system with the
correct ancillary information (metadata) and a release.In the today’s world, one of your customers is at every news event with a smart
phone and who will, if it’s easy, give you coverage. JReporter is easy to use and
ensures that you know who is sending you content, so that you can follow up, get
additional information, and interview the eyewitness…Cloud based and advertising supported, JReporter ensures high availability and
low cost of entry. JReporter does not require any changes to your current working
environment and can be ready to go in no time.JReporter includes embedded revenue opportunities and is white labeled for
sponsorship, branding or embedding.” Source: JReporter
The Journalism Accelerator is not responsible for the content we post here, as excerpts from the source, or links on those sites. The JA does not endorse these sites or their products outright but we sure are intrigued with what they’re up to.
Topics: Community Resources Revenue Technology
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57 comments so far.
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Tiffany Shackelford says:
September 18, 2012 at 5:20 pm
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John Juliano says:
September 18, 2012 at 5:29 pm
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Tiffany Shackelford says:
September 18, 2012 at 6:05 pm
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John Juliano says:
September 18, 2012 at 8:54 pm
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Tiffany Shackelford says:
September 19, 2012 at 5:31 pm
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John Juliano says:
September 19, 2012 at 5:39 pm
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John Juliano says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:47 am
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Emily Harris says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:48 am
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Emily Harris says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:10 am
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Duncan Suss says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:16 am
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Emily Harris says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:19 am
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John Juliano says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:26 am
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Emily Harris says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:27 am
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Jo Ann Froelich says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:18 am
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Emily Harris says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:21 am
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Jo Ann Froelich says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:32 am
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John Juliano says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:22 am
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Duncan Suss says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:43 am
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John Juliano says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:51 am
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Emily Harris says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:53 am
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Emily Harris says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:55 am
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John Juliano says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:57 am
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John Juliano says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:58 am
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Emily Harris says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:58 am
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John Juliano says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:09 am
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Duncan Suss says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:09 am
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Jo Ann Froelich says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:10 am
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Emily Harris says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:13 am
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Emily Harris says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:13 am
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Emily Harris says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:17 am
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Duncan Suss says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:25 am
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Duncan Suss says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:27 am
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John Juliano says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:30 am
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John Juliano says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:40 am
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Jo Ann Froelich says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:41 am
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John Juliano says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:43 am
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Christian Gaston says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:37 am
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Emily Harris says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:39 am
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Christian Gaston says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:42 am
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Christian Gaston says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:43 am
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John Juliano says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:43 am
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John Juliano says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:45 am
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John Juliano says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:02 am
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Christian Gaston says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:08 am
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John Juliano says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:14 am
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Christian Gaston says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:23 am
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John Juliano says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:31 am
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Emily Harris says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:42 am
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Jo Ann Froelich says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:44 am
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Jo Ann Froelich says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:44 am
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Jo Ann Froelich says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:51 am
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Emily Harris says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:52 am
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Jo Ann Froelich says:
August 29, 2012 at 11:02 am
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Emily Harris says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:32 am
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Emily Harris says:
August 23, 2012 at 5:13 am
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Jo Ann Froelich says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:37 am
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John Juliano says:
August 29, 2012 at 10:39 am
| ParticipantsHi John. I am the executive director of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia. This would be an amazing tool for our 128 news organizations. Let me know if we can chat more.
Hi Tiffany. Let’s set up a time at your convenience. You can reach me at +1.404.327.6010 or on Skype at johnjuliano
I’m in the office all day tomorrow. Shall we plan to speak sometime during the day?
Sounds great. I’ll call you around 3 eastern!
We’ll speak then.
John I’m sorry I missed you today. Do you have time either now or tomorrow late afternoon?
Now is fine.
Emily, this was a blast. We had a wonderful time speaking with everyone. We hope we answered everyone’s questions and hope everyone will contact us directly.
Thank you so much for this opportunity.
–john
Many thanks to you and Jo Ann!
