How Google Wave could transform journalism

Google Wave lets users collaborate live on documents.

The tech world is awash with excitement for today's scheduled release of 100,000 invitations to preview Google Wave.

Seems like everyone is buzzing about how the collaborative Web tool will revolutionize how we do business, organize parties, manage projects with friends, cheat on homework and market brands (trust us, we've seen the news releases, plural). The term "Google Wave" has been on Twitter's top-trending list all day.

For the last two months, while we've been testing the Google Wave developer preview, we have been talking amongst ourselves about how this thing could change (or add to) what we do. So, here's a list of a few wild ideas we had for using Wave.

Collaborative reporting: You may notice that double bylines aren't very common. That's because trying to co-author a news story stinks.

The process usually involves one reporter talking to and researching a few things and another following a different set of sources and finally combining their findings toward the end. This can result in a mess of incompatible and unrelated research that gets either thrown out or somewhat-awkwardly wiggled in.

We're not going to e-mail our co-writers with every new lead and minute detail we dig up. But if we're sharing a virtual notebook, we can scan through ...

... or search the newest findings as they're logged, make comments and highlight our favorite bits.

Then, when it comes time to write, we can rearrange and discuss the story's flow in the same software. Thanks to the openness of Wave, collaborative pieces between bloggers could become more common.

Record and archive interviews: As reporters conduct interviews and frantically jot notes day after day, we start to develop our own shorthand. To outsiders, it looks like some sort of alien language.

If Google connects its Voice calling service to Wave, we might be able to easily insert call recordings, voicemails and text messages into our notes. Wave's founders, brothers Jens and Lars Rasmussen, have indicated in a past discussion that Google was looking at ways to connect many of its products with the Wave platform.

A third-party Wave extension called Ribbit lets users initiate conference calls inside of the program as well as the ability to call a designated phone number and have audio transcribed into the document.

Live editing: We love our editors (really, we do). But sometimes crucial things get changed that we miss in the final read-through and in rare cases, tweaked to inaccuracy.

Google Wave clearly marks updates to documents and lets you view a timeline of changes. Eventually -- once Google adds the feature -- users will be able to revert to a specific point in time. And the most passionate writers could watch live as editors tweak documents and respond to questions or changes.

Smarter story updates: Take a look at a breaking news blog like L.A. Now or the New York Times' The Lede. Scrolling down the page, you'll probably see the word "updated" in bold again and again.

Instead of creating a new post for each piece of news that's later uncovered on a breaking story, the blogs post an update to clarify which paragraphs have been changed or factually corrected.

That timeline feature could allow users to intuitively view previous versions of a post and see exactly what has been changed and why.

Discuss while you read: All of the Times blogs and many of stories on the website have areas where readers can log comments. These are just static message boards.

We get a lot of comments, saying, "That's stupid" or "You're totally wrong." That leads us to wonder, Uh, which part?

Wave lets users leave comments on particular paragraphs, sentences or words. This would allow readers to discuss passages as they're reading along and clarify which sections they're addressing.

Transparent writing process: Many readers say they're genuinely interested in how reporters string together a story. That fact was perhaps best evidenced on Sunday when curious readers gawked at the Associated Press' accidental publishing of a reporter's notes on the Roman Polanksi story.

What if we let readers watch the text as we write it? In our own testing, we found it to be a really fascinating peek into the writing habits and minds of our associates. It's also comforting to know that we're not the only ones who have trouble spelling the word "etiquette."

Maybe we can go one step further and let the observers comment throughout the writing process. Readers could help shape a story.

Instant polls: Every once in a while, bloggers like to poll their readers on topics. But gathering a decent sample size takes a while.

Presumably -- maybe once Google turns on compatibility with standard e-mail platforms -- people will practically live inside of the Wave software. We could blast out a poll using Google's Polly extension and instantly begin pulling in feedback.

Wiki news aggregator: Now we're drifting a little far out, but allowing readers to rearrange our homepage would be an interesting experiment. Of course, there's always the worry of a few unsavory links getting injected in there. Even Wikipedia isn't prone to destructive tricksters.

Got any ideas for how Wave could be used to change news gathering? How could it change your work? Let us know in the comments. (Sorry, no fancy in-line comments on this blog.)

-- Mark Milian

Follow my commentary on technology and social media on Twitter @markmilian.

Comments

[Gaby M]

I wouldn't read a writters corrections or shape the story. Useless information for me. I could spend my time elsewhere,doing other things instead. However for projects for school or work it will revolutionize the process to a faster cutting edge pace. Props google!

