WWW.ANANEWS.COM FEBRUARY 2013

If you did not att end the Arizona Newspapers Associati on 2013 Legisla-ti ve Recepti on, you will certainly want to be at the next one!

“We had an excellent turnout. Almost two-thirds of the legislature showed up,” said ANA Executi ve Direc-

tor Paula Casey.Missed the recepti on, but sti ll

want to get involved? HB2483 (Public Noti ces; Publishing; Public Medium) is scheduled to be heard before the House Technology and Infrastructure Committ ee on Thursday, February 7

at 9:00 am in House Hearing Room 5. This 574-page bill replaces hundreds of statutory references to “newspa-per” with the term “public medium.” Needless to say, ANA is opposed to the bill and considers your support at the state legislature criti cal.

Rep. Thomas Shope, R-8, and Rep. Phil Lovas, R-22, discuss the inner workings of the legislature during the ANA 2013 Legislati ve Recepti on.

Legislators, news media feeling the love at legislative reception

RECORD REPORTER CHANGES FORMATThe Record Reporter, established in 1914, has long been

one of the state’s public noti ces outlets. In 2013, it’s changed to a newsprint product and includes more news with a focus on law and business content.

SCIENCE & JOURNALISMUniversity of Arizona School of Journalism alumni are invit-

ed to join Dr. Jeff rey Trent, Arizona State University Professor Carol Schwalbe and New York Times best-selling author Alan

Weisman for a lively discussion on the importance of science journalists, on Feb. 7, 5 p.m.-7 p.m. at the Phoenix offi ces of Bryan Cave. Please RSvP to kateh@email.arizona.edu.

NAJA HOLDING CONFERENCE IN PHOENIXThe Nati ve American Journalists Associati on will host its

2013 conference in Phoenix, July 18-21. If you are interested in volunteering or parti cipati ng in this

nati onal conference, please contact organizer Tom Arviso at tarviso@navajoti mes.com.

What else is going on in Arizona media? Read the briefs.

Page 2 | February 2013 ■ ANAgrams

ANA ad network expands offeringsThe 2by2/2by4 Display Ad Network has expanded to

include two more sizes: 2by5 and 2by6. It is considered to be a greater opportunity for news-

papers to increase revenue by off ering more opti ons to adverti sers.

The network has also changed names and will now be the Arizona Statewide Display Ad Network.

As with the 2by2 and 2by4 ads, one third of the revenue is held in an account to be split and distributed to parti ci-pati ng newspapers.

This change was discussed and at ANA’s quarterly market-ing committ ee meeti ng in January.

See page 3 of this newslett er for more informati on about the changes.

NNA disagrees with USPS decision to eliminate Saturday delivery

“The U.S. Postal Service’s announcement that it intends to maintain Saturday delivery of packages but abandon delivery of newspapers is an indicati on USPS is moving further and further away from the universal service the American public expects,” said NNA President Merle Baranczyk, publisher of the Mountain Mail in Salida, Colo.

“This unfortunate decision sees packages as profi table but forgets the importance of money in the mail for small busi-nesses and thousands of American communiti es who depend

upon local newspaper delivery on Saturdays,” Baranczyk added.“The Nati onal Newspaper Associati on has a long record

of supporti ng six-day delivery. It is regrett able the inacti on of Congress to deal with the unfair requirements it imposed upon the Postal Service in 2006 has led USPS to make such a discriminatory choice. NNA disagrees with both the policy de-cision and the legal reasoning behind it. We hope to sti ll work with the Postal Service on a plan to ensure ti mely delivery of newspapers.”

What is a social media listening station and why you need one

Social media is not going away and smart media com-panies have not only become adopters of this technol-ogy, but are using it to drive traffi c, build buzz and sell. However, publicati ons are already overwhelmed due to smaller staff s. So how can they get with social media on limited ti me? Answer: Put together a social media listen-ing stati on. keep track of conversati ons, news and buzz in just a few minutes a day.