Jo Ann, I have a question from Mary Turck, editor of the TC Daily Planet in Minneapolis/St. Paul. She couldn’t join us live, but sent us a note asking about price, and also asking about how the content people send integrates with a newsrooms’ CMS. She wrote: “I suspect the main breakdown will be in the “intergration with your CMS.” That’s never as easy as it sounds.”
Not wishing to step on Jo Ann’s toes, but … I don’t see any reason this should be more complicated than integrating AP or Reuters news feeds into a CMS
Jo Ann or John, what exactly would a newsroom need to do to start using this? Even if JReporter can assuage Mary’s concern that CMS integration is always trickier than promised, what kind of commitment / resources / community engagement does it take to get this app in people’s hands, and get content coming in?
Or might some newsrooms just use it for reporters?
Startup is very quick from a technical point of view (and yes, we believe JReporter would be a great tool for staff). We see that larger effort in building awareness of JReporter and demand for it.
Two notes: Because JReporter has built in advertising revenue opportunities, teaming with a sponsor for JReporter encourages that sponsor to promote JReporter.
Secondly, we provide media company marketing experience to help with this very important JReporter-Launch effort.
But what do you think it will take for a news room to get people to use it? How much outreach, promotion, etc?
Hi Mary, The price is based on the number of titles you set up. This is a one time cost+maintenance, no monthy fees. You own the application and the content! It integrates the same as a wire feed so your editors view the content and use it the same way they use wire content, so training is minimal.
Thanks Jo Ann. What do you mean by the number of titles? Can you give her a ballpark figure? Or a comp – would it be like the cost of an AP feed?
The Daily Planet is a title and covers a geographic region. We offer tiered pricing based on the size of the project.
Emily, let me answer the technical part of the question.
We don’t expect the CMS interface to be a problem. We’re all very experienced newspaper system vendor people. In general terms, we deliver content in the forms that CMS systems are able to process, this includes RSS feed and IPTC format.
The stories are categorized into six dynamic categories determined by the media company, so that stories can be automatically routed by the CMS to the appropriate desk/basket/queue.
We don’t expect problems here.
One note, the content is delivered in the form of a ‘‘story’’ rather than a stream of discreet assets.
Hello Emily, Jo Ann, and John.
It seems that in addition to dwindling reporting staff, newspapers have dwindling editorial staff; the days when our newsroom had several wire editors (who are the natural gatekeepers for externally-sourced content, IMO) are long gone.
Do you have any thoughts as to how community contributions might best be collected, identified as “of interest”, and acted upon by today’s newsrooms?
Duncan, there seem to be several approaches to this. One is to use JReporter’s assignment feature to ask your audience for specific coverage. This engages the audience, assures them that what they contribute is of interest, and gets the media company content which is of interest to them.
A second approach, which were working with for a project in the DC area, is to have the community rates content for both trustworthiness and interest, which in turn ranks the contributor.
John, let’s back up a little bit. Could you walk people through the basics? How do people use JReporter?
And for Duncan, I’m interested, where do you think people – v. technology – are crucial in the process you described – collecting, identifying as of interest, and acting on community contributions?
Sure, Emily.
JReporter is a white labeled product, meaning that media company will have a version that is branded for them and potentially a sponsor.
JReporter user receives messages and headlines from the media company. The JReporter user can contribute to the media company by sending video, stills, text and audio grouped into a story that the media company receives in a manner similar to a wire.
So JReporter facilitates a two-way conversation between the media company and its audience.
Why would people want to do this?
Why would people want to do this:
A variety reasons: in general, people want to contribute and have a say in the coverage of events that are of interest to them.
With the JReporter’s assignment feature users will respond to a request for coverage from a media outlet with which they have an allegiance.
We’ve also added a rewards feature, which we know will not be the sole reason someone contributes, but it adds to the experience.
In short, the audience wants to be engaged. Some will do it for the thrill of seeing their name in “print.” Others because they want to contribute and direct coverage, some for the rewards and others to be part of the process.
@Emily: as I see it, there are 2 spaces.
