Project J-Score
Gerald Businge
Armand Emamdjomeh
Tasneem Raja
Martin Ricard
The Problem
In response to the challenges facing traditional journalism due to disruptions from today's media landscape, the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism undertook an initiative aimed at training students to have the knowledge and skills not just for the traditional media but also for the new age of multimedia reporting. 
A big part of this initiative involved developing hyperlocal sites, which apart from serving as training grounds for students to learn how to report relevant information in the new media environment were also aimed at providing the respective communities the news and information that they need to make informed decisions in their daily lives.
However, in creating the sites, we have noticed that some of our hyperlocal news practices have worked well while others have failed. So how do we know these sites are really serving their purpose? As a class project, we decided it was necessary to take a step back and ask some very basic questions.
How does the popularity of stories on the sites relate to the journalistic quality of the stories?

Whose sites are the hyperlocal sites: for the J-School or for the communities in which they serve?

Do people in these areas view the sites as their own?

Are the hyperlocal sites really producing news and information about their communities that is different from what is produced by the mainstream media?
most of all...
Journalism in the Age of Disruption
Fall 2009
Instructor: Alan Mutter
How effective are the J-School hyperlocal news sites?
challenges
traditional journalism
training students
multimedia reporting
hyperlocal sites
training grounds
communities
serving their purpose?

                 
                                                   ...without compromising either goal?
 ...and provide a service to communities through hyperlocal news coverage...
Can the J-School serve as a training ground for students...
Methodology
Findings
Conclusion
Recommendations
We decided to give a sort of "blind taste test" to a roomful of journalists. Without knowing which stories had high traffic and which were barely read by anyone . . .
Would they pick the traffic-leaders
as their personal favorites?
...Or pan the same stories that
came in dead last in traffic?
How it works:
We gave each journalist 20 stories from two sites, Mission Local and Oakland North — the 10 with the most traffic, and the 10 with the least — without revealing which was which. The journos would read the stories and give them a J-Score.
Creating the J-Score
Getting traffic stats would be easy with Google Analytics (more in a minute).
The hard part: creating a scoring system for journalistic principles. 
After much discussion, we chose the following metrics.
Highest possible score: 5 points. Lowest score: -5 points. 
Gathering the stories and measuring traffic
We chose 20 stories each from each site:
the 10 with the most traffic, and the 10 with the least. 
All of the stories were published between Sept. 1 and Nov. 1, 2009.
Getting the stats:
The Ford sites run Google Analytics, a free Google tool that offers detailed statistics about who your website's visitors are and what they do on your site.
What's a page view?
To pick which stories to read, we looked at total "page views." Every time a visitor loads a page on the web site, it counts as one page view.
If the visitor then clicks on another page on the same web site, that's another page view.
If the visitor comes back to the site three hours later and decides to re-read the first article over again, that's yet another page view.
If the visitor emails a link to the article to a friend, and 
the friend opens it, you guessed it, that's page view four.
There were a lot of other metrics we could have looked at: 
bounce rate
time on site
"unique" page views
But page views worked because it's an easy concept to understand, 
and it shows how many times each article was opened in a browser window.
Do readers like the same thing journalists like?
Here's what we found:
To take the hyperlocal sites to the next level, we need to keep in mind that...
Well-written stories and breaking news still generate a ton of traffic and comments.
Medium matters
Oakland North's "Thiller" piece was great as a video.
...but you wouldn't get the full effect if this were a print piece.
It's an ongoing process, and we have to keep up efforts to understand our audience more.
Who are the readers?
What do they want?
What type of coverage do they want?
What are they reading, watching, etc.?
On the other hand...
Are we asking student reporters to do too much?
How do you be a:
Are we looking for a different kind of coverage? 
Is the traditional, 600-word to 700-word story being phased out? 
reporter
community outreach/activist

multimedia producer
SEO expert
at the same time?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
A successful media outlet today is measured by more than just whether it can produce a good story. It has to emphasize promotion and community-building.
Meeting Tweeting
When a whole story is too much, or too slow, try tweeting or live-blogging it and putting the feed on your site.
Using #hashtags helps. 
"Tweet" new stories and features to attract people to your site. Make them witty and snappy but accurate. Remind people about yourself and your content.
We run community sites. Let's attend community events, but let the coverage fit the story. Don't feel like you have to publish a full article about every event that you attend.
But do find other ways to show the community that we care:
highlight community members when they send in tips or say something interesting (e.g. via Twitter or via a great image on Flickr)
recruit citizen journalists
Careful though. These require management, editing and training.
Link love
Learn how to get links and re-tweets (RT's) and work them in to your workflow by...
Posting on Mission Local, Oakland North, Facebook page
Tweeting from site account and also individual reporter accounts
Work that SEO
It's useless to put something online if no one can find it...
...And it's not that hard. 
Through good use of SEO, you can land in the first few Google results — where you want to be.
It was just a short simple event listing, but because it contained 
a useful piece of information for the community, it got a huge 
amount of traffic. 
Just look at the comments.
Are we still using "old media" methods to create "new media" sites?
SCROLL MOUSE OVER VIDEO TO WATCH
Draw a crowd
Oakland North rankings
Mission Local rankings
Top 10 page views
Top 10 J-Score
Bottom 10 J-Score
Top 10 J-Score
Bottom 10 J-Score
Top 10 page views
Bottom 10 page views
In general, stories that we rated highly also were read widely
Obligatory coverage of meetings and events was not well-read
When used properly, social media helped attract more eyeballs
Originality/Style:
Was the story written in a fresh, engaging way?
Copy Quality:
Any typos? Layout problems? Proofreading problems?
Information:
Beyond opinion and commentary, are the "nuts and bolts"
in place (i.e. names, numbers, background info, etc.)?
Utility:
How useful is this story to someone's everyday life? We expected stories like Bay Bridge closure to score highly in this section. We expected stories on things like fashion and history to score low.
Clarity:
Are sentences easy to digest? Or was the story littered with clunkers? Are long sections broken into paragraphs that make sense?
Newsy-ness:
Is this story breaking news, or about a current event?
Did this story require some digging to get? Would other local publications have undoubtedly reported it even if you didn't? Or does this story demonstrate familiarity with the back alleys and tucked-away corners of your community?
Uniqueness:
We expected stories with a lot of background info, history, and synthesis to score highly in this section, even if they weren't breaking news or about a current event.
Significance:
How noticeable is the author's voice in this story? Does it read like standard newspaper copy, or does the story have personality?
Voice:
Bottom 10 page views