This month our host asks:

How do you decide to dedicate time to a new tool/platform/gadget? What is the process you go through mentally? And then later – how do you convince others to go through that process? And, last: How do you ensure that the tools you do adopt are used once the “newness” factor fades?

This is a great question and one tied very much to a class I just gave at UC Berkeley’s J-school.

One of the things I started with was showing this list of web tools from Robert Hernandez (the ying to my yang).

That’s a LOT of tools. More than you can probably teach even in a two-hour lecture. My goal, however, is not to teach specific tools, but to teach a mind-set of problem solving. For every pain-point there is a solution and that’s when you’ve come across a good tool. If a hammer didn’t get the job done, it would be a bad tool.

When I start to think about using a new tool/platform/gadget this is what goes through my mind:

1. I start with a “yes attitude.” Hey new site – do I want to give you a try, sure!
2. Is it simple to use. Yes – great. No, too bad for that tool/gadget/platform – I probably won’t come back.
3. If it is simple to use – does it have an intended purpose.

There is an important distinction to make between a strategy and a tactic. A strategy is an intended goal or outcome. A tactic is a way to get there. In checkers the strategy is to eliminate all the checkers of the other player. A tactic might be to get one of your checkers to the other side of the board so you can make that checker a king. That’s a tactic which can help achieve your goal. Another might be to try and set up a triple jump.

Most platforms/tools/gadgets are tactical – not strategic. You should always keep your strategy in mind so that you can evaluate a tool about whether or not it’s helping to achieve that final goal.

The right tool for the right job.

You don’t use a sledge hammer to knock in a nail. Similarly you don’t need to use Storify if all you’re doing is aggregating two or three tweets. You don’t need to use TweetDeck if you only manage one twitter account. That’s overkill and while it can get the job done – it creates more stress than it’s worth sometimes.

The three steps above is part of the mental checklist I go through after I’ve signed up for a tool/platform. I don’t start with cynicism, I grant that somebody took time/energy to think about a particular pain-point and how they might solve it. But if after I’ve begun using the tool I find it difficult or pointless, I’m out.

Once a tool proves its worth to me – the next question is if it’ll become part of my routine. For that again I need to find a simple way to use it. If it creates more work for me than it’s worth – the relationship won’t last. Twitter is a great example because the tool is so flexible (you can put whatever content you want in it) I’ve seen people who use it as a way to take notes during live news events. What a FANTASTIC use of the tool. Not only does it have an intended purpose – but it doesn’t create more energy, in fact, it reduces it.

If a tool can’t become part of your regular work-flow (or solve a pain point in your workflow) it’s not a good tool. The only wrong tool is one that doesn’t work for you!

Convincing others to use a new tool is a different question all together. I must confess, I don’t know if I’m the best at getting other folks to jump into the waters of various tools. I certainly evangelize certain tools like xPad, Jing, TextExpander, Nudgemail, etc – all of which have made my life easier. The only thing I can really do is lead by example and just share the tools that have truly made my life easier. If they don’t – what would I have to show for it?

Still in its infancy Google+ has been the topic of many-a-tech blogposts. As a former tech-writer I love and hate this stuff. Sometimes I want to slap Mashable right in the ‘http’ and tell them to never do another “Top X Ways [name your industry professionals] Can Use [new social networking tool].” If you are curious though – here are the  top five ways journalists can use Google+ courtesy of Mashable.

Equally I want to avoid speculation about Google vs. Facebook. There is already plenty of that. If a Facebook executive has a sneeze that sounds like ‘ahh-choogle’ the tech-press is all over it. I personally am not a fan of Facebook and welcome my Google+ overlords. I do have a post in me about privacy, silicon valley speculation, etc – but I don’t want to add my voice to that already loud chorus.

Instead I want to write about Google+ in terms of everyday average use. Both how journalists use the Internet and how everyday average people use the internet (assuming the later is slightly different).

Sure enough 10,000 Words (the Mashable of journalism blogging) recently did a post on the top 10 ways journalists use the Internet. This is the ENTIRE internet mind you – but the results of the study are revealing. According to research journalists use the Internet for….

1. Reading news
2. Searching for news sources/story idea
3. Social networking
4. Micro-blogging
5. Blogging
6. Watching webinars/webcasts
7. Watching YouTube
8. Exploring Wikis
9. Producing/listening to podcasts
10. Social bookmarking

By rough estimate I’d say six of those activities can be encapsulated by Google+ in a way that Facebook doesn’t (partly because Facebook looks like a user-interface designer puked on the screen). One could argue with Google Hangouts you can add another one or two activities to the count and considering the network is still young, who knows where it could go.

