To give you an idea of the topics that will be discussed, here are a few questions that the panelists will be asked:

• How do you make money selling local news?
• What is a day in the life of a Patch reporter like? What about the editor(s)?
• What content on Patch sites is being consumed the most?
• What, if any, multimedia skill sets is Patch looking for when they hire reporters?

The end of the evening will be Q&A with questions from the audience. Questions via Twitter and e-mail are encouraged for those individuals who cannot attend in person. Send your questions to spj_dmc@yahoo.com or use the hashtag #spjpatch

#spjpatch

WHO: 4 staff from Patch (we will update this information with specific names as it becomes available)

WHERE: Illinois Technology Association
200 South Wacker Drive
15th floor
Chicago, IL 60606

WHEN: 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

LIMITED SPACE: The Illinois Technology Association has generously donated the space for our event. However, seating is limited to the first 125 attendees to sign up. Tickets are FREE! Please bring your ticket with a valid form of ID in order to be admitted into the building.

Get your tickets now -

http://hyperlocalnews.eventbrite.com

WHO SHOULD ATTEND: Journalist, citizen journalists, hackers, programmers, professors

What is PATCH? (in their own words):

“We’re a community-specific news and information platform dedicated to providing comprehensive and trusted local coverage for individual towns and communities.” Read more…

A few months ago, I happen to get on a new internet news site where contributors get paid by the click on their story.  I also happen to discover that a story posted by a babysitter-turn-news contributor actually was written by a reporter friend of mine who works for a major newspaper.

The woman who copied and pasted parts of my friend’s story did not credit him.  Sure she only took parts of his story, but it was taken word for word.    Why the news site managers didn’t look into this; that’s another story.   Of course, I told my reporter friend, and he took care of the rest.

At a social networking conference, I learned about a site called Copyscape.  It’s a free plagiarism checker.  Simple to use and right now appears to be the only web tool out there targeting plagiarism.

How does it work? Just put the URL in the search box that you want to check for plagiarism and submit.

Copyscape does the search for free.  It even offers a banner that you can put on your own website that warns people that you use Copyscape for checking.

If you want more bells and whistles you have to pay for it, but that includes a service that is constantly looking for your work for plagiarism and alerts you.

Copyscape has had several favorable reviews by major publications and internet news sites.  http://www.copyscape.com/press.php

Rebecca Aguilar is a freelance multimedia reporter based in Dallas.  She has 29 years of experience and has numerous awards for her work, including several Emmy awards.  She’s also on the board of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.  Rebecca conducts reporting workshops around the country (Finding Sources and Stories, Networking, Live Shots, Getting the Best Interview, Writing to Video, and The Basics Of Multimedia.) She can be contacted at aguilar.thereporter@yahoo.com.

Of course I was also curious to get a sense of the atmosphere in the town. This was the first time I had covered a national convention and I had lots of questions along with the excitement that comes with a new assignment. While my husband and I were driving around the streets in St. Paul outside the Xcel Energy Center on Sunday August 31, 2008 we came across an anti-war protest. I suddenly realized that we couldn’t follow them in the car, so I told my husband to stop the car. As soon as the car stopped I was running towards the protesters to catch up. I wanted to capture what was happening on my personal video camera. I had my cellphone in my backpack so I knew my husband and I would be able to find each other afterward, whatever afterward meant.

The YouTube system makes it easy to add text bubbles, annotated notes or even highlight portions of a video that you want to draw your audiences’ attention to. The most time consuming part of creating annotations for a video is placing the annotated notes in the appropriate spot on the video timeline. Once you have written the text you want to have appear as annotated text, YouTube makes it clear where the user should simply copy and paste, or write in, that text.

Below are the steps I took to annotate my video “The other RNC 8.”

How to add annotations using YouTube video

1. Sign into your YouTube account
2. Click on your username and choose ‘My Videos’
3. Choose the video you want to edit and click the ‘Edit’ button
4. Click on ‘Annotations’
   

   Choose the annotation button

5. Choose ‘Sort by: Appearance Time’
6. Click the play icon to find the section of the video where you want to add your annotation. Or you can move the red cursor along the timeline.
7. Decide whether you want to add: speech bubbles; notes; spotlight; video pause
8. The information for each annotation will appear on the right panel
9. You can choose to switch what type of annotation you are using by clicking on the annotation icon.
   

