Melissa Harris is a business columnist at The Chicago Tribune and an attendee at the 2013 edition of News Foo, a gathering of people in the digital news space organized by Knight Foundation, O’Reilly Media and Google. Above: Taxi cab wars 101 via The Chicago Tribune on YouTube.

Late last year John Bracken of Knight Foundation invited me to an “un-conference” called News Foo. It’s an annual gathering of coders, digital news producers, executives and others working at places such as Quartz, Twitter, Upworthy, Facebook and The New York Times.

I had never heard of News Foo. I’m a business columnist at The Chicago Tribune. I spend the majority of my time working the phone and attending events, trying to break news and land big stories. Thankfully, though, I learned how to code in high school and college, so the News Foo world wasn’t entirely foreign—but it was foreign enough. Here are three things I learned there that easily translate from the world of coders to the world of reporters.

1. Headlines are incredibly important.

A data scientist at Facebook pointed me to The New York Times’ most-emailed list and posed two questions: How many of the headlines on the list actually tell you what the story is about? Versus, how many are provocative and engaging, a little teaser that makes you want to read more? At the moment we checked, the No. 1 most-shared story was: “They Loved Your G.P.A. Then They Saw Your Tweets.” (A story about colleges denying admission to students based on social media content.) No. 3: “The Sex Toys in the Attic.” (I have no idea what that story is about.) No. 4: “How Hipsters Ruined Paris.” (Provocative.) No. 5: “Is it O.K. to Kill Cyclists?” (Even more provocative.) No. 10: “The Co-Villains Behind Obesity’s Rise.” (Well, I want to know who the villains are, don’t you?) The point being that nothing akin to “Two Confirmed Dead in West Side Shooting” made the list. And the fact is that headline writing is a skill I need to get better at—because although The Tribune may have talented headline writers for print and the Web, I’m my own headline writer for Twitter, Facebook and Google+, which are equally important, if not more important, vehicles for readers to find my work.

2. “Breaking Explanation,” a new story form that works.

As popularized by Wonkblog, the quintessential examples of this trend are: “Nine Questions About Syria You Were Too Embarrassed to Ask,” or “Everything You Need to Know About How a Government Shutdown Works.” So my colleague Gail MarksJarvis and I have taken this format to video, launching a new series recently in which we attempt to demystify complex business and financial issues in 2 minutes or less. It’s breaking explanation but in a video format. You can check out our first two segments, “Medical Marijuana 101” and how to wisely spend your tax refund.

3. Alert groups interested in an upcoming story in advance.

Two years ago, Public Radio International launched a radio series called “Cancer’s New Battleground: The Developing World,” which focused on how illnesses such as malaria and HIV receive the bulk of the resources, despite cancer’s equal or, in some cases, larger threat. In advance of the story, their social media team contacted dozens of advocacy groups interested in this topic, told them about the #globalcancer hashtag they had created for the project, and then asked them to tweet and share the series on their social media channels. The alerting of stakeholders to the topic (not the findings) in advance and the requests for tweets and posts helped make the series go viral.

In that vein, I would very much appreciate a tweet or Facebook post to help promote our new video project. I’ve even drawn up some samples:

• #Taxi Wars 101. @chiconfidential explains what’s happening with @uber @lyft lawsuits, regs in #chicago http://bit.ly/1bMepsw
• How to get up to $1,000 FREE while filing #taxes: @GailMarksJarvis explains http://bit.ly/1hza4qN #money

Most things, I’ve realized, just don’t “go viral.” In the crowded world of online news, there are a lot of smart people helping reporters find new and ever-expanding audiences for their work. An army of some of them happened to be at News Foo.

Contact Melissa Harris: [email protected] or  @chiconfidential