While I won’t venture what the top 10 Internet activities are for non-journalists I suspect the majority of them are social in nature, including email (gmail having lots of penetration) and research (Google again). Now we can start to see some real Epic 2014 scariness/potential.

The real lesson here is that journalists on Google+ should keep in mind how they are using the platform and how the public might be using the platform. The two aren’t necessarily the same and all-too often we think the rest of the world uses web technology the same way we do. Whenever I want to be humbled I watch a member of my family use the computer and think to myself – ignorance is bliss.

The reason to be on Google+ isn’t because it’s the newest, hottest, sexiest thing. That might be a good reason to be on it as an individual (hard to seperate) but not why you should be on it as a journalist. You should be on these sites to understand how people are communicating and the vocabulary of this communication. Friendster informed MySpace which informed Facebook which informed Google+. If you ignore these sites you will fail to understand how a growing portion of the population deals with the flow of information and inevitably how more people will deal with this flow in the future.

If you are a journalist your JOB is to understand and insert yourself into the flow of information.

From the launch of Spot.Us, I’ve always said the following:

• Anyone can tackle the crowdfunded journalism model. In fact, NPR could do it tomorrow and blow me out of the water. It’s just about being transparent and giving up control over how donation money gets spent.
• This model would have more success at the national or international level.
• This model would have more success if a known brand took the lead. (Again, I always tend to cite NPR.)

There has been much opining about the New York Times pay wall that went up this week. I was quoted in a Neiman Lab post on the topic; I wrote about it for the Reynolds Journalism Institute, where I’m currently a fellow; and I was a guest on WNPR, an NPR station in Connecticut, to discuss the topic with other news professionals.

Here’s one thing that I previously haven’t said publicly: Whether or not they know it, and without identifying it as such, the New York Times has taken a big step towards the NPR model. And that puts them just a stone’s throw away from the Spot.Us model. In some respects, I actually think they are closer and more likely to pull it off than NPR.

Subscription Plan Isn’t About Access

Let’s start by calling a “duck” what it is. The “pay wall” is not a “wall.” It’s incredibly porous. A savvy reader can find a dozen ways around it, from finding a Tweet of the story you’re interested in to removing part of the Times’ URL. In other words, the subscription plan is not about access. People that think the fee is about access are the same folks who think they have to pay AOL for Internet access in order to keep their AOL email address. Savvy readers will know it isn’t about “access” but rather something else. For starters, it benefits the print subscribers, who pay less for digital access than all-digital subscribers. Fair enough.

But I am willing to bet a LOT of people will pay for a “subscription” not for access and not because it comes with their print subscription, but for something else.

Donation Driven Journalism

If there is one thing that Press+ has taught us (aside from the fact that really rich folks can hype up a technology product and sell it off for millions of dollars) it’s that, yes, people will pay for news even if access to is never truly restricted. That’s a limited audience/market, but it exists. Interestingly enough, the price point doesn’t matter as much as one would think. That audience will pay $5 if you ask, and they’ll pay $15 if you set that as the benchmark.

National Public Radio has known about this small market for a LONG time. I could have told you this within 10 minutes of launching Spot.Us. But at least today we can see it as more of a given for the conversation. There is an audience that will pay for content. It’s small, and not a replacement for advertising, but it’s there.

The NYTimes.com subscription plans are not enough to sustain the entire organization, but it is a new revenue stream that didn’t exist before. You can call it a “pay wall” or a “metered wall” but, again, I think we should call a duck a duck. This is a donation system, plain and simple. News organizations don’t want to refer to “metered walls” as “donations,” and I understand why. I’m happy to stroke their hair as they cry into their ink-stained hands. We can call it whatever they want, but it’s a donation because there is no HARD reason for anyone to pay it other than because they want to or are too uninformed about how to get around it.

A Modest Proposal

Assuming the New York Times doesn’t want its future tied to the technical ignorance of the masses the way AOL currently does with its dial-up customers, the next question is: What can the Times give to its new donors? As Dave Winer and Steve Outing have both said:

“Wouldn’t it have been wise to, at this juncture, offer something to sweeten the deal. Something truly exciting and new that you get when you pay the money. Something that makes your palms sweat and your heart beat faster?” (Dave Winer)

Tote bags? Bumper stickers? Membership to a wine of the month club (with wine reviews from the Times sent along with every bottle)?

