The Guardian has brought its typical idiosyncratic approach to social bookmarking with the launch of ‘Clippings’. But for once I think they’ve missed the mark.

By clicking on the scissors icon () next to a story users can now ‘clip’ an article to their own account. They could do this before anyway – but importantly, the revamped service means they can see others’ saved stories and subscribe to a feed, or publish their own feed elsewhere.

These are welcome additions to an older service, but there are some glaring oversights.

Firstly, although the phrase ‘social bookmarking’ is not used, this is clearly an attempt at that, and it isn’t social. There is no way to discover other bookmarkers apart from, as Inside Guardian suggests, ‘guessing’ their name.

Equally, new articles are not suggested as a result of what you bookmark – although you can click on Guardian-defined categories to see the latest stories about ‘ITV’, for instance.

To add insult to injury if you want to import your old ‘saved stories’… you can’t. You have to visit every one, and clip it all over again. Nice.

Here we have a centralised service which requires you to be logged in and is generally controlled and defined by the publisher.

Why would I use it when I can’t use my own categories? When it doesn’t help me discover new things, or organise old ones in new ways? When I can only bookmark Guardian stories?

Where is the benefit?

So here are my suggestions.

Firstly, allow tagging and user categorisation. Make them into links so you can see what else is being tagged with the same. Allow people to discover each other through shared interests.

Secondly, create a widget/bookmark so people can clip material from – shock, horror – other sites.

But most important – and easy – is this: The fact that I can see Guardian Unlimited Editor-in-chief Emily Bell’s clippings is a massive draw (sadly, no clippings yet for Jemima Kiss).

But do they make this visible on Emily Bell’s articles? No.

Not even her profile includes a link.

What a missed opportunity.

Every Emily Bell story should include a link to ‘Emily Bell’s clippings’, it’s as simple as that. If I respect her work as a journalist, there’s a chance I’ll want to be reading what she reads. And that’s where The Guardian – and news organisations generally – have an advantage: the editorial angle; the brand; the relationship.

And what a great way to keep readers on your site.

More broadly, I’ve posted previously about the concept of letting readers see ‘What the journalist read to write this’ as part of the model for a 21st century newsroom. And Radio 4′s iPM del.ico.us account is a great example of this in practice. So I won’t repeat myself on that.

Having said all that, I’m guessing this is actually a stepping stone to The Guardian’s planned social networking service, where user profiles will link to their clippings pages and, I hope, allow for more serendipity and linkage.

In the meantime, however, here’s an opportunity to iron out those glaring problems first.

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Hidden away on the Sun website when you do a search…

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Since I wrote the Five W’s and a H that should come *after* every story post I’ve been responding to the hugely helpful posts and leads, and developing the idea further. As the deadline for Round 2 of the Knight News Challenge looms on Friday I thought I would post the latest on how the idea is shaping up, including a mockup (click for full size):

So here’s what’s happened since that first post:

• A hugely productive brainstorm with creative agency man Stefan Lewandowski
• Meetings with news organisations about running the pilot
• Dialogue with a web specialist in the Ukraine who has experience in advocacy and may be able to source additional funding
• And lots and lots of useful leads and tips from blog readers. Thank you.

Here’s how the model is developing:

• Developing on the ‘what’ part of the original model, central to the whole is a unique ‘tag’ accompanying each story/issue so that readers can tag other content and it be pulled… 
• Aggregation becomes an important part of the technology, as it finds related feeds and tags (and comments by the journalist elsewhere)
• A ‘story cluster’ which identifies tags related to the unique one
• The idea of ‘completeness’ to encourage user participation
• Mobile phone and email alerts
• RSS feeds for all elements, feeding back into aggregation.
• Because we are aggregating, we are also opening our content up for others to distribute.

As always, these ideas are open for discussion, development, improvement and criticism. The wiki is here if you want to edit directly. And if you’re a designer, please feel free to draft a mockup that’s more lovely.

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I felt so strongly about the Five W’s and a H that should come *after* every story that I pitched an idea based on it to the Knight Foundation. It’s called the ‘Conversation Toolkit’, and it’s through to the second round of the Knight News Challenge. Think it sounds like a good idea? Have any improvements? Want to help make it happen, or test it out? Then log on to the idea wiki at http://bidideas.pbwiki.com/conversationtoolkit (password: idea) and add what you can, or contact me directly.

Here’s the text so far:

Describe your project: * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)
A series of plugins or bolt-ons that enables publishers to facilitate more productive conversation around a news issue. Based on ‘Five W’s and a H’, this allows users and journalists to address the following questions with a simple user interface:

• Who can I connect with? (e.g. social networking, etc.)
• Where did this happen? (e.g. Google Maps)
• Why should I care? (e.g. personalisation, databases, how international events affect us)
• When are events coming up that I need to be aware of (e.g. Calendar, Facebook Events)
• What did the journalist read to write this?/What have people said about this article? (e.g. links, documents, Trackback)
• How can I make a difference? (e.g. petitions, changes in personal behaviour or consumption, automatic email to politician)

Who would want to use it, and why? * (830 characters maximum, approximately 125 words)

Any news organisation or online content-based organisation. The toolkit would help facilitate user interaction, generate material and engender community around the issues in question. From a business perspective, UGC is known to be sticky and therefore attractive to advertisers; from a community perspective, it helps make information useful, and therefore attracts users.