FiRst tHiNgs FiRst: Pick your platf orm. I am personally a huge fan of Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Netvibes. These platf orms support muti ple social media accounts like Facebook, Twitt er, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Foursquare and almost anything with an RSS feed. You can save so much ti me by having a single dashboard in which to view all your ac-counts in one place.

NEXt: Figure out what you’re listening for. Build lists of people and businesses you want to fol-low, such as hometown celebs, major business in your community, local government offi cials and competi tors and partners. Follow key phrases and hashtags like your

publicati on name, citi es, schools or major events. tHEN: Monitor. Who is talking about what? What are

they saying? What can you extrapolate from your social media analyti cs?

LAstLY: Respond. Social media is about being social. Share news, retweet interesti ng info, answer questi ons. Get to know bloggers who cover your community and build relati onships with them. Correct misinformati on. If

tourists are looking for local info, refer them to the great resources you have available on

your website. Encourage new residents to subscribe to your publicati on. Help local

businesses promote their events. Thank your fans and followers for linking to you. Run contests. Get on people’s radar.

Top brands like Gatorade and the Super Bowl use social media listening stati ons to

create brands that people care about. Why not take a page from that book?

It will take an initi al ti me investment, but once you have your social media listening stati on set up, you will fi nd social media will become easier to parti cipate in, more valuable and less ti me-consuming.

BY PERRi COLLiNs | ARIZONA NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION

Pick your platf orm. I am personally a huge fan of Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Netvibes. These platf orms support muti ple social media accounts like Facebook,

Figure out what you’re listening for. Build lists of people and businesses you want to fol-

tourists are looking for local info, refer them to the great resources you have available on

businesses promote their events. Thank your fans and followers for linking to you. Run contests. Get on people’s radar.

Bowl use social media listening stati ons to create brands that people care about. Why

not take a page from that book?It will take an initi al ti me investment, but once you have

February 2013 ■ ANAgrams | Page 3

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For more information contact Sharon Schwartz at 602-261-7655 ext. 108 or s.schwartz@ananews.com

3.75” x 6”Statewide - $2,205.00

3.75” x 5”Statewide - $1,835.00

3.75” x 4”Statewide - $1,470.00

3.75” x 2”Statewide - $735.00

Page 4 | February 2013 ■ ANAgrams

MOVERS & SHAKERS: Brett Fera

The Local Media Associati on board of directors announced that John M. Humenik, president and publisher of the Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), will become the chairman of the board eff ecti ve this month.

Humenik served as board chair from September 2009 through September 2010. He replaces Gareth Charter who has left his positi on at Holden Landmark but will remain acti ve in the associati on as chair of the marketi ng committ ee and as a director on the Local Media Foundati on board.

According to Charter, “I’m excited about the new directi on of my day-to-day work, while saddened though,

understanding that the bylaws of LMA cause me to relin-quish the Chairman’s role. I truly love this associati on and everything that it stands for, and I wish John and the board well and look for-ward to staying involved in a diff erent capacity.”

“We want to thank both John and Gareth for their tremendous service to our organizati on,” said Nancy Lane, president of Local Media Associati on, “both have made signifi cant contribu-

ti ons to LMA over the years and will conti nue to do so.” Humenik will lead the board strategic planning session this month that will set the course for the year as well as the coming years.

“This is a criti cal ti me in our asso-ciati on’s history as we work hard to help our members grow their busi-ness and make progress in the digital transiti on,” said Jon k. Rust, immedi-ate past chair of the LMA board, “we are thrilled that both John Humenik and Gareth Charter will be part of the leadership of LMA and the Foundati on for the next few years.”

John Humenik can be reached at jhumenik@azstarnet.com.

Humenik named chairman of Local Media Association board

WHO? Managing editor, East valley Tribune

FAMiLY: Wife Lindsey and our two pups, Mikey and Mayhem

HOBBiEs: Before-the-sun-comes-up tee ti mes in the dead of summer is some-thing I certainly take advantage of living here in the valley. I love college sports in parti cular, but I’d bet there isn’t a region in the world with the number of professional-quality faciliti es Arizona has. It’s unreal. Away from sports, I en-joy learning about U.S. history.