These incentives are necessary because the Times needs to find other ways to keep a paying customer on board. Where one month somebody might pay, the next they’ll slap their face and say, “Why am I doing this? It’s certainly not for access.”

These tote bag gifts mimic NPR fundraising. But let’s think even further. What could be an incentive that would increase transparency and participation in journalism and not cost the NYT organization infrastructure costs (ie: purchasing and shipping thousands of tote bags)?

Imagine if along with every $15 monthly “metered access” payment a NYTimes.com reader also got five NYT Points. After three months they’ve accumulated 15 NYT Points. Those points can then be used to vote on topics, areas of coverage, or redeemed for the tote bag mentioned above (an excellent plan B).

Again, NPR could do this tomorrow, except — believe it or not — NPR is a bureaucratic nightmare when it comes to how donations are handled. Remember, each NPR station is unique and the mothership NPR, aside from being caught in a culture war, is not allowed to fundraise from individuals the way independent stations are.

But the Times doesn’t have this hangup. Whether they admit it or not, they’ve begun fundraising efforts this week. So will the NYT find something to make it fun for donors? Or do they think that the false claim to “access” is enough?

Opportunity to Interact with the Times Community

I think there are a lot of smart folks at the Times and they’ll be watching how people react and pay/don’t pay for this subscription system. For those that do pay it one month the question is, will they continue to pay? For that, they need to be purchasing something. Call them “NYT Points,” call it “NYT Membership” — I don’t care. But I think a part of it should include giving those members a stake in how the funds from their subscription are spent.

In other words, there could be a new sense of transparency and participatory control in how a news organization spends its funds. With their new metered pay wall, the NYT is just one incy-wincy step away from cracking the code to crowd-funded journalism. Why do I want to pay my $15 this month? Because then I can vote on next month’s NYT coverage. This would be the NYT using a kind of Spot.Us model.

And if that day ever comes, you won’t find anyone happier than me.

To understand it’s epicness – you first have to close your eyes and think back to a time long ago on the Internet circa 2005-6. Maybe you had a MySpace or Friendster account. The Numa Numa guy was still hot on the meme scene, Digg ruled all traffic everywhere and Techcrunch was just the opinionated blog of a lawyer. This was an Internet without Twitter, Facebook was for college students and all we had were blogs and RSS. In that dark and desperate time we didn’t have WJChat‘s, PubMediaChats or any other Twitter chats.

No my e-friends. Back then, to get a regular conversation going we resorted to blog carnivals. Long live the blog!

The Carnival of Journalism, at its height, consisted of about 30 or so journalist bloggers. Every month a new blogger would host and ask, via email (how quaint), a question for all the participating bloggers. Point of order – this is how I first digitally met my current housemate and fellows RJI fellow Will Sullivan. We didn’t meet in person for another two or so years, but I felt as though we were colleagues because of our monthly blog carnival.

Sometime around 2007-8 the Carnival ended and since then social media has taken hold so we have regular ongoing quick chats. Don’t get me wrong, I embraced Twitter early and still love it.

But blogs are not dead and there is a level of communication we can achieve beyond chatting with blogs as a facilitator. While this might turn into a failed experiment (like testing carrier pigeons after the advent of the telegraph) writing one blog post a month isn’t a high calling. And having friends, making that commitment (or at least trying to make that commitment) and having a single topic to swarm around makes blogging that much better.

And so – we are reviving the Carnival of Journalism.

Interested in joining? FANTASTIC

Caveat for the first four months

Normally the Carnival of Journalism is an open ‘community controlled kinda thing.’ The first four months of this COJ, however, won’t be for two reasons.

First: I want to make sure it starts strong. I hope to prime the pump so in May I can pick a new host and he/she will organize the next COJ and pass on the torch, etc.

Second:  I’m organizing a conference at RJI for mid-April (more details on that soon). Like a benevolent dictator I will use the Carnival of Journalism leading up to this conference to spur conversation among participants. This way – when everyone shows up at the conference – we can skip the intros and jump right into the topics at hand.

What are the topics at hand? The same topics we will write about once a month, every month, leading up to the event.

And the first topic is: DRUM ROLL PLEASE………………………….

The changing role of Universities for the information needs of a community: One of the Knight Commission‘s recommendations is to “Increase the role of higher education…..as hubs of journalistic activity.” Another is to “integrate digital and media literacy as critical elements for education at all levels through collaboration among federal, state, and local education officials.”

