Suddenly, it matters whether you shaved this morning, and how well you can speak on camera while narrating a video you are shooting at a crime scene or when you are sitting at your laptop providing analysis on a Google + Hangout.

Therefore, training journalists in this area becomes crucial. We are doing some of this training at the San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune and Contra Costa Times  as we roll out the Tout video platform with Digital First Media.

At first, we focused our Tout training only on shooting techniques such eliminating background noise, taking advantage of the best lighting, and how to frame the video shot.

Then, Yvonne Leow of Digital First noted that it was time to add speaking on-camera tips to the training. I thought I would share some of those here.

My top tip to reporters who are doing Google+ Hangouts is: “Don’t fear the silence.” Too often, we speak quickly when we are being recorded, and often that leads to interrupting the other person hanging out with you. And, since this is not Fox News, where people shout over each other enough to be heard, no one gets heard.  Try pausing for a second before you respond to the person on the Hang Out with you.

Also, speak slowly and deliberating when you are on camera. This may not feel natural at first, but your audience will thank you.

Here’s some others great tips from Dan Petty, Social Media Editor for the Denver Post.

Whenever I do training about Vine, Twitter’s video app, at least half of the people in the class look at me strangely. Why should they care about a platform that shoots six-second videos, they wonder. Who is going to watch them? What can you possibly capture within such a short time. Even after I show them examples, I am not sure I convert many of them, who are imagining endless loops of cat videos. Nor does it matter when I tell them that recently it hit No. 2  in the Apple iTunes store among free apps.

Today, I am here to show you why it matters, with an example that might win over even the most skeptical of journalists. Vine gained  some respect during the unfortunate bombings at the Boston Marathon on Monday. The key for creating a   Vine video at a news event, is to capture just the right moment – or in this case -six seconds, I always tell my students.  And on Monday one spectator did just that.

Advertising Age wrote a decent story about the use of Vine at the Marathon.  It includes the Vine that @doug_Lorman managed to capture. The video,  the story points out, served as the first video for many people looking for visuals of the explosions. Later, longer videos naturally provided more depth and details, however, Lorman’s video received 40K plus views. And, I used it in a Storify of images from the bombings.  Vine is still only available for iPhones, but don’t expect it to go away anytime soon.

Have I won you over?  Find me on vine @deborapetersen. I will be looking for you six seconds at a time.

Reblogged from The Buttry Diary:

Storylane users are expressing their dismay and frustration over the platform’s recent decision to join forces with Facebook, underlining once again the lack of control we have over our social media choices.

“Just when I am starting to settle in (to Storylane) BAM, the rug is pulled out from under me,” writes one user. “I for one am not happy about this “Merge/Acquiree” with/of Facebook. I know that a few of my friends are not happy with it either.”  Meanwhile, Storylane sent out information  to its users Monday offering suggestions and tools for importing their stories to Facebook or other platforms such as WordPress and Tumblr. You can also download a backup of your stories.

The story-telling platform is no longer accepting new users, and will be shutting down according to Inside Facebook. None of these “transfer” options are ideal.  The platform – which encourages people to tell stories and ask others to tell stories about themselves – has its own unique character, and attracted a certain type of user (of course it also had its share of self-promoters). The whole point of the site, like all social media platforms is to share. But this site took sharing one step further because it prompted users such as myself to tell stories that they would not have thought about writing unless prompted by a fellow user.

I am a big fan of Storylane and of its CEO Jonathan Gheller, who I interviewed last November and part of me is like, who could blame he and his team for ignoring this opportunity. Still,  I am disappointed that the Palo Alto startup was unable to stay in the game and contribute to the diversity of social media options. It also makes me glad that I did not devote even more time to using Storylane because now I am stuck. I must move my stories or lose them.

One option  is to send them to my Facebook account. However, under that option, you move your stories to Facebook Notes, a relatively obscure feature on Facebook.  I have used Notes so rarely that I had trouble remembering how to access them. To find notes, click on “apps” on the bar on the left column of your profile page. Notes allow for longer posts such as Storylane stories which tend to be more in depth than Facebook posts. You can post notes and share them, but it is hardly a dynamic Facebook tool.