EduCAtiON: M.B.A., B.A. Journalism, both University of Arizona

HOMEtOWN: Born and raised in the Los Angeles suburbs, but I’m oft en the fi rst to say Tucson was where I “grew up.”

FAvORitE QuOtE: “If your dumb, surround yourself with smart people; if you’re smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.”

WHAt AttRACtEd YOu tO YOuR NEW OPPORtuNitY? The Tribune has been through plenty of growing pains, but to be trusted to lead this newsroom’s eff orts at conti nuing to be the most trusted resource for the community it serves – and to do it with the media outlet that I was able to start my career at – means everything.

MOst EXCitiNg EXPERiENCE: I know it’s cliché, but the fact is it hasn’t happened yet. That drives me. I’ve been across the country as a reporter and just recently began working more closely with up-and-coming journalists as a faculty associate at ASU’s Cronkite School. All have been incredible experiences, but, truthfully, I am truly driven by the excitement of “what’s next?”

February 2013 ■ ANAgrams | Page 5

MOVERS & SHAKERS: Candace BegodyWHO? Editor, Navajo Times

FAMiLY: Parents Leroy and Laura, 16-month-old son Mason James

HOBBiEs: Long-distance running, boxing, teaching. Just spending ti me with my family.

EduCAtiON: BA in Journalism from the University of Arizona. Put on hold obtaining master’s degree to focus all energy on this positi on.

HOMEtOWN: Ganado, Ariz.

FAvORitE QuOtE: “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul” (Henley) and a saying that was taught to my by my grandpa - “Love, faith, forgiveness and charity will get you through life’s most diffi cult ti mes.” WHAt AttRACtEd YOu tO YOuR NEW OPPORtuNitY? I have always been the type of person who will step up if no else will and will take on a challenge if it meant I would improve or develop professionally or personally. Aft er the former editor left , there really was no one person who said, “I will do it” or “I can do it.” So I approached the pub-lisher of the Navajo Times and asked if he would give me a chance. Needless to say, he did.

WHAt ARE YOuR gOALs As EditOR? I would like for us at the Navajo Times to begin using our website more to deliver news. We have started to use our website more (with the ulti mate goal of creati ng multi media projects) and delivering breaking news daily, and expanding on those updates for the print editi on. We are all starti ng to see that the web is not only fun, but we are able to off er more to our readers.

MOst EXCitiNg EXPERiENCE: I think the most exciti ng experience so far is just seeing how excited the reporters and photographers get when we beat the daily newspapers with breaking news. Breaking news is something that wasn’t done oft en in the past, but today we are all getti ng into the mindset of daily reporters and constantly updati ng the web with fresh news.

MOVERS & SHAKERS: Marji Ranes

WHO: Publisher, West valley Community Newspapers (Daily News-Sun, Glendale-Peoria Today, Suprise Today, YourWestvalley.com)FAMiLY: Husband Doug, three stepdaughters Danett , Toni and SheriHOBBiEs: Nature photography, hiking, cooking, golfEduCAtiON: Double major, journalism and politi cal science, Cal Poly San Luis ObispoHOMEtOWN: Arlington, va.

FAvORitE QuOtE: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it is.” -- Wayne GretzkyWHAt AttRACtEd YOu tO YOuR NEW OPPORtuNitY? The chance to ‘come home’ to Arizona (I worked for The Arizona Republic as General Manager in the Southeast valley), and to do so leading a group of truly local, truly targeted community newspapersMOst EXCitiNg EXPERiENCE: Whatever I’m doing in this very moment.

Page 6 | February 2013 ■ ANAgrams

Back in 1897, James Ross Clemens was ill. Not-so-careful passing on of information resulted in word that Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, was dying in London. When an enter-prising reporter decided to check on Twain before publishing his demise, the author responded, “The report of my death was greatly exaggerated.”