5. What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

The plugins become an element in a majority of blogging platforms and news content management systems. Programmers mashup the technology to improve and build on it. Citizens are empowered and engaged with issues in the news, and work together to address problems.

6. How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

An open source download site will be able to measure downloads and contributions by developers; pilots using existing news websites and blogs will measure contributions by users. Discussion across the online journalism community will indicate how it is affecting newsroom cultures.

7. What unmet need does your proposal answer? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

An answer to the question what is news for. Until know we have rather complacently believed it contributes something to democracy. Providing tools which allow the audience to extend the news thriugh action as well as conversation will create a more direct link between the deomcratic intent of news and the reality in terms of actions. The need to move beyond the conversation; the need for empowerment and engagement in an increasingly disengaged and disillusioned public. For newsrooms, this fulfuls a need for technologies that facilitate user engagement – ‘stickiness’ and loyalty.

8. What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general need? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

Other attempts tend to address specific issues, or provide generic ‘blank pages’ for people to contribute ‘comments’ or improvements. This brings an editorial focus to the questions raised by issues in the news, and helps users to frame their responses in terms of particular, action-based routes of enquiry. It also brings together a number of technologies with potential for news: social networking; mapping; calendars; databases; social bookmarking; and automation – building on off-the-shelf solutions rather than trying to build from scratch.

9. How will people learn about what you are doing? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

The process will be covered on the Online Journalism Blog, which has a global readership across all five continents. I also write for Poynter in the US; Press Gazette and Journalism.co.uk in the UK, and Indian Online Journalism. From those it should be disseminated more widely through other bloggers, academics and journalists. The project should also attract some research coverage.

10. Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project. * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

No.

11. Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

Nick Booth (details above) would be involved in conceptualising the project and liaising with pilot organisations. There is also potential to involve the BBC interactivity unit and any number of interested parties through the Online Journalism Blog.

12. Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

Although a number of people are working in the wider field of social media – Steve Outing, Jay Rosen – this project is relatively unique in its focus on action and utility.

13. What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal? * (2075 characters maximum, approximately 325 words)

A prototype plugin that addresses at least one of the six questions identified above, and facilitates user engagement and contribution through work-saving technologies. Along with this, a pilot study that attempts to test such a plugin. And ongoing reports and analysis via the Online Journalism Blog

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So far this model has looked at sourcing stories in the new media age, and reporting a news story in the new media age. In this third part I look at what should happen after a news story has been reported, using a familiar framework: the 5 Ws and a H – who, what, where, why, when and how.

A web page – unlike a newspaper, magazine or broadcast – is never finished – or at least, can always be updated. Its permanence is central to its power, and relates directly to its connectivity (and therefore visibility).

Once out there it can be linked to, commented on, discussed, dissected, tagged, bookmarked and sent to a friend. That can take place on the original news site, but it probably doesn’t. The story is no longer yours. So once the news site has added comments, a message board, ‘email to a friend’ boxes and ‘bookmark this’ buttons, what more can it do?

Let’s look at conversations. Conversations are good. They help us work through our thoughts; they help us rethink ideas; put together compelling arguments; make connections; spot holes; negotiate; compromise.

But they’re only the start.

Have you ever been to one of those meetings where there is a lot of talking – but no action? That’s what most news websites and blogs are like at the moment. One endless meeting.

There are some hugely important issues right now. Traditionally news organisations have sought to explain what’s going on, to clarify, to investigate. But given the infinite space, the permanence – and, above all, the connectivity and functionality of new media – shouldn’t we do more?

Shouldn’t we be connecting?

So here’s what my 21st century newsroom does with a story once it’s published. It seeks to make connections – along these lines:

• Who can I connect with?
• What did the journalist read to write this?
• Where did this happen?
• When are events coming up that I need to be aware of?
• Why should I care?
• How can I make a difference?

I’ll deal with these one by one:

Who can I connect with?

The story is about recycling (local facilities are not good enough). Or the story is about chess. Or the story is about fertility treatments. Once someone reads it, they feel they want to talk to someone about it, or organise something, or just play chess.

Traditionally the newspaper/station may have broadcast or printed a telephone number of a traditional organisation – but that organisation had to exist in the first place; and they already have their own agenda. What if our readers want to connect with each other, without the middle man?

Social networking – in some cases crowdsourcing – should be working naturally off the back of these stories. Not just a message board, but a self-generating community of interest: ‘I read this story and wanted to connect’. It may be a pre-existing Facebook group, or a service to build your own social network (Ning and Elgg are just two), or something actively managed by the newsroom (the Community Editor’s role) – or it may be something built using your dating website systems, or your MyX platform. Whatever it is, help them do it.