Since Gheller announced that his team was moving to Facebook, Storylane has been filling up with posts similar to the one with this headline “But I went here because I dislike Facebook.”   Another Storylane fan wrote this post explaining that he was happy to have an alternative out of the social media giant’s wide reach.

The ultimate irony is this Storylane user, who was inspired by Storylane to deactivate his Facebook account. “ I had around 2300 friends on facebook, and I knew only 300. The only reason I added people was to connect, learn from and feel acknowledged, but it is more of a placebo effect than an actual therapy,” he writes.

As a social media editor, I spend my days navigating the wide ocean of social media tools, and often complain that there are too many too juggle every day. However, when moves like this happen, it reminds me that while the ocean may be wide, it is often not very deep.

Time will tell if Gheller’s team can help make Facebook a platform that accommodates  storytellers who like the  man who wanted to divorce his wife. have shared compelling,personal stories.

As for me, I am going to think twice before jumping on the next social media bandwagon. It is just likely to land in Facebook anyway.

For those who want to migrate their stories to elsewhere, Storylane is developing tools for that, he wrote.” We are building tools that will help you migrate the content to other services if you so desire. I will be in touch with you about those specific tools later,” he wrote, ” but I can confirm that Facebook is not acquiring any of your data; and we’re working to make sure you can migrate your content in a manageable way.” This is the full announcement.

What this means  is a bit unclear, with Gheller saying that  in joining Facebook, his team will be able to continue its mission of connecting to the world. “After a lot of discussions with Facebook about how our teams might work together to have even greater impact, we are announcing today that the Storylane team will be joining Facebook.”

Since this coincides with Facebook’s announcement of a revamped news feed, there is speculation that Gheller’s team can help Facebook since it specializes in both longer story form, and personalized stories.  In making describing the news feed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg vowed to make it ” the best personalized newspaper in the world.” Here is the story about the news feed announcement.

I am still trying to reach Gheller, and will let you know what I find out.

If you are using Tweetdeck on your mobile phone or are using the desktop version in the office, you will want to find a new Twitter management system soon or switch to Tweetdeck’s Chrome App or Web version. Twitter announced this week that it is killing off its mobile and desktop versions. This story by NBCnews.com explains.  Also, Tweetdeck’s integration with Facebook will disappear in May. I find Tweetdeck incredibly useful, however, I am also a fan of Hootsuite, which does a pretty decent job of helping you manage multiple streams of  Tweets.  I like its mobile version. I do not find the Web version of Tweetdeck to be as intuitive as its desktop version, but you certainly can get by with it. This story recommends Tweetbot but I have never used it, and it is not free.

Please send along your ideas for replacements.

Meanwhile, it is a little frustrating to lose such a useful mobile tool. Let’s hope that Twitter makes good on its promise to keep improving its Web version.

Oh, yeah, and there is the obvious teaching moment: “You don’t call a 9-year-old actress by a vulgar name on Twitter.”

Last night when my editor told me of the Tweet, at first I thought he surely had it wrong so I searched for it. The Tweet had already been deleted. Still, it took me all of 2-3 minutes to find it.

And, if you Google it right now, you can easily find it. It is here on Wired:

That is because even though The Onion rightfully deleted the Tweet and the CEO issued an apology today, that Tweet is never going to go away. Wired took a screen shot of it. Many others did too. I found it because someone took a screenshot of it, and then Tweeted it. I promptly took  a screen shot of her screen shot, and that Tweet is sitting among the photos on my iPhone. You see how it works, this a high-tech game of telephone. Except in this case, The Onion has more than 4 million followers, and as the message passes among them and beyond, it does not get changed or watered down. It is an exact replica (Wired smudged out the word) of The Onion Tweet.

Now or 10 years from now, I could Tweet it, post it on Facebook, email it to all of you, even make a poster out of it.

Unlike  those at The Onion, we are real journalists, and so none of us is about to do something so impulsive and stupid. Yet, we all make mistakes. And, all of us hate that moment when we have to step up and correct those mistakes by tweeting a correction and often deleting the Tweet too. However, this deleting an erroneous or distasteful Tweet does not make it go away. Nor does an apology (but it helps).

Here we go again. I just finished holding a session on “Separating Fact from Fiction Online” and then, I read this Twitter hoax story. Today, share prices fell for a company after a  fake Twitter account  falsely reported that the company was being investigated by the Department of Justice for fraud. The only fraud, apparently, was the Twitter account that reported it. Reuters reported that the false report came from another Twitter account.