   Editing the annotation can be done in the right pane

   

   Editing can also be done in the video pane

10. You can also change the size and shape of the rectangular box that contains your text.
    

    You can alter the size of the note box

11. If you decide that you didn’t place the annotation is the correct location you can move it using the individual time frames (See the top image under item #9 to see an example) assigned to each annotation or by altering the size of the blue brackets on the timeline.
    

    Slide the blue brackets to move the location of the annotation note

12. To delete an annotation click on the trash icon.
    

    YouTube annotation editing screen

13. Click on ‘Publish’ when you are finished adding or editing your annotations.

Video Transcript
—–
(Annotation) Veterans for Peace participated in an anti-war protest at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota on August 31, 2008.

(Crowd) Will somebody take the bullhorn please?

(Protester) We will continue on with the march…the rally point.

(Protester) If you go to the left you will be participating in the civil disobedience. If you go straight you will not be participating in that.

(Police) We are also following behind the civil disobedience. Over.

(Annotation) Many protesters along with a group that would later be known as ‘the other RNC 8′ left a designated protest route.

(Annotation) A casket representing fallen soldier Lance Cpl. Alexander Arredondo who was killed in Iraq was wheeled to the security fences near the Xcel Energy Center.

(Crowd) Hey guys, turn around. Give me the peace sign. David!

(Crowd) What are they doing? Walking to jail? Hey you all can go over it too, you don’t have to crawl under it.

(Crowd) Be gentle! Be gentle! Be gentle! Be gentle! Be gentle!

(Crowd) Better come quick the cops are coming this way.

(Police) Let’s go back. Will you back all the way up? Thank you.

(Protester) We’re just trying to get there.

(Police) Alright. Thank you.

(Annotation) Elizabeth (Betty) McKenzie, a 78-year-old nun and Jeanne Hynes walked through a security fence.

(Crowd) We love you. Thank you for doing this.

(Crowd) Are you okay? Do you need water? Let us know if you’re not.

(Jeanne) They have been explaining everything very nicely, but they’re gonna bring in a team in to bring us downtown.

(Crowd) Make sure you get vegan food in jail.

(Betty) I’m Betty McKenzie.

(Crowd) Betty, do you live in the Twin Cities?

(Betty) I live in St. Paul.

(Annotation) Elizabeth (Betty) McKenzie is a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in St. Paul.

(Crowd) And how old are you?

(Betty) 78. How old are you?

(Crowd) I’m 34, I think.

(Betty) Oh…well you could be my grandson.

(Jeanne) Well that’s one of the reasons why we are here. There are too many young men and women who are dead…I’m Jeanne Hynes. My message here today is no war.

(Crowd) Who are you trying to deliver it to?

(Jeanne) To anyone that is interested in hearing it and maybe some people who have not heard it before. Because we believe that marching with the veterans is a great honor.

(Betty) There is never a justification for war.

(Jeanne) If you’ve ever marched with a group of men and women who have been there and done that or who are parents and brothers and sisters of the dead and the injured it makes you feel as if you really owe them something. And we are willing to go one step further than just march.

(Annotation) Eight protesters from the August 31, 2008 Veterans for Peace march were found guilty of misdemeanor trespassing. They were sentenced to pay a $100 fine or perform 20 hours of community service.

Hilary Fosdal is the associate new media editor at the Law Bulletin Publishing Company located in Chicago, Illinois. You can follow her tweets @hilaryfosdal.

Listening to her reminded me of a 2007 TED conference talk by Dr. Larry Lessig, now of Harvard then with Stanford. Lessig discussed ways to prevent copyright law from thwarting the potential of Internet users to benefit society with their creativity.

Fellows don’t have to pay anything – it’s all free, baby. The Kiplinger Foundation even pays your travel and lodging. Pretty sweet deal.

If you’re interested, then fill out this online application. The deadline to apply is November 30, 2010.