Morley Safer, during his Jan. 6 “60 Minutes” report about the newspaper industry, glibly stated, “The facts of life are that newspapers are folding all over the country. It’s a dying business.” His example was the New Orleans newspaper, The Times-Picayune, which recently cut back from publishing seven days a week to three days,

When it comes to newspapers, there are two cousins – large metro dailies and community newspapers. The latter includes weeklies and small dailies (publishing three or fewer days a week). Safer as well as reporters and broadcasters from media giants across the United States and around the world owe it to the public – and to community newspaper owners and staffers – to perform due diligence to determine which of the newspaper cousins is near death and which is alive. Only then, should they report their findings.

It is the large metro daily news-papers, which make up less than 5 percent of all U.S. newspapers, that are struggling from declines in readership and advertising, printing less often or ceasing publication entirely.

While it is painful to see our metro-daily-newspaper cousins faltering, we, the community newspapers, are not dying. Like Twain, community news-papers say, “Reports of our dying are greatly exaggerated.”

Much has been published and broadcast about the decline of metro dailies. It is time to shine a spotlight on the health and vigor of community

newspapers and on our role in rural and suburban communities across the country.

Readership of our newspapers, most-ly weeklies, is increasing and new com-munity newspapers are being birthed. That the great investor Warren Buf-fett bought more than 60 community newspapers in 2012 suggests there is present and future value in the weekly and small-daily arm of the industry.

Community newspapers are do-ing well because people want to read about the actions of their town council and local school board, the results of high school sporting events and what’s happening in the business community. Readers turn to community newspa-pers for public notices, for obituaries and police reports and for engage-ment, wedding, anniversary and birth announcements. They expect keen and thoughtful editorials as well as a forum for their own opinions – letters to the editor. They read the advertisements, look at every photo and clip articles and photos to post on bulletin boards and hang on refrigerators.

A 2011 survey by the National News-paper Association and the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism found that 74 percent of people in areas served by

newspapers with circulations under 15,000 read one of those papers each week. They spend nearly 40 minutes reading the paper. Then, they share their newspaper with 2.3 more people.

We are watchdogs in our communi-ties. We protect the public’s right to know and keep our readers informed about their communities – essential elements in a democracy.

As 21st century technology keeps enhancing the gathering and dissemi-nation of news and information, com-munity newspapers aren’t standing idly by. We are in the fray, taking advantage of the immediacy that technology offers. We have developed revenue-producing websites, and we interact with our communities and our readers on email, Facebook and Twitter.

Community newspapers are very much alive. As Bill Tubbs, publisher of The North Scott Press and a member of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, wrote in an edito-rial Jan. 16, “Morley Safer, you’ve done us wrong, but here’s an offer you can’t refuse. Come to Eldridge (Iowa) and spend a week with our staff.”

Any of the more than 8,000 com-munity weekly newspapers in the U.S. extend a similar invitation not just to Safer but also to everyone who wants to see the healthy cousin. Interview the folks in Freeman, S.D., about the Freeman Courier; the high school stu-dents in Pittsfield, Ill., about the Pike Press; the families in Falmouth, Maine, about The Forecaster; the govern-ment officials in Espanola, N.M., about the Rio Grande Sun; or the business owners in Woodstock, Ga., about The Cherokee Ledger-News and set the record straight.

Cheryl Wormley is publisher of The Woodstock (Ill.) Independent and president of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors. She can be contacted at c.wormley@thewood-stockindependent.com.

Reports of our death are greatly exaggeratedBY CHERYL WORLEY | INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF WEEkLY NEWSPAPER EDITORS

February 2013 ■ ANAgrams | Page 7

74 percent of newspaper audience is over 45The population of people reading newspapers has aged

dramatically in the last three years to the point that nearly three-quarters of the audience is aged 45 or older, accord-ing to my analysis of survey and census data.

