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Phil Meyer’s Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive is a succinct, easy-to-read manual for using the new tools necessary to survive as a journalist on the web.

Chapter 4: “New Reporting Methods”

Using readers to help generate the news is a great way to use less resources to produce a better quality result, says Meyers. In essence, capturing data is just another way to gather information, and information from databases can provide statistics, facts, and inspiration for valuable stories.

To journalists just beginning to embrace digital literacy, Meyer suggests a small first step: Stop using paper to store information.

He recommends using Excel or google's free document program instead.

Tips:

Field your data. Any data listed under a particular field can later be sorted out and used in combination with other fields to produce meaningful search results. This can be critical when using data in the news, especially if you have a lot of information to sort.

Publish your data. The web is not subject to the same space constraints as print, and this opens up the option of allowing readers access to as much information as you can give them. With graphic interfaces and some creativity, large volumes of data can be made simple and entertaining for readers to navigate.

Organize digitally. Use tools like Backpack to keep track of appointments, and use a database to organize story sources. The main benefit of storing data on the web is that it can be shared by everyone in the newsroom and updated by anyone at any time.

Don't enter the same information over and over. Events being "keystroked" into Microsoft Word repeatedly belong in a database, so that readers and news staff can search and sort the information. Anything that can be broken down into fields can be databased, including news stories themselves.

Use your audience. Invite readers to provide reporting, feedback, and multimedia content. Readers are experts on their own experiences, as well as the best people to tell you what information they want and need.

Transparency is a good thing. For stories where the audience might be able to provide valuable local information, it can be useful to reveal your story plans to readers and then let them help you write it before you write it.

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