One is similar to this event — all welcome to post their comments on a subject, but quite clearly defined as such. Readers’ comments on a story posted online, for example — as often arguing with each other or tangential to the subject as actually contributing factual matter to the story.
The other space is news gathering and dissemination — where the factual content of the story actually matters, and the reputation of the newspaper hinges (somewhat) on getting it right. In this case it’s important to know that the video clip of rising seawater (for example) was actually taken in the French Quarter today, and an editor must make the judgment call whether to publish or not.
People want to be engaged especially about topics they care about, Facebook and Twitter have proven that. They want a voice in their community.
You’ve said that JJCS is a mission driven organization, that you want newspapers (in whatever form – digital, etc) to be the center of their communities. What’s your vision of a new incarnation?
To clarify, a new incarnation of newspaper/community relationship? And how does that drive JReporter?
@Duncan – as you assess the potential of JReporter, what do you see as most likely / least likely to work – in terms of getting content, engaging community, AND bringing in revenue? All points it’s designed to deliver.
@Emily: neither content nor revenue will happen without community engagement — to focus on those two without having a solid game plan on how to build community interest, trust and engagement would be hopeless IMO.
(cont.) … of course, “interest, trust and engagement” are non-technical issues — any organization thinking they can buy a product that does their work for them is delusional (again, IMO!)
Duncan has brought up a very important point about factualness. We have added a number of features to make spoofing difficult, these include GPS coding of all assets and including the verified phone number of the contributor. To preserve privacy, all personal info is stored only on the handheld device — phone number is transmitted to the outlet only when the user contribute. The user is aware of this.
Emily: You’ve said that JJCS is a mission driven organization, that you want newspapers (in whatever form – digital, etc) to be the center of their communities. What’s your vision of a new incarnation?
To answer this question it is important not to be sidetracked by technology. Technology will change and even JReporter will one day seem quaint.
The answer is best answered in terms of services the organization provides to its audience,
A newspaper needs to serve its community — trite, I know. This means provide information about the community (physical or special interest) as a trusted source. The information must be of interest to the community and must encourage the voices of the community to be heard.
In today’s world, I can suggest the technologies to encourage all of this, but technology is only the medium.
Our slogan is ‘‘where the community comes to learn about itself.’’ ™ I believe so very strongly that newspapers must be that place that we trade marked the slogan so we can out all of our efforts behind this. JReporter is just a tool to help news organizations return there.
We must rebuild a trusted relationship between the consumer and the media company. There was a time we could trust what we read but the internet changed Provide us with content I care about when and where and in the format I am using. The content must include advertising, events and news.
Emily: And how does that drive JReporter?
Briefly, by being the conduit for the back and forward flow of the conversation between the media company and its audience.
It is now a mobile world… This is the world we defined JReporter for.
Hey, I don’t know if I’m speaking out of turn here, but I’m the editor of a small newspaper in Forest Grove, part of a chain of community papers. I took a look at this tool and it really seems like it would be more successful with television stations or metro dailies who have broad reach. I’ve found that in suburbs and small towns there generally isn’t a critical mass of smart-phone-using techies to take advantage of this stuff.
Not out of turn at all. Welcome. Jo Ann and John are right behind you.
How techie do you think a community reporting tool needs to be, Christian?
Many smaller newspapers cover markets with low technology usage. For example, in Forest Grove, we connect with teenagers at the high school using Twitter and social media and text messages, but their parents aren’t there. It’s rare to find an adult in our market that we can connect with via Facebook rather than by connecting with them with a telephone call.
So I’d be curious to know what size of communities this tool has been successful with.
Hi, we’re learning about our market. In our experience so far, the interest seems vary between media companies with similar profiles. The interest at the lower level has been from chains that own a group of newspapers.… We are also targeting TV and news radio.
Christian,The product is just being released. We are actively looking for pilot projects. If you might be interested, please talk to us after the chat.
Christian, regarding the age of the JReporter user, there will clearly be a tilt towards younger users, some websites and topics that are the focus of the younger audience will most likely get the most enthusiastic coverage. Having said that, I think they’re very few working people who are not smart phone users.