[Dave Nattriss]

Hurrah, a tech writer/journalist who has vision. Great post Mark.

[Edvin Beerman]

Straight away I can think of two scenarios where Google Wave and journalism seems perfect for each other, both of them which Mark came across above:

¤ Number one has to do with the transparency part; if you're being interviewed by the "jottlers", you can then check what's actually being added and edited as news, live as it happens, and comment on anything you feel is being slightly misinterpreted or completely erroneous. No more of the misquoting.

¤ Number two would be those cases where you as a reader simply know a lot more about the subject than the journalist(s) at hand. Again, with this tool of openness you can comment and basically help the writers getting their facts straight. Heck, if successful this could actually be a type of freelancing to some people.

As always with these new gadgets and internet-stuff, things tend to become a little over hyped. This time however, not only the geeks and the techs seem interested. Maybe this IS the Next Big Thing.

[Ujjwal Kanth]

Great Post... really great writting.!!
Wave is going to revolutionize our world..

[Damien]

Hi,
I did a video interview with Stephanie Hannon (Googel Wave Project Manager) about "the newsroom in the cloud" http://vimeo.com/4891186

[FlatWave]

Just like a lot of Google's ideas this one will fall flat.

We have Myspace, Plaxio, Facebook, Twitter, iReport, make your own blog and post comments, email group, and there are other programs that let you do the same things. What's new, not a whole lot.

Just like Google groups, about 10 people will use it. They may get a big kick from people first signing up to use it, then it will fade away into the sunset.

[Seamus]

Great piece. In addition to redefining how existing newsrooms function, I'm excited to see if we'll see any news startups that exist completely in the cloud because of this tool.

Seamus
Community Manager
mediabistro.com

[SpC]

Good stuff. Would love to be a BETA for it (and myself as a past Usability Engineer for some of the big players, I'm particularly intrigued).

[Online Design Bureau]

Nice article, Mark. Two questions:

Google Mail user accounts have been hacked many times now. Will security not be a concern that will dissuade some reporters from using Google Wave as a tool?

When you write about transparent writing: do you mean the public would somehow have access to the notes on Wave. Would a newspaper (who is a type of content owner) not reflect on this as contrary to its interests?

[Mark Milian]

@ODB Wave lets you select which docs are open to the public and to whom. I don't expect these ideas would translate well to stories with anonymous sources, but I wouldn't have a problem with posting my notes for most stories.

[David Sibaja (twitter.com/sibajad)]

Great info, i hope in a near future be able to post a comment directly in the paragraph :P

[Matthew Gerring]

"We have Myspace, Plaxio, Facebook, Twitter, iReport, make your own blog and post comments, email group, and there are other programs that let you do the same things. What's new, not a whole lot."

You seem to misunderstand what Google Wave is and does, but I can give you at least one reason why it isn't anything like those services- Google Wave is also a **protocol**, not just a piece of software that runs on Google's servers. So it's more like a replacement for e-mail, since anybody that wants to can host their own Wave service, build any Wave client they like, and have it be interoperable with every other Wave.

In fact, Google Wave could end up being the end-all be-all open stream protocol that Facebook and all those guys have been after. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the services you mentioned built in compatibility with Wave once its released.

[Chris Meadows]

This article is about how Google Wave could transform journalism into a more collaborative process. What is interesting to me is how much this echoes what I have discovered in writing fiction with EtherPad – http://www.etherpad.com

The process of writing a story together, with characters owned by respective authors, used to be a morass of writing half the dialogue and sending it back and forth for insertion of respective characters' words, or writing it ourselves and hoping our lack of famliarity with the other person's character didn't lead to us making them act out of character.

With EtherPad (and, presumably, with Google Wave), collaborative fiction writing becomes akin to an act of structured role-playing, where we actually write together at the same time—and unlike normal role-playing, if we decide something came off wrong we can easily go back and tweak it.

Of course, I'm not in the Google Wave trial yet, but I can't wait until I am. It will be very interesting to try it out.

[Jean Paul]

Google Wave sounds pretty amazing... for 1985. Now, it will only last as long as the users' initial enthusiasm and then die a quiet death, just like MySpace. The reason all these initiatives are falling flat on their faces is that they are trying to organize the cyberspace, as it were. But the cyberspace is essentially anarchic, so any attempt to put it in order will be met with the resistance from the space's own structure (or lack thereof).

[Ric]

Google Wave will be a catalyst defining the next paradigm for in the trenches journalism. Genuine real time collaborative reporting will also be the final opportunity for traditionally oriented news people. Either they will grab this evolution by the horns and ride it to new highs or will be left on the shore fading to irrelevancy as the media boat sails away to hook up with the new masters of media.

