After a round-robin series of conversations between Jay Rosen, David Cohn, Pat Thornton, and myself along with Howard Owens and Zac Echola, I’m happy to announce that WiredJournalists.com and BeatBlogging.org are joining forces to bring attention to the unsung beat reporters gathering their sources around the bonfire of a blog to better fulfill the mission of figuring out just how much more than us our sources know.
My, that’s a mouthful.
Here’s the deal:
- There’s a new box on the Wired Journalists home page with the latest posts from the BeatBlogging blog, along with a call to action to let Pat Thornton know if you’re an unsung beatblogger. Pat’s the new editor at BeatBlogging, taking over for David Cohn, who moves on to doing something else impressive with his Knight News Challenge grant at Spot.Us.
- The growing (2100+) group at Wired Journalists is a huge pool of people doing innovative work, an increasingly international bunch, and really, is full of reporters that the mainstream media blogosphere (MMB?) hasn’t heard of. We want to know more about you.
- The best way to get some love for the work you’re doing and share your successes and failures with the community is to get in touch with Pat. Contact him at Wired Journalists or hit up his personal contact page.
What’s next?
We’ve heard a few proposals from folks interested in connecting with the 2100+ members of Wired Journalists, and it’s getting interesting. Hopefully, we’ll have more announcements like this in the not-too-distant future.