Just a glance of the mockup I built tonight.*
Click to enlarge…
This might give you an idea of how I’ve been imagining (and diagramming in mindmaps/on napkins) the structure of the site.
*(…in Coda, not Photoshop. HTML and CSS that I can build into a Drupal theme.)
Journalism.co.uk asked six questions about ReportingOn.
“4) Why are you doing this?
I saw a need to connect reporters to each other. So much local news lacks context, lacks a clear idea of where a local event fits into a larger trend, whether we’re talking about drunken driving or school funding or foreclosures.
Twitter has been a big inspiration, as well. I’ve been impressed at how casual, public conversation can be packed with information and benefit to anyone willing to ask questions and give answers freely.”
Plenty more about ReportingOn to come in the next few weeks and months.
For now, follow reportingon on Twitter and send your own Tweets @reportingon to make connections with your peers across town or on the other side of the world.
From the message I sent to members of the What Are You Reporting On? Facebook group yesterday:
The initial, humble little piece of integration with Twitter is live now at www.reportingon.com.
If you look at the right side of the page there, you’ll see a list of all the recent tweets sent to @reportingon. If you have a Twitter ID, try it out by posting a message like “@reportingon working on a review of There Will Be Blood.”
Your message will show up at reportingon.com.
I’m working on ways to let you subscribe to all those replies by RSS or Twitter.
Thanks for participating – I hope to see you all making connections with other reporters at reportingon.com.
If you don’t have a Twitter account yet, sign up for free at www.twitter.com.
The next step will be a site with groups where you can share your strategies and sources for working your beats with peers at other news organizations, in other towns and around the world.
I’m going to leave it at that for the moment.
In the immediate future, I’m still working on:
Please feel free to add your feedback here, in the comment thread at reportingon.com, or e-mail me about it at reportingon@gmail.com.
Thanks!
Thanks to everyone who noticed the pillow-soft launch of ReportingOn.com in the only link in my Resolutions post, and especially to those of you who commented, e-mailed, tweeted, or blogged about the project.
At the moment, it’s just an URL, an idea, and a comment thread, but it’s building momentum, and that’s pleasant.
“Ryan’s idea, as I understand it, is to take the new found obsession with instant conversation (and gratification) and aggregate these conversations in order to improve local reporting.”
“I’m a competitive being, as most journalists are, but the purpose of our profession is to inform. If you don’t want to be scooped, don’t give away the scoop. We must continue to adapt how we do our job to better inform readers and this site would be a great way to help do so.”
As the idea evolves, I’m thinking strongly that the Twitter tie-in and a Facebook application are the two places to start.
Dave Cohn is right: Herding a boatload of journalists – pro or amateur – over to a redundant social network feels forced. I’m not going to encourage reporters to seek out their sources in popular social networks in one breath, then ask them to join another network in the next.
Or maybe I will, I don’t know yet. Tell me, what would you want out of this?
My basic thought, the tagline for the site, service, app = The backchannel for your beat. I want this to be a place/way for reporters in far flung places to talk to each other – quickly and relatively publicly. A rising tide lifts all bylines. Seriously.
A wildcard: Poynter Groups?
I’m not sure the Poynter idea is exactly what I’m picturing — actually, I know it isn’t, but I still think it’s a good idea. Is Poynter the best possible place for a social network for journalists?
Many questions. Answer what you can. Thanks.
Might as well, eh?
In no particular order…
I’ll be realistic and stop at three.
Publish2, a social network for journalists, is now taking beta registrations. I highly recommend you, Journalist, go sign up right now.
For a brief explanation/exploration, check out the Beatblogging post where David Cohn puts it like this:
“Think of it as a Poynter 2.0: There is a core niche of journalism, but it is a space to connect to other people and share important ideas and information with them. It could have a tangible benefit to their work.”
It’s the “tangible benefit” part that excites me the most about this and inspired me to start drawing up plans for ReportingOn, which I envision as something closer to Twitter-for-journalists and Digg-for-readers rather than the Digg/Delicious sweet spot that Publish2 is trying to hit.
The thought of reporters strewn all over the city/state/country/world sharing notes on issues and building up context for local stories is The Right Idea; it’s what the Web is for.
I gave someone a bit more detail about my nascent ReportingOn concept via e-mail late last night. Talking these things out in public always helps, so here’s a fresh draft of what I’ve been mumbling about:
This post was the beginning of the idea.
In short, ReportingOn.com would be a social network for reporters looking for others on the same beat (in different towns).
Make it easy for everyone reporting on “sea lions” to find each other, perhaps as part of a larger group of people reporting on “science.”
It’s one thing for a reporter to subscribe to a listserv for environmental reporters; it’s quite another thing to be a reporter writing a story on a surge in sea lion deaths in Monterey Bay (I’m making this up – the windows are open and I can hear the sea lions 1+ miles away), and to quickly find a list of other journalists working on sea lion stories.
I’m at a point where I’m starting to learn Drupal, building a gray box mockup of the site, and sketching out what the relationships would ideally look like in the database. One of the next steps is getting a clear idea of how to use the functionality built into Drupal and its modules to surface the data the way I want to.
I briefly considered using this project as a focal point to learn Django around, but that just doesn’t seem to be the correct hammer for the job. I’ll get to Django eventually, I promise.
Before twelve people flame me talking about how this has nothing to do with networked journalism or citizen journalism and it just reinforces the barriers between professional journalists and people who don’t get paid to observe the world around them, rest assured that there is a second column to the idea, as I see it in my head, in which ‘readers’ can vote for the topics and categories they want to read more about.
Should there be groups just for readers, or should they be integrated into the Reporter groups?
The latter, I think. But I’m trying to keep this pretty lean: A social network for beat reporters. A backchannel for your beat.
A stream of short updates that answer the question “What are you reporting on?” leads to longer discussions about issues, sources, and beats.
There’s a Facebook group where you can start answering that question.
Brainstorms, in no particular order
Ideas bubbling to the surface on a sunny Saturday…
All three of these ideas need some fleshing out. That’s where you come in.