[PeterPatnter]

Much ado about very, very little.

[Joe Pelletier]

Well, Wave is definitely going to up the efficiency level, something everybody in the tech world seems to be looking for. But it won't be as monumentally ground-breaking as some assume.

For most, with the integrated use of Twitter, Google Docs, AIM, and even programs like Trillian, things are pretty much instantaneous. As the senior managing editor of a college newspaper, I can tell you it takes minutes for a story to be e-mailed in, copy-edited, and thrown into layout. It's already quite efficient, and as for sharing stories and co-writing, I don't expect that to change much. The biggest difficulties in co-writing comes from different mindsets, not the stratification of data. Some people just like to write a certain way, and you won't change that.

On the public front, I don't expect people to take advantage of Wave in terms of article production. People want data in front of them, they don't want to go digging. They don't want to translate different text colors and versions of stories--they just want information, ASAP. WAVE may complicate this.

But again, efficiency will probably upped in certain senses, and I will certainly give it a look-see.

Joe Pelletier
Senior Managing Editor, The Chronicle, Quinnipiac University
Founder, technically-speaking.weebly.com

[Alec D]

I am a multimedia journalist and I am always happy to consider and utilise new web innovations but this reform of journalism can never happen.
Allowing people to see our work before it is complete is fraught with danger, misreading of articles and a myriad of other pitfalls lie in wait.
Also, why do we continue to talk about bloggers and journalists in the same breath? Some journalists blog and some are bloggers, but most bloggers are totally untrained in the basics of reportiong and have little regard for legalities, unless they feel they have been slighted.
In order to protect journalism and the disemmination of fair, accurate and balanced information, we need to draw a line and stop telling everyone that with a piece of technology they too can do our work. If we don't, the culture of rumours regarded as fact will only grow and the truth will become totally lost.

[Mark Kaplan]

I have a daughter in Journalism School at Boulder. There are very few, if any, classes on Social Media. I have been trying to steer her interest towards Social Media as the future for journalism students or college graduates looking for an industry where they could find a job. How much more spot on could this article be to my point. We're getting colloborative in our news reporting which is a reflection of the need people have to interact in a technological world that is bent toward isolationg people from the office environment.

[Mark Kaplan]

If college students need to stay in touch with their friends' every breath, where Face Book started and thrived, it is an indication of the isolation people are feeling. It is possible in that everything now thrives on a grand scale, the individuals have a need to feel part of something. Increased privacy and permission based communications have also created the threat and maybe delivered on the promise of isolation. There is now the tremendous effort to get connected and interact. The key board has replaced the telephone. The desire for minimizing our involvement in things that are tedious has been replaced by the opportunity to be involved in only the things for which we have passion. We can now be involved in forums and several conversations all within an hour. We might also be getting to the point that it is necessary for commerce in the new permission based society. So I do it for business and then because I don't have office interaction to get my social on, I have a need to help you write an article on things I love to talk about. Its a reflection that we are getting private, efficient, and very communicative in non threatening venues.

[mursya]

What differs google wave from wiki than?

I want to be a reader reading journalist text, not a journalist or editor or co-editor or writer... how many people think like this?

[sanju]

ok.the wave processing that you put in the scrap is very use full.

[Andy Rossback]

This is where journalism needs go. I'm in college and I look forward to doing journalism in this fashion someday soon. I really enjoyed the ideas.

[bernardo]

great story and ideas, marc, thanx! i think that wave is mostly useful in adding transparency and collaboration to today's (and tomorrow's) journalism in a general sense, and could even be a great answer to its many problems...

wave seems even more interesting for the various citizen media based projects, such as global voices online: we are experimenting it also for collaborative translations (ie, using aunt rosie + manual editing), which is another crucial issue in ourglobal village....

anyway, just joined the wave related to this article

[John Lombaerde]

If you notice newspaper articles, (usually in the form of blogs), they will list comments at the bottom of the article. Many comments are mundane, of course, but sometimes a comment is so astute, that it really belongs together with the original article.

Google Wave could allow an author to move such high quality commenting to the top of the comment list. This would improve readability, relevance, and stimulate the discussion on the topic.

It might also stimulate more interaction between the writer and the reader. I link to a wave on a news article would certainly do that. No many writers reply to comments on their blog. I encourage writers to do that. I try to do that whenever an insightful comment has been made on my blog at http://websitepromotionblog.net

This is just one small example, but it would be a significant improvement over the mostly one-way method news is presented today