Okay – great recommendations. But how do we actually make it happen? What does this look like? What University programs are doing it right? What can be improved and what would be your ideal scenario? Or is this recommendation wrong to begin with? No box here to write inside of.

Not only will this be a topic we discuss at the RJI conference coming up in April (details on that event to come in a future post) but it is a topic YOU, dear friend, should feel free to write about for the next Carnival of Journalism.

HOW IT WORKS

• Join the Carnival of Journalism by filling out this form.
• You’ll be added to a Google Group for future communications.
• Write and publish a blog post on January 20th by 10am PST on the topic above and let the COJ host (that’s me) know about it.

I’ll see you at the Carnival.

David Cohn is a 2010-2011 RJI Fellow working on a project called “Community-Funded Reporting.” Read David’s findings, other blogposts, and talk back at cohnd AT rjionline.org and @digidave on Twitter

Let’s start with the praise: Jeff Novich wrote a well thought out critique of citizen journalism. It’s more than I can sum up quickly but he hits all the major points.

• It’s trite: “See, snap, post” – there is no depth.
• People are stupid. Or as he diplomatically put it “most people don’t understand the tenets of journalism.” But read that section of his post and you’ll see what he really wants to say is “people are stupid.”
• It’s more about sharing than anything else (see: “see, snap, post”)
• It doesn’t really accomplish anything – certainly not fact-checking the media (see: “See, snap, post”)
• It’s not paid – so the quality is crap.
• Too much bias. It isn’t accountable.

The list goes on. Again, my hat is off to Jeff for writing a well thought out analysis that I believe captures most of the major criticisms of participatory journalism.

I still call bullshit.

Megan Taylor did a good point by point response “Citizen Journalism Is Not Useless.” But a critique like this is not best met trying to go point-by-point. While I can easily name moments when citizen journalism had real tangible value – this is not an anecdotal pissing match. Besides, most of the anecdotes can be interpreted however you want to see them.

Instead I’d like to chime in on what I think was the most important point Megan Taylor made.

Throughout the post, Jeff seems to be confused on what his point is. That citizen journalism is not a proxy for professional journalism? I agree. That citizen journalism is useless? I disagree.

In the end it all comes down to what values you are trying to suggest citizen journalism (I prefer participatory journalism as the term) should uphold or represent. Allow me to once again use my baseball analogy from a post “Can Professional Journalism Ever Replace Citizen Journalism.”

Can citizen journalism ever replace professional journalism? No. But what I want to point out is the silliness of that question and pose its opposite.

The silliness of that question: If Major League Baseball stopped tomorrow would all the little leagues in the country be able to replace it? If industrial sweater factories shut down tomorrow would knitting hobbyists be able to replace them?

Nobody would ever ask these questions because the goal of little leagues and knitting groups isn’t to replace their professional counterparts. Instead, they are to create a sense of community, a positive activity for children, to make personalized gifts, etc. If they were to disappear there is no way their professional counterparts could replace them.

So I ask: If citizen journalism activities were to stop tomorrow could professional journalists replace them? My answer is no – and that will be part of my response to this question from now on.

I have also come to really like Clay Shirky’s discussion on the stupidity of LOL Cats juxtaposed with their general benefit to society over simply watching re-runs of Giligan’s Island.

The argument from Clay goes something like this.

(a. Acts of creation are better than acts of passivity.

(b. LOL Cats are the single dumbest thing a person can do online.

(c. LOL Cats are an act of creation.

The choice is yours: What is better for society – thousands of people participating in LOL Cats or those same people sitting on their hands watching Jersey Shore?

The only argument I can imagine in response is that acts of citizen journalism aren’t just dumb – they actually HURT society. That somehow they have a negative impact and therefore being passive would actually be a net gain.

Otherwise I call bullshit – and that’s without even trying to defend citizen journalism (which can be done) again Jeff’s critiques. Even if I GIVE Jeff all his points above it still doesn’t turn citizen journalism into something “useless.” It all depends on the “use” and who is judging.

Sure – a snobby journalist can hold their nose up and point out shoddy work.

A major league baseball player can laugh at any high school kid’s swing.

A professional basketball player would probably dust me on the court and point out my lack of balance. Should I not play? Am I “useless” when playing a pick-up game with my friends? Sure, I’d be useless in the NBA. But when I play on Sundays with my friends I have a blast and get a good cardiovascular workout.