When I performed the same analysis using the same methodology in 2010, only half of the newspaper audience was aged 45 or higher, reflecting a rapidly growing rejection of newspapers among most younger readers.

The rapid graying of the newspaper audience has huge and unpleasant impli-cations for publishers, as discussed in a moment. First, the data:

As illustrated in the chart immediately below, the Pew Re-search Center reported in a survey last fall that newspaper readership is heavily concentrated in the upper age ranges of the population. While only 6% of respondents in the 18-24 bracket said they had read a newspaper in the previous day, Pew found that fully 48% of those over the age of 65 had done so. Here is how that looks:

I compared the Pew data with census data to estimate the actual numbers of newspaper readers in each of the age cohorts. The graph below compares the percentage of newspaper readers in an age group (blue) with the percent-

age of individuals in the population as a whole (orange).As you can see, 74% of the newspaper audience is aged

45 years or older, even though the two oldest age cohorts collectively constitute 39% of the population. At the other end of the continuum, only 6% of the newspaper audience is 18-24, even though this age group constitutes 10% of the population.

The above calculations caused me to check my math several extra times, because the new data show that the newspaper audience has aged radically since I performed the same analysis in 2010, discovering that only 51% of newspaper readers were older than 45. If the aging of the newspaper audience seemed like a problem for the indus-try back in 2010, then the far older audience today can be regarded as nothing less than a crisis. Here’s why:

- The mature skew of the audience is unappealing to most advertisers, who generally target individuals in the early life stages of forming households and raising children. The older audience delivered by newspapers could reduce the sales potential for an industry that already has lost more than half of its advertising since hitting an all-time high of $49.4 billion in 2005.

- Absent a sudden influx of twenty- and thirty-something readers, the heavy dependence of the newspaper industry

BY ALAN MuttER | NEWSOSAUR

Page 8 | February 2013 ■ ANAgrams

on aged and aging readers means that its audience at some point will die off. While the Social Security Administration says a 65-year-old woman statistically can look forward to nearly 20 more years of life, the above data clearly dem-onstrate that the industry is failing to replace older readers with younger individuals. At some point, the newspaper audience may contract so severely that (a) publishers can-not attract enough advertisers, (b) publishers no longer enjoy the economies of scale necessary to print profitably or (c) both of the above.

- The weak readership in the younger segments of the

population suggests that both the form and content of the print product are not widely appealing to the generations that came of age in the digital age. While there doesn’t appear to be much hope of attracting a significant number of sub-45 individuals to the print product, publishers have a shot at extending and protecting their valuable franchises by developing digitally native products that could – and should – be embraced by the Digital Natives.

The time for the industry to pivot from print to pixels ap-pears to running low. In the meantime, none of us is getting any younger.

Con’t from page 8: Newspaper audience

Tucson newspaper finds success with e-books

It all began with a blog: Tales from the Morgue, where the Arizona Daily Star would post stories from the days of yore, sharing the history of the town it has covered for over 135 years.

When the Star just wanted to get their feet wet in the book publishing business, they tapped Johanna Eubank, aka the Morgue Lady, a former research assistant who worked in the Star’s library for 18 years before becoming an online content producer for the news-paper’s website, AZstarnet.com.

Since March, the Arizona Daily Star has published a total of five e-books: The Bad Girls of Arizona trilogy featur-ing the stories of Eva Dugan, Winnie Ruth Judd and Louisa Marshall; Shoo-tout at the Ok Corral, a compilation of newspaper reports on the shoot-ing, the events leading up to it and those that followed from the pages of the Arizona Weekly Star, the Arizona Daily Star and the Tucson Citizen; and Arizona on the Frontier of Science: A centennial look at inventions & dis-coveries, based on the popular series 100 Days of Science, the Star’s state centennial project highlighting the importance of science and technology in the development of Arizona and its economy, repackaged as an e-book.

