Some of the cool tools that make journalists' jobs easier, whether for editors or reporters. Compiled after ONA 2012 conference in September 2012.

1. Cool web tools
Wordle.net

2. Saving time to innovate
 Verification and aggregation tools
 Aggregation and production
 Multimedia: Doing audio, video, graphics
 Optimization: Making sure people see what you do
 Mobile and tablet: Where we want to be

3. A new audience
 Mobile audience is growing quickly
 83% to 90% of Americans have cell phones; 55% have
smartphones; 74% of ages 25-34 have them
 68% of people with smartphones say they can’t live without
their smart phones
 Android and IOS are biggest drivers; IOS drives more usage
and page views
 Tablet audience doubled from 2011 to so far in 2012 -- $121
million spent this year on tablets. Two-thirds of those are
iPads.

5. Frequency of use
 19% of people check their devices every 30 minutes
 17% do so once an hour
 14% check every 10 minutes
 Tablets account for more usage than any other device
late at night
 Mobile early in morning, desktops and laptops through
the work day.

6. Habits and patterns
 Sequential use: People move from one device to
another.
 96% of people polled downloaded apps last year
 68% use mobile to watch short form news videos
 64% do two-screen multitasks
 47% seek weather info
 31% watch video
 29% local news; 24% national news

7. What about social media?
It’s not the main driver
to news, especially
our audience. But
helps to pay
attention to it.

8. Verification tools
There is an increasing skepticism of
journalism and a demand for more
verification. Tools are helping verify.
Super Pac App: Allows you to hold it up to
a presidential ad and it will identify where
it came from, who is behind it, etc. Like
Shazam for political ads; from Newsweek
and Daily Beast

10. SuperPACApp

11. Verifying sources
 Photos
http://images.google.com/imghp?hl=en

12. Spokeo.com

13. Aggregating sources
 Smart ways to see what others are doing
 Nearly all your sources are on social media now, too
 Companies, individuals, other aggregators
 How do you keep track of it all?

14. Muckrack
 Sign up as a journalist, and you can create alerts of fellow
journalists' tweets, get lists of journalists covering the
same beats or areas.
 See these:
CCB http://muckrack.com/directory/crainschicago
Forbes: http://muckrack.com/directory/forbes
Metro Detroit: http://muckrack.com/directory/metrodetroit
Bloomberg
News: http://muckrack.com/directory/bloomberg

15. By beat or geography

16. Latest and most active

18. Twitter search
 Twitter search: http://twitter.com/search
 Use the advanced search function to find out what's
going on in a particular subject area or geographical
area. Here's a search for "restaurants" within 15 miles
of Detroit
https://twitter.com/i/#!/search/restaurant%20near%3A
%22detroit%22%20within%3A15mi

19. Tweetdeck

20. Tweetdeck
 Schedule tweets
 Create lists or searches by hash tags or terms
 Keep track of more than one feed at once

21. Topsy.com
 Allows you to target tweets and to go back in time

22. Spundge
 Pulls in feeds from RSS, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube
 Does what Google Alerts used to do, but in a more
targeted way
 Is very, very new!

23. Dan Gilbert: Spundge
notebook

24. Storyful.com
 This allows you to see videos and tweets that are
trending on world issues and on politics.
 You can narrow it to Michigan to filter:
 http://storyful.com/pro#tab=2&vs=michigan

25. Geocoding
 Geofeedia: Allows you to see tweets, instagrams,
videos in a certain area over a certain amount of time

26. Video and audio
 Video and Audio: It has become a thing unto itself. It is no
longer good enough to create video based on a content
strategy. Journalists think about content -- but there are way
too many people in the game. It's about how you distribute it
and use it.
 The Washington Post: The Grid
 Socialcam app: Allows you to take and share video in many
ways within seconds.
 Instagram for photos
 Soundcloud.com:
 Adding audio clips easily http://soundcloud.com/

27. The Grid: Washington Post

29. Scribble Live
 Live blogging
and interacting
 Freep using for
Kwame trial

30. Other social arenas
 Obama does Reddit
AMA (Ask Me
Anything)
 It’s all captured in a
Storify here

31. Elections: Most social ever
 Michelle Obama and Ann Romney are on Pinterest:
http://pinterest.com/michelleobama/people-who-inspire-me/
http://pinterest.com/annromney/
 There is a lot of aggregation and use of tools to report from
one social media platform to another. When Obama did a
AMA on reedit: A storify of that AMA was done:
 http://storify.com/ivanlajara/barack-obama-does-reddit-ama

32. Storify
 A great tool for aggregating from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,
Google, and now even Reddit to create a customized story.
 A good FAQ about storify (includs some good, short instructional
videos)
 Candidates are using storify to aggregate campaign coverage,
with photos and posts:
 Obama on storify
 Romney on storfy
 Onion editor’s live tweets from RNC, compiled into a storify:
 http://storify.com/baratunde/the-best-of-baratunde-s-dnc-tweets-
part-2-of-2

33. Storify
 A tool to bring together many sources – or one stream
of tweets, posts, instagrams.

34. Cool trends
 A top tech trend is
wearable technology
 Everpurse: Charges
your phone while it’s
inside the purse
 Utility-based
applications: CLOTH
app allows you to
catalog your closet,
then it picks clothes
based on the weather

35. Mememaker.com