Shame on whomever is behind the fake Twitter account, but double shame on anyone who retweeted this tweet without making one simple check. The real account @muddywatersre has 7,597 followers, 225 tweets, and is included on 207 lists. It includes the company website on its profile. The fake one?  It has eight tweets, 12 followers and it is on zero lists.  There is no link to a website.  The real firm is going to have higher numbers in all these categories, and a website listed.  This does not assure that the Twitter account is legitimate, but in this case, there were enough signs on the fake account to raise red flags that warranted further investigation. Also, the fake account lists the name Conrad Block, but the name of the founder of Muddy Waters Research is Carson Block. Finally, the fraudulent Twitter account’s eight tweets were all about a single company and a single (supposed) investigation, and all the tweets were made today. Such a young account should never be trusted for such important and potentially libelous news.

Both accounts have the same photo logo, which points to how sophisticated this trickery can become.

The real firm, Muddy Waters Research, Tweeted today that there is no report, and that it was a hoax. There are other reasons that such a tweet would be suspicious, but in this case, the first sign of trouble was easy to find.

Here are some quick reminders about retweeting:

• When in doubt do NOT retweet!
• Check out the source of the tweet before retweeting- Does the account have a photo, followers, is it on lists, is there a website listed, who is following.
• Confirm the information with additional sources
• Is there a link included in the tweet which confirms the information?
• Trust your instincts.
• If it is too good to be true it probably is.
• When was the account started?
• Here are more tips from me, Craig Silverman and Mandy Jenkins.

Thanks to the Association of Alternative News Media and Online News Association for inviting me to present at its ONA Digital Camp in San Francisco on Saturday. The group included editors, publishers and reporters from weekly newspapers as close as Monterey and as far as New Orleans and Hawaii.  For me, newspapers like that are like crack. I am addicted to them so I went home with a pile of their publications. These reporters are on the ground in their communities, reporting local news with often tight budgets and small staffs, and I love reading what they come up with.  The most impressive investigative story I found was in the Arkansas Times. It is an eye-opening piece on “Frac-sand mining” That’s right, if you think fracing is controversial, check out what is happening in states such as Arkansas which are suffering environmental degradation  because their soil carries a key ingredient needed for fracing.

The paper with the funniest cover story?  The Charleston City Paper. It’s about the “Luv Guv”,  Mark Sanford, who is running for the U.S. House of Representatives. I took the newspaper’s quiz about him, and scored frighteningly well, while wishing that I could write headlines like that.

Closer to home, I enjoyed the cover piece on Carmel’s Brita Sigourney, in the Monterey County Weekly. The extreme half-pipe skier is heading for the Winter 2013 X Games.  There’s lots of good journalism out there, and I was happy to hang out with the producers of that.

In my presentation, I talked about seeking  readers instead of expecting them to come to you and your website. It is something all publications struggle with, no matter if it is a weekly or a daily newspaper. In preparing for the talk I was reminded again of how important it is to understand  how best to use so many aspects of the digital world: blogs, SEO, and a long menu of other social media tools.  Our readers become more and more specialized every day in the topics they want to read about, and the ways they find them.

I started with a story about the most recent column I wrote for www. mercurynews.com. The story was about my husband’s new electric car, a Nissan Leaf. After writing the column, I decided to also blog about surviving life and marriage with an electric vehicle. You probably already guessed, but the WordPress blog received almost as many views as my column did on our newspaper website. And, when it came to comments and discussion, the blog far exceeded comments on the newspaper site. Also, that discussion is continuing.   The small, but mighty electric car community is thriving, but they are doing it in a world only loosely connected to traditional media.

That, of course, is our continuing challenge, isn’t it? We need to find as many and varied ways to root out our readers as possible.  Like the newspapers in Arkansas, Charleston, and Monterey, we have stories that matter to large communities of readers. We  need to find them and make it as easy as possible for them to find us  whether they are searching on Google, navigating the blogosphere, or reading their friends’ feeds on Facebook.

Here’s a link to my presentation ”Beyond Sharing Buttons: Finding Our Readers” which provides only a cursory overview of some of the places where readers hang out.  Tell me a story about some of the places where you have found pockets of readers.