Each book took a total of 10-12 hours to compile, and was worked on during slow news days. “It’s not com-plex in any way,” according to Debbie

kornmiller, senior editor for custom content and delivery at the Arizona Daily Star.

According to korn-miller, not committing to an upfront expense was one of the main reasons the Star decided to test this avenue for profit-ability. Nothing is paid upfront for your e-book to appear on three major publishing platforms (Amazon, Apple, B&N), however, they each take a cut of every sale you make, usually about 30%.

The Star’s e-books are priced from $0.99 to $3.99. Each e-book is available for the Amazon kindle, as well as the Barnes and Noble Nook. The Star is currently exploring how to make their e-books available for Apple iBooks.

The e-books are promoted in the daily newspaper, with house ads that run alongside related content. There is also a dedicated page on the Star web-site where you can click to download each one.

The next Arizona Daily Star e-book making its debut will be about the Pio-neer International Hotel fire in 1970 – the worst fire in Tucson’s history. With the pending re-opening of the case,

the Star thought it would be an op-portune time to showcase the history in their archives.

“Repurpose your good stuff. You’ve got the stories. You’ve got the photo-graphs. Put it online,” said kornmiller.

Looking for ideas for your first e-book? If you don’t have the deep ar-chives the Star does, why not do some-thing with your local sports coverage? Pick one of your ancillary products like a travel guide to put online.

kornmiller’s advice to other news-papers thinking of pursuing e-book printing: “Don’t over think it. Just give it a try.”

BY PERRi COLLiNs | ARIZONA NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION

February 2013 ■ ANAgrams | Page 9

Eight simple rules for accurate journalismBY CRAig siLvERMAN | COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REvIEW

It’s a cliché to say clichés exist for a reason. As journalists, we’re supposed to avoid them like the, um, plague. But it’s useful to have a catchy phrase that can stick in someone’s mind, particularly if you’re trying to spread knowledge or change behaviour.

This week I began cataloguing some of my own sayings about accuracy — you can consider them aspiring clichés — and other phrases I find helpful or instructive in preparation for a workshop I’m giving with The Huffington Post’s Mandy Jenkins at next week’s Online News Association conference. Our session is called B.S. Detection for Online Journalists. The goal is to equip participants with tools, tips, and knowl-edge to get things right, and weed out misinformation and hoaxes before they spread them.

So, with apologies to Bill Maher, I offer some new, some old, and some wonderfully clichéd rules for doing accurate journalism. keep these in your head and they’ll help you do good work.

the initial, mistaken information will be retweeted more than any subsequent correction — I’ve started calling this the Law of Incorrect Tweets. The point is to emphasize that a piece of misinformation is often far more appealing and interesting than the subsequent correction. People are therefore more inclined to retweet or like a false news report than to pay attention to any subsequent correction. Be careful with the information gets pushed out, and be diligent about repeatedly offering a correction. This is espe-cially true with social media, but the principle—invest time in spreading corrections—is universal.

A journalist is only as good as her sources — We often encounter a source who spins a great story, only to later discover he or she was lying to us. Or, well, spinning. Since we rely on sources to build our reporting and inform us and the public, the quality and diversity of sources is hugely important. So make the effort to find the best sources pos-sible. This is where the next favorite saying of mine comes in to play.

verification before dissemination — Our job is to apply the discipline of verification to everything we gather. That means checking what a source tells you before putting it out there. It means holding off on that hot bit of news to make an extra phone call or bit of checking before sending it out. It’s the core of what we do. Too often we are enticed by the glory promised by dissemination. Which leads me to my next rule…

People will forget who got it first, but they remember who got it wrong — Scoops are almost never as impactful and glory-filled as they seem. Apart from Woodward and Bernstein, who were turned into Hollywood characters, how many other journalists are widely known among the

general population thanks to a big scoop? I would wager very few. But names like Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass and Janet Cooke seem to endure in the public’s mind. So too do the names of news organizations who push out false or incorrect information about a big story. For example, how many people had heard of What’s Trending before CBS pulled its backing over an erroneous tweet from the show? When you sacrifice verification for a scoop, you set yourself up to win the worst kind of glory.