So, while adults may not be Twitter and social media users there certainly smart phone users and engaged in texting… how else does one speak to one’s own teenager?
One more question: It looks like the app allows media outlets to push their content to users as well as solicit content from readers. Could it fill in the gaps for media orgs without mobile apps for their content, or is this really it’s own thing?
Christian, to be honest, it is our hope that JReporter will become the single app for many outlets.
We are strong fans of HTML5 and strongly feel that by developing responsive website content can be displayed on all format devices, so that by directing headlines out through JReporter users access the news outlets coverage from within JReporter, keeping the user engaged and from straying outside the app.
When the four components of JReporter: content contribution, directed ads, GPS directed messaging and linked headlines to access content are combined, we feel that the user will stay engaged with the media outlet from within a single app. (JReporter uses an internal Web browser.)
So essentially it’s a mobile application for news outlets that don’t have one, with a crowd-sourcing component built in that has elements of interactive gaming (tasks/reward system). I can see potential there. Food for thought.
Christian, that is our goal.
For everyone, we’ll chat for the next hour. To join in during this live chat, please sign in to the JA then just jump right in the thread. You can sign in by choosing your preferred social network, where you have an existing profile, and click on that social icon button on the upper right of this page. To post, write in the comment box at the top of the thread reply below an already posted comment. To see what’s new, refresh your screen, or check your email box.
Comments and questions are still welcome and will be responded to after the live chat window. You can post a question or comment anytime and people who have participated will get an email notification so they can respond.
If you are a Twitter fan, we have set up #JReporterJAchat as well.
We’ve linked to a fact sheet and short video explaining JReporter in the resource listing, above. John, I’d like to ask you to respond to Christian’s points, and then give us a quick explainer: How do people use JReporter?
If you want to build a stronger relationship with your community then this tool was designed to help you do that, it really doesn’t matter the size of your organization. This provides you with citizen journalists and content you otherwise wouldn’t be able to cover.
The same principles apply to broadcasting as well.
When I attend high school sports events, the number of smart phones being used to take pictures and send updates to friends and family is over 75%. These are Moms, Dads, schoolmates, grandmothers, etc. There are lots of events that concern or interest your customers but they don’t have access to share this content with their media company.
Is JReporter like an app, basically, from the point of view of the community members?
Just like other apps they use on their smart phones.
Welcome to the JA live chat about JReporter, a mobile platform that is designed to solve four specific newsroom needs, as identified by JReporter developer JJCS: “dwindling reporting staff, lack of content ownership, ineffective revenue streams and lackluster customer engagement.”
This is the second in our new series of chats with the people behind the resources we list on the JA. These conversations are designed to learn more about the possibilities each resource offers, be it a tool, a report, a business model, a talk, an organization or something else useful to journalists and publishers. They are also a place to give feedback. What would YOU, as a user, like to know about these resources? How could they meet your needs better?
Today, John Juliano, JJCS owner and founder, and Jo Ann Froelich, executive director at JJCS, are here to talk about JReporter. Both have decades of experience in technology and news publishing. (Check out their bios on the upper right of this page.)
John and Jo Ann, welcome! Thank you for being here.
JReporter creator John Juliano says his company mission is to get newspapers (however they’re delivered) back at the center of their communities. Juliano founded JJCS three decades ago to provide “behind the scenes services” in the media business. The latest is JReporter, designed to increase community engagement and get verifiable community reporting delivered to you easily and efficiently.
Does that sound potentially useful to you – either as a news professional or a community contributor?
Join me here on Wednesday, August 29 at 1:30 PM Eastern / 10:30 AM Pacific find out more and give feedback to John Juliano and JJCS executive director Jo Ann Froelich.
Drop by during the live chat window or add your comments later and still get a response. You can post ahead of time too, and we’ll get your question answered whether you’re here for the live chat or not. Please sign in to comment, using one of the social networks listed in the upper right hand corner of this page.
See you then! Emily
Hello and welcome.
Hi Everyone.