I’m a journalist, I’m a blogger — a Journoblogger.

Well, if you’re a news organization, at least.

Let’s think about what you do and how much return you actually get. Granted, these are my observations on how much work it’s been building ours and what I’ve seen on some others. If you know of any good ones, let me know.

You decide to go this route because you think it’ll help build community with your fans, and yeah, it does, but there’s very little opportunity to see a change in your metrics because of it, sans linking back to your site, but that in itself requires constantly logging in to the page and adding as you go.

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This might be a few days late, but I think I’m still recovering from the 20-hour workday that was Election Day. Anyway, I promised Zuri a write-up of what we did, so here’s a bit of how we worked Election Night.

First off, we did a package during our 6 p.m. show talking a little bit about that. You can see that video here. (BTW, bah for no embed… BAH, I say).

One of the main things we did was stream the newsroom. This actually got some really great reaction from viewers far and wide. (It’s a pretty long clip — the one below is about 7 hours)

Live TV by Ustream

I made some mistakes with the stream (should have embedded it into our Web site and I should have required registration for the chat room), but those can be easily fixed for the next time we decide to go with the newsroom cam. We did a little bit of tweeting, but not nearly enough, and while we were prepared to do some Skype coverage, we just couldn’t get it going the way we’d prefer, so we passed.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad day from the newsroom standpoint.

Until people get on the new media bandwagon…

A.D. Morales (host and proprieter of ADMorales.TV) is currently working on a 72-hour livestream to promote his new foray into new media journalism.

We’ve been talking Twitter, Skype, journalism and the like, but he’ll be on for the next three days, so drop in to his UStream, say hi and start discussing whatever.

Let’s face it, we all want our newsrooms to be a little different (essentially, a little better, though). Well, if you have control of some facet of your newsroom, I suggest starting out by trying some very simple, very easy ideas. My first step was inspired by Will Sullivan at Journerdism (No. 10, to be exact).

I love the idea of having different Web sites displaying in front of your newsroom’s eyes. Since I started working at KSAT.com 11 months ago, we’ve always had KSAT.com on the flat-panel TV in our hub. Hell, it’s been on KSAT.com so long, the logo is burned into the screen.

But as of today, no more, I say!

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If you were starting a new broadcast show, how would you integrate it online?

Solicit show ideas and comments via e-mail? Twitter? Maybe broadcast on UStream or Mogulus? Build a Facebook fan page?

I ask because I’m kicking around two show ideas with some other people, and I wonder if I’m outthinking myself sometimes. A little help, please?

It all started with a tweet from the lovely and talented Bernice Kearney.

@joeruiz yes… you’re right. so why don’t you do a KSAT Twitter? i’d support it. and i’m starting to tweet stories i think are interesting.

With that, we finally broke out a Twitter user for KSAT 12 News to be used for the everyday tweets and conversation with our online audience (we already have @ksatweather and @ksat_bgc for our HS football scores).

But how — and more importantly, why — are we going about using Twitter the way we are. More after the jump.

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We’re pretty hooked on politics in my newsroom (as I would imagine it is in most), and a couple of us are hooked on Twitter, so I’m pretty psyched on the news from Current and Twitter called “Hack the Debate.” (Video plays automatically on Current’s page, so check your speaker level.)

It’s simple and you just need a Twitter account. Use the #current hashtag and tweet your thoughts during the debate. I know a few of us will do that during the broadcasts in between actually working.

Some of the tech used for Ike coverage

So I finally came back from Miami a week ago today. Ike took a southern track and went through Cuba, essentially giving me a 60-hour working vacation in South Florida rather than any crazy work. Ike wasn’t through with me, though, and decided to come toward Texas.

Now, I know most J-blogs are from people who work in newspapers, but there are a few good broadcast ones (and if you think I’m missing one, please let me know). Anyway, this past weekend, KSAT 12 and KSAT.com began using readily-available Web tools with our coverage in addition to the standard broadcast techniques.

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So I’m leaving San Antonio in a few hours for Miami to help our sister Web site have proper coverage during Hurricane Ike. I hope to get some of my own reporting done during my time off, but we’ll see. I’ll post once I know more, but you can be damn sure I’m livetweeting #Ike.

Follow me here.

I know this is later than normal, but this week has just been crazy at work and quite honestly, a little stressful.

Last Sunday, I worked on our Web site from home during Hurricane Gustav (not that it affected San Antonio much, but it was my day off), and one of the ways I gave it some local flair was to link to additional Gustav coverage via outside Web sites and Twitter-based coverage with the help of Andrew Dunn and Beth Canter. Both put together some great Gustav coverage links and Canter helped create the Hurricane Information Center on Ning for audio, video, maps, tweets, etc.

What made me think about this post was a friend who sent me a text later in the evening. It was a standard, “What are you up to?” text, and when I called to tell her exactly what I’d been working on, she asked me a question that I wouldn’t expect from a wired journalist or digital native, but her only involvement in the media is as a standard consumer. She asked me why I would link to other people’s Web sites and other news station or newspaper’s coverage?

She asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be competing with them?”

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