Failure sucks but instructs — This is a saying from man-agement professor and bestselling author Bob Sutton. He lauded the value of failure in a post for the Harvard Busi-ness Review: “In fact, there is no learning without failure — and this includes failing at dangerous things like surgery and flying planes. Discovery of the moves that work well is always accompanied by discovery of moves that don’t.” We must do everything we can to avoid factual errors and spreading misinformation. But, at the same time, we must remember that we will make mistakes. And that’s when we have to move past the shame and anger and figure out how to turn our mistakes into valuable lessons. That’s how you stop making the same mistakes, how you get better.

if your mother tells you she loves you, check it out — This is a saying popularized by the folks at the City News Bureau. Perhaps it’s not as rhythmic as my “verification before dissemination” line, but the idea is the same. In this case, the line is great because it includes a built-in caution about sources. Familiarity and history do not excuse you from checking out the information. Nothing does. (Sorry, mom.)

if something seems too good to be true, it probably is — Journalists are often fooled because we want a story to be true. We want to be able to write about it, we want to be the first to have it. Maybe it confirms something we’ve al-ways believed. Maybe it’s just a great story we can’t wait to turn into a narrative. One illustrative recent example is the fake research report that claimed users of Internet Explorer had a lower IQ than those who use other web browsers. It gave lots of folks a chuckle, and it reinforced a perception. This rule is also useful when it comes to amazing images from breaking news event. Street shark, anyone?

it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup — This applies to transgressions of all sizes. Refusing to correct a misspelled name has the potential to cause far greater damage than simply issuing a proper correction. Blindly circling the wag-ons without first seeing if complaints and requests for cor-rection are valid only further enrages people. Admit your errors and reap the rewards.

Those are my maxims. What about you? What other rules or clichés apply to accuracy?

Page 10 | February 2013 ■ ANAgrams

Turning scanned documents into structured data

In about six weeks Raleigh Public Record, an online non-profit news organization based in Raleigh, N.C., will release a new open-source program to help journalists turn PDF files into structured data.

The new software will enable reporters to take an image containing data — say a scanned campaign finance return — and turn that into a spreadsheet.

This is a problem we at the Record have been trying to overcome for more than two years. The story started with Wake County campaign finance returns. The returns are filed as paper, and staff at the Wake County Board of Elec-tions scan them in and put the images online. The problem is, the only way to view the data is to look at it page by page, and the only way to analyze it is to go through by hand and enter the data into a spreadsheet one row at a time.

We’re a small news organization; we don’t have the staff to do data entry for hundreds of pages of campaign finance information. We also don’t have the budget to hire some unfortunate college students to do it for us.

Edward Duncan, my brother and a full-time programmer, and I have been thinking about how to tackle this problem since 2010. We had been kicking ideas back and forth until Edward stumbled across this solution last summer.

The new program, called DocHive, aims to pull data from the documents and put everything into a spreadsheet.

Here’s how it works: the program converts the PDF into an image file using ImageMagick, then uses a template to break a page up into smaller sections.

For example, in the campaign finance documents, DocHive will make separate sections for donor name, oc-cupation, donation amount and all the other fields. Then,

the program will take each of those sections and turn it into a separate image file.

The software takes that small image and uses optical character recognition technology to read the words or numbers and insert them into a CSv file.

This method works with county-level campaign finance returns in North Carolina, but it can also work with almost any other standardized document format.

The new program works so well because it’s able to break the page down into its component parts and use OCR with the much smaller image. Each page could be broken down into as many as 200 smaller images to be processed into a spreadsheet.

We are working on finishing up the core functions of the program and creating a user interface so anybody can cre-ate a template. Right now, that’s done by hard coding XML.