I understand there is frustration that the economics of content have changed – but it’s important to keep in mind that one man’s exploitation is another man’s civic engagement. The greater irony. If Jeff is correct, his blog post, which was not reported – but mere opining (as was this post) is…. useless.

Profits are killing journalism.

Publishers and editors care more about the bottom line than the quality of their reporting.  Newsrooms are shrinking, as a result, and good stories have gone untold.  The public is worse off because of it.

So goes one argument, at least, in the debate about public funding of journalism.  It’s a hot topic that appears immune to any clear-cut solution, and it’s shaking the foundation of what it means to do journalism and the best way to do it.  Among the big questions are:

Should public funding expand to cover the gaps left by the shrinking private news business? Could it expand without government support, and would this create conflicts? Would a heavily subsidized public media serve us better than the private media?  If so, how?

With a sponsorship from Free Press, we asked the Spot.Us community to tell us what they thought.  Then, we invited the 407 users who took the survey to decide where the sponsorship dollars would go, which is to say, we handed over a part of our budget to them, in return for their two cents.

SURVEY RESULTS

Keep in mind, the survey was not scientific, and there was a degree of audience self-selection, i.e., the Spot.Us community.  Nonetheless, with several hundred respondents, we did get a diverse set of answers. One interesting thing to note is that while a previous survey showed a split (almost 50/50) in the “objectivity” debate this survey on public/private media showed a much more one-sided response. This might be because, as previously suspected, Spot.Us’ community overlaps with the “public media” demographic.

To begin, the majority of respondents reported that they listened to NPR (71 percent), read the news online (79 percent), or used nonprofit news sources (58 percent), while the minority reported that they received a newspaper at home (37 percent) or donated to nonprofit news media (41 percent).  From these numbers, we can see among other things that, although the majority listen to NPR or use nonprofit news sources, there is a sizeable gap between using nonprofit media and donating to them.

In response to a question about programming—“In general, how would you rate the quality of
news, arts and education programming on public media versus commercial media?—the vast majority (74 percent) said the programming on public media is of higher quality.  A mere 19 percent said the programming on public and private media is of equal quality, and only 5 percent said public programming is of lower quality.

Half way through the survey we even switched the ordering of these potential answers to ensure no undue influence. The first half of the respondents saw the answer “public media is of higher quality” first and the second half saw that answer last. In either case – the majority viewed the programming as higher quality.

When asked if they would support the creation of a public media endowment to increase funding for educational programs, arts, and investigative journalism, the respondents overwhelmingly said yes (84 percent), with only 3 percent saying no and the rest undecided.  Likewise, they would support overwhelmingly (93 percent) the creation of a matching grant program that would combine foundation grants with public funding to support innovation and investment in local news and journalism.

So far, all of this suggests that the respondents like to use nonprofit media; they believe public programming is of higher quality than private programming; they would support public endowment and matching grant programs to increase funding; however, they do not necessarily make personal donations to those ends.

The respondents, with their generally favorable view of public media, also said more conflicts arise in journalism that relies on commercial advertising than in journalism that relies on taxpayer funding.  Fifty-seven percent believed that to be true, while 12 percent said taxpayer funding creates more conflicts, and 31 percent said neither creates more conflicts and that strong firewalls between funding and journalists can prevent bias.

We also asked a few open-ended questions.

The first one was, “What should be the role of public and noncommercial media in the future of journalism?”  Below are a few anecdotal responses from Spot.Us members who gave us permission to publish their views.

Journalism should be supported by the public, but traditionally the expectation by newspaper executives has been to not ask for the public to support their product. Journalists and news executives have an obligation to build better arguments for the public to support the news. In order for that to happen, though, journalism needs to demonstrate value to readers.
– Denise Lockwood

Non-profit and other alternative funding models will increasingly have to make up for the loss of advertising funded journalism. NPR has done this already but more needs to happen. There will need to be a broader range of non-profit media orgs than we have right now, and non-profits focused on substantive issues (environment, human rights, etc.) will increasingly become news providers themselves. Hopefully, some of these new iterations will be exemplars in terms of how to establish and benefit from partnerships and collaborative models. We may see more “temporary” journalism outlets as non-profit news outlets spring up and die out in this transitional period.
– Melissa Wall

Journalist(s) need to figure out how to make their product of value to the community. While I love NPR and that model, nothing is wrong with a profit. Good journalism should be able to support itself, but for decades now people have ranked journalist right up there with lawyer, car salesman and politician. That has to change and we need to be honest why people feel that way.

