Tag: citizen journalism
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How to turn every reader’s mobile phone into a newsroom of one
On the occasion of the second stop on the Carnival of Journalism revival tour, we’re provided with a wide open question: Considering your unique circumstances what steps can be taken to increase the number of news sources? So without much further ado, we’re going to have a little “NOW IT CAN BE TOLD” moment here…
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At IdeaLab: Paul Bradshaw on crowdsourcing investigative journalism
Over at IdeaLab, I’ve been way past deadline for a post, after (again) making all sorts of promises about helping out more over there. Until now. After playing the modern equivalent of phone tag (Twitter DMs and e-mail across two operating systems and one ocean) for a week or so, Paul Bradshaw and I landed…
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Community-funded news launches at Spot.Us
Fellow Knight News Challenge 2008 winner David Cohn took the wraps off the latest iteration of Spot.Us over the last few days, launching an engine for community-funded reporting from donation to publication. Here’s the explanatory video: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2041615&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ff9933&fullscreen=1 Spot.Us – Community Funded Reporting Intro from Digidave on Vimeo. I love the idea that Spot.Us could do…
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Cross-pollinate or shrivel
I’m profoundly enthralled by things like rapid news-driven development in Django, and building a CMS that can switch from a beautiful feature layout to a Drudge-like breaking news linkbomb on a dime, and of course, leveraging the steady stream of free embeddable tools showing up online every day for your own newsy purposes. But none…
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I happen to know some people with ideas.
If you’re not already subscribed to the PBS IdeaLab blog, the forum for Knight News Challenge winners to talk about their projects, spout off on related topics, and generally try to change the world, now would be a good time. Here’s a few recent posts over there that I’m still thinking about: Amy Gahran on…
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Citizen journalist killed in Iraq
{ Those of us that were in the room during the ‘Video’ session at the Networked Journalism conference in October remember witnessing Brian Conley of Alive in Baghdad basically make a plea to anyone from the numerous large, profitable news organizations at the conference to help out the cause of citizen journalism in Iraq with…
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Crowd wisdom, some assembly required
Scott Karp points out the difficulty in waiting for the monkeys to write Shakespeare and Ian King reminds us all that free content requires filtering that costs time and money. Both are talking about the NYT bit on Heinz’s ketchup-stained UGC ad ploy. Which brings me to the point: User-generated advertising content should be amateurish.…
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Why Citizen Shovelware doesn’t work
…or “Sometimes hyperlocal just ain’t enough.” Community site engine/citizen journalism startup Backfence (Here’s the Palo Alto version.) appears to be well on its way to falling apart. Why? Because people don’t want to participate in your brand, they want to participate in their community. I don’t know if YourHub, a hyperlocal site framework developed by…
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How your newspaper can monetize citizen journalism
The traditional way: Content, community and local search build brand loyalty and page view traffic to sell your standard leaderboards, skyscrapers, squares and tiles. Some fresher ideas pointed out by the NAA Presstime magazine: Charge a little less for small businesses looking to advertise on your locally-targeted pages. Let the community (i.e. the Little League)…
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The Internet is for democracy
The Center for Citizen Media has lifted the curtain on what it’s planning to do with a Sunlight Foundation grant. It’s a political transparency project, with the goal of gathering everything there is to know about this year’s race for the 11th congressional district here in California, featuring incumbent Richard Pombo (R-Tracy). All nonpartisan caveats…