The Record will release the beta version of DocHive at the NICAR conference Feb. 28 in Louisville, ky. Development has been made possible by a grant from Raleigh’s own Beehive Collective (hence the DocHive name) and the kind folks at Reporters’ Lab.

Let us know if you’ve got any tricky document sets we can use to test DocHive or want to help test or prepare the new program for release. You can reach the development team at editor@raleighpublicrecord.org.

Charles C. Duncan Pardo is the founding editor of Raleigh Public Record, a non-profit online-only news organization dedicated to public service and watchdog journalism in Raleigh. Duncan is also a part-time graduate student at Duke University, where’s he’s creating his own journalism program. He lives with his wife and 100-pound lapdog in East Raleigh.

BY CHARLEs C. duNCAN PARdO | REPORTERS’ LAB

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Webinar Calendar

Looking for more webinars? Check out the ANA training calendar at:

http://ananews.com/calendar

Leveraging LinkedIn for Professional and Advertiser UseWHEN: Thursday, February 7 | 3 p.m. ESTdEsCRiPtiON: This 45-minute webinar will explain how to complete or develop your Linkedin profile, prospect for new clients, participate in groups, adjust your settings and maximize your searches on LinkedIn. This webinar will also cover how to utilize all of LinkedIn’s users’ tools to develop company pages that will give your organiza-tion (or advertising client) a powerful online presence. PREsENtER: Gordon Borrell, C.E.O. of Borrell AssociatesCOst: $39 MORE iNFO: http://goo.gl/yT6j6

Improve Sales Performance by 30% in the next 30 daysWHEN: Friday, February 22 | 1 p.m. CSTdEsCRiPtiON: How can you improve your performance by 30% in the next 30 days? It’s simple, but not easy. You must get better by 10% in 3 areas in the next 30 days. This webinar will identify those three necessary areas and step up! Let’s face it. Your sales results can only grow to the extent that you do. Therefore, the objective of this session is to help you grow, so that your sales grow. You will learn how to improve your pre-call planning, sales call execution and post-call reviewing.PREsENtER: Sales coach Daniel GrissomCOst: $35 MORE iNFO: http://goo.gl/WgUee

Branding for JournalistsWHEN: Tuesday, March 5 | 1 p.m. CSTdEsCRiPtiON: You’ve heard about journalists and person-al branding for a few years now. So let’s talk about ways you can grab the wheel and take control of it. Your brand can be as simple as You Being You… Online. The trick is figuring out who that is and how to leverage online tools to make the most of your strengths. Robin J. Phillips, the Reynolds Center’s digital director, will show you some simple tips to take control of your image, and accentuate the value of who you are and what you do best – apart

from your news organization.PREsENtER: Robin J. Phillips, digital director for the Reynolds Center for business Journalism and co-founder of #wjchat, a weekly Twitter-based gathering of Web journalists.COst: FREE MORE iNFO: http://goo.gl/9Ioqp

Building Effective News & Information WebsitesWHEN: Monday, March 18 | 1 p.m. CSTdEsCRiPtiON: Learn to create beautiful, functional websites in this three-week online group seminar. This hands-on, project-based course will help you develop web publishing skills from the ground up – no prior pro-gramming or development experience necessary.

Whether you’ve only dabbled in web technologies and need to get up to speed – fast – or have some experience and want to flesh out your knowledge, this course will teach you the essential principles and techniques needed to create websites that communicate your message and engage your audience.PREsENtER: Poynter Institute adjunct and director of online research and development at the University of South Florida Casey FrechetteCOst: $429 MORE iNFO: http://goo.gl/q2z5k

Compensation Plans That Boost Local SalesWHEN: Thursday, March 28 | 3 p.m. ESTdEsCRiPtiON: What are the best methods to motivate sales reps to increase new business, sell more digital ad-vertising and decrease contract churn? Find out how the Morris Communications and the Tampa Bay Tribune have changed their models of accountability and compensa-tion to do just that!PREsENtER: TDBCOst: $39 MORE iNFO: http://goo.gl/qUYt1