Emily Sweeney is a staff reporter at The Boston Globe. You can follow her on Twitter (@emilysweeney) and find her on LinkedIn among other places.

No matter if you work for TV, the Web or a paper publication, you should make sure your organization is represented on Facebook with a page. (You can make a Facebook page here.) Pages are different than profiles because they’re intended for companies and public figures — brands that could and should have a large presence on Facebook.

But once you have that page, it can be a mystery when it comes to what you do with it. Well, Facebook has come to the rescue. Recently the site has launched a special page for the media, with a specific tab just for journalists. It’s called Facebook + Media.

Here you’ll find best practices, learn how you can increase audience and drive traffic, and how to understand user insights.

In addition, you can learn about cool features like reaching your audience through their news feeds (every time your page is updated, that update will go out to all of your fans, just like a friend’s update), how to run promotions on your page and how to interact one-on-one with readers.

While the page isn’t terribly extensive (there is so much to do with a page, beyond what they suggest for journalists), it’s still a fabulous place to start.

Check it out — and let us know what you think. Do you have a Facebook page? Will this help you?

Amanda Maurer is a creative director at a start-up in Chicago. She focuses on social media and search engine optimization. You can follow Amanda on Twitter: @acmaurer.

What I do know is two things; that video of the security guards and woman could have come in handy on a story on shoplifting, and I should have had a Flip camera in my purse.

Most of us will try to use the best video camera we can on a story, but in a pinch—a Flip camera is not a bad tool to have in your bag.  There are several versions of this small camera, including the Flip Ultra HD that costs about $200.

It’s easy to use, because you press a button and you’re recording.   It’s very convenient when you need to upload your video right away, because it has a flip out USB connector.  You can plug your Flip camera right into your laptop. Yes, it’s that easy. 

You can also buy an underwater case for your Flip camera.  This is great if you want to take shots in a pool.  I bet it would come in handy right now for those reporters covering the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.   

I found this video blog by a citizen journalist who uses a Flip camera for her reports.  It’s an excellent tutorial:

http://dev.freevlog.org/

Here are some basics on the Flip:

FLIP ULTRA

-Fits in your pocket

-Records about 2 hours of video on 4GB

-Uses double A batteries

-Any standard tripod can be used with Flip

-Also has microphone

FLIP ULTRA HD

-Fits in your pocket

-Captures about 2 hours of HD video on 8GB built-in memory

-It comes with rechargeable AA battery pack

-Also has a microphone

-Any standard tripod can fit the tripod mount

Search YouTube for more tutorials on the Flip camera.  Good Luck!

Rebecca Aguilar is a freelance multimedia reporter in Dallas.  She has 29 years of news experience and has been awarded numerous awards, including several Emmy awards.  She’s also on the board of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.  Rebecca conducts reporting workshops around the country (Finding Sources and Stories, Networking, Live Shots, Getting the Best Interview, Writing to Video, and The Basics Of Multimedia.) She can be contacted at aguilar.thereporter@yahoo.com.

Here are 7 articles that should do the trick.

1. iPhone 4: Pros & Cons After a Weekend of Tinkering
2. Apple may have iOS 4 update to fix reception issue
3. Apple Not Too Sorry It Sold 1.7 Million iPhones, But Apologizes For Delays
4. AT&T May Suck, But It’s a Huge Reason Apple Sold 1.7M iPhone 4s
5. Apple: iPhone 4 “Most Successful” Product Launch, Defying the Antenna Critics
6. Despite issues, iPhone 4 is Apple’s best product launch ever
7. Review: Apple’s iMovie app on iPhone 4

Hilary Fosdal is the associate new media editor at the Law Bulletin Publishing Company located in Chicago, Illinois. You can follow her tweets @hilaryfosdal.

From its pioneering code of ethics to FOI lessons, the scope, breadth and quality of the resources offered by the 8,000+-member Society of Professional Journalists has always stood out. But SPJ.org has accumulated a glut of content since its launch 14 years ago, and the site sometimes snags users in a spider web of slow-loading, text-heavy, link-laden subpages hosted on outside servers.