What did the journalist read to write this?

This should be part of routine practice already, but through a combination of resistant journalistic culture; clunky CMS’s; and lack of time, journalists still don’t routinely link to their sources. So, we need a way to make this happen.

One way would be to make the journalist’s social bookmarking account part of their byline (and, of course, they should be social bookmarking). Unfortunately, it’s not obvious what bookmarks relate to any particular story, so we might need some AI-engineered way of pulling those under related tags. Or, better still, the journalist uses a story-specific tag when bookmarking, and that is used on the story. Readers can then use the same tag to produce more links.

Where did this happen?

Here’s a simple one, and it’s already happening: map your stories. When the California wildfires spread, news organisations tapped into the technology of GoogleMaps to inform their audience; the LA Times uses Google Maps to illustrate homicide data. But these are exceptional, so let’s take more workaday examples. In the UK, regional newspaper publisher Archant is geotagging its stories so readers can choose to read stories within a certain radius; the BBC is experimenting with GPS tagging of stories collected on mobile devices; or how about this map of local bloggers. Then there’s YourStreet, which is doing this with existing stories (US only). Google Maps Mania keeps a running record of experiments across a range of websites – we should be watching these and learning.

When are events coming up that I need to be aware of?

Another simple one. If I read a story about an upcoming festival/reading/demonstration, it would be nice to be able to easily add it to my Outlook/Yahoo/Google calendar – in the same way I can click ‘add to my RSS reader’. Or how about I can sign up for a mobile text alert ahead of the event taking place? Even better would be if I could add my own event that I happen to be organising on the issue being covered.

Some news organisations have events calendars – imagine what an essential resource that would be if your readers could add to it, and even classify with their own tags. Then what if your stories automatically pulled events with related tags? And then perhaps we could sell sponsored links like Google, and make a bit of money? Or charge for a mobile reminder to your phone? Wouldn’t that be nice.

Why should I care?

Possibly the biggest question (and perhaps one that should be answered before the article starts). So the lowest rate of income tax is being axed? How does that affect me? So they want to build houses on green belt land? I don’t live there. Why should I care what happens in Uganda, or Iran?

New media technologies – and databases in particular – offer amazing ways to personalise news and illustrate how it affects the reader. USA Today’s candidate match game is one example that matches you with a candidate based on your views, while the BBC’s Budget Calculator aims to tell you how a new budget will affect you. But we can do much more: if the Stern Review put a figure on how much environmental change will affect our economies, could we tell an individual reader how much it will affect their wallet?

How can I make a difference?

In a way, most of the above questions will go some way to answering this one. The reader can organise with other people; they can add events to their diary; they can raise awareness. But let’s ask this question explicitly: people are starving – what can I do? global temperatures are rising – what can I do?

Again, while there is a fine tradition of feature articles in this vein, this is about opening it to readers. The web offers easy access to online petitions and automatically generated letters to your MP on the more traditional side; while consumer action and changing consumer behaviour is made easy by the ability to switch services online. No doubt there are other examples I’m not including (smart mobs spring to mind). And yes, it’s about advocacy, which may be uncomfortable for journalists used to the principle of objectivity. But I think we’re past that, aren’t we?

Read part four of the model for a 21st century newsroom – News distribution in a new media age – here.

This is a work in progress. Please add your own contributions – are there other Who/What/Where/Why/When/Hows? Examples already in practice?

Note: Thanks to Nick Booth for helping work through these ideas at PICNIC 07

Update 1: Help make these ideas reality.

Update 2: Nico Luchsinger suggests the integration of a comment tracking tool (like CoComment), that “makes the journalists’ comments elsewhere available, possibly also with a tagging functionality, so that you can look at comments on a specific subject.”

Update 3: Vincent Maher makes a number of useful points:

1. Microformats, esp. calendar and contacts, are going to be great for this
2. The idea of social connections and context left on content like perfume is slightly weird but also potentially massive. So you go to a story, see a list of people who said they want to connect with others and why, and you can connect with them using something like OpenSocial, if they create a portable profile system, in whatever container you’re all in. Killer.
3. In this day and age everything should be geo-coded no matter how transient it may seem. The next great navigational device is the plan itself and history needs to be encoded into/onto it.
4. Tag aggregators like technorati are useful for pulling out related blog entries etc, but new orgs should agree to a a standard API for extracting tag-relational data from their own archives. So a standard way to publish the address of the remote methods, the input format i.e. a list of tags, a date constraint and some info on how to order the results. Then it sends back a list of headlines, blurbs, dates and URIs. Simple enough and this would enable bloggers to be able to do the reverse back again – i.e. instead of media linking to related blogs, be able to link to related media stories in a particular publication. News must stop being content and become a platform.

Update 4: read this post to see a mockup of these ideas in action and more detail

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