The good news is that SPJ staff, including executive director Joe Skeel, say they recognize the site’s areas of improvement, and they promise more changes in the coming months (short of the time and expense of starting the site from scratch). So far, their progress has been encouraging.

SPJ.org’s new homepage and main portal subpages are cleaner thanks to fewer links and less text. The site’s menu toolbar is now visible atop every subpage, and the Society added a “breadcrumb trail” feature in the upper left corner of each webpage to let users know where they are at all times.

The Society also installed a main search box to transport users directly to the most relevant subpages. Plus, SPJ.org is now viewable on mobile phones, and users can share its content more easily via social networking sites, emails and instant messaging services.

Those using the organization’s famous ethics code and chapter/member resources shouldn’t have any trouble, and it’s still easy to join, donate to and learn about SPJ. But the new SPJ.org still has areas of improvement.

Parts of the site, such as its training sections, overflow with content, including outdated material. And it can be difficult to maneuver inside the site’s subpages, some of which display too many pieces of clip art, text and links. Other parts lack effective search tools and a central element on which users can focus.

Nonetheless, it’s clear SPJ’s leadership is trying hard to rectify the site’s problems. The result is SPJ.org has been transformed from a Greek labyrinth to a Halloween corn maze — users may still get unnerved or lost at times, but the site is dramatically easier to navigate, more fun and there’s no Minotaur.

Daniel Axelrod spent five years as a full-time newspaper reporter, most recently in Scranton, Pa., before moving into public relations in April 2009. Reach him at deaxelrod@msn.com

1. Start with a plan: Before you sign up for a social site, come up with a game plan. You should be able to answer these questions: What do you want to accomplish? How much time do you have to spend on maintaining a social profile? Who do you want to reach and where can you find them online? Those questions will help determine which tools and sites you should use. If you don’t know, start doing some research.

2. Fill out your profile: Adding a photo or filling out your bio may seem basic, but it shows the community that you care. Photos help users remember you, and bios allow them to find you easily.

3. Be transparent: Interacting with folks on social sites can be a very personal experience. Users want to trust you – so make sure your profiles honestly portray who you are, what company you work for and why you’re on that site.

4. Be genuine: Stay true to who you are. People will want to connect with you if they feel you offer an authentic relationship. Similarly, while setting up RSS feeds to accounts or connecting Twitter feeds to Facebook may save you time, they don’t offer the authentic relationships many users are looking for – or will want to interact with.

5. Stay active and commit time to building your profile: Creating a successful profile online can take weeks, if not months. During that time you’ll learn it’s important to maintain and update your profile every day. Posting often will remind your friends that you’re active on the site, and they’ll be more likely to interact with you. Note: Be careful not to post too often. You don’t want to clog up your friends’ feeds with all of your posts.

6. Listen and interact: For the most part, being active on social sites requires two things: participating and listening. Remember that your profile isn’t a one-sided conversation. If you want folks to comment and interact with you, you’ll need to spend the time interacting with them. Be engaging by posting interesting content, asking questions and being polite (saying thank you, etc.).

7. Follow people back: It’s a general courtesy to follow those who friend you. Mutual friendships offer several benefits like the ability to send private messages to one another. They also show the community that you’re interested in others, rather than keeping to yourself.

8. Edit your posts: Become familiar with the editing options each site offers. On Twitter you can determine how your Tweet reads; but did you also know that you can edit the headline, description and photo on a link posted in Facebook or a link submitted to Digg? This means you can take out the “ – website.com” text that often appears after the headline and customize the description to something that is appealing to your audience.

9. Track metrics: If you’re not sure how much of an impact you’re making, check your metrics. This could be as easy as setting up an account with bit.ly, a link shortening service. It tracks how many clicks each link receives and offers other analytics. It’ll help you figure out if your effort is yielding the response you want.

10. Mistakes happen: We all make mistakes online, but it’s important to learn from them and move on. If a message does go out that’s incorrect or inappropriate, take a moment to correct that mistake or apologize. The community will appreciate it.

Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments!

Amanda Maurer is a digital news editor at the Chicago Tribune, who specializes in social media. She blogs at acmaurer.com; you can also follow her on Twitter at @acmaurer.