– Eddie North-Hager

Ideally, publicly funded media should focus solely on communications that are not commercially viable. However there has to be focus on what the public is interested in, not just what is in the public interest. Without remaining relevant and interesting, public media becomes irrelevant.

– Spot.Us Community Member

Another question should be what is the public’s role in public media. I think public media should be a place where people can go to tell their stories (think storycorps) where discussions can happen where people of all sides can hear each others voices (think bbc’s have your say); chicago’s vocalo is interesting in this way. Recent “pubcamps” are interesting in this way. NPR opening up its API is interesting in this way, in that they invite programmers and technologists to participate. I think the quality of public broadcasting is high, but airtime is at a premium, they should find ways to put MORE programs on the web and open up the airwaves for new talent. I think funding is an issue too. I live in Paris and stream programs live from any number of stations; I also podcast my favorites. I don’t know which station I should support, I know I want to support specific programs. I know I want to support NPR; but I don’t have a local station and I don’t know that I want one.

– John Tynan

The second open-ended question was, “In the past, government has provided tax breaks to media companies, given broadcasters free licenses for public airwaves, funded PBS and NPR, and subsidized newspapers through legal ads and postal rates. What should be the government’s role in the future?”  Below, again, are a few anecdotal responses:

Regulation is necessary (else, the commercial media could say anything they wanted, regardless of effect or truth), but I don’t like the government’s involvement in the money behind broadcasting.  Things start to sound like China with its enmasse censorship of media incoming and outgoing. Free speech should remain free – free of censorship and influence. If you think publishing or reporting a story will keep the government from sending you extra funds, you aren’t likely to print it. Thus, the free press becomes the mouthpiece for a government and nothing more.

This said, I think government subsidizing of NPR and PBS is important because these are services funded by donations from watchers/listeners, and that is who they (should) have loyalty to first because that is where the money is coming from, rather than political parties or politicians.

– Kaylene Narusuke

The old models don’t work because in the 1980s, newspapers made a lot of money from ads and became very profitable, changing the expectations from the owners. Those expectations haven’t changed while the competition for ads has. Newspapers adopted the USA-Today model, dumbing down stories, writing shorter and more shallow stories. People want deep, well written stories in any format. Government agencies could support investigative reporting, specialty reporting, and reporting on the arts, but the public has to be willing to pay for responsible journalism.

– Yvonne

Government should recognize that high-quality journalism is an important part of a healthy democracy, and that well-informed citizens are more engaged and more likely to vote. Government should expand direct funding for public media beyond PBS and NPR by creating a grant program for organizations developing new kinds of public-media models.

– Lila LaHood

I don’t see a problem with calculated tax breaks for the media industry whether it’s limiting taxes on the purchases of paper products or electronic devices. To me that’s no different than oil companies, banks, light manufacturing getting financial breaks or incentives to conduct business. Those who represent converged or multimedia take issue with this, citing these as out-dated mediums with failed business models. Therefore, they should not be buoyed with tax dollars and in a true capitalism, failed businesses disappear and make way for newer, better models.

– Kevin Smith

All of these things are helpful, but American journalism really needs something more revolutionary right now. Stop thinking about tax breaks and advertising and start thinking about something equal to the National Endowment for the Arts, but replace ‘Arts’ with ‘Journalism’. I hope our leaders act now before we lose the 4th Estate, and a generation of enthusiastic young journalists.

– Daysha Eaton

So there you have it, the views of the Spot.Us community on public vs. private journalism.  Any of it surprise you?  Confuse you?  Bore you?  Tell us your thoughts in the comments section!

As a past winner I try to help out at the PBS Idea Lab blog when I can, so I interviewed a few of the winners. The video is below.

It should also be noted that one of the winners PRX is going to work with the Spot.Us code! I included a video of Jake Shapiro explaining what exactly they are going to do.

Winner: Brad Flora from Windy Citizen. For details on his project check out the PBS Idea Lab post.

My friends at USC Tom Grasty and Nonny de la Peña and their creation Stroome!

The folks from Davis Wiki are launching Local Wiki

From Arizona’s School of journalism: City Seed

The folks from Front Porch Forum

Jake Shapiro explaining PRX’s StoryMarket

I tend to avoid the “professional vs. amateur journalism” debate, saying “I have constructive criticisms for both sides.” As we’ve hit a flash point for traditional news organizations, the evolution of citizen journalism networks like NowPublic, AllVoices and others may shed light on how the media space will resolve. Perhaps the two “opposites” will meet somewhere in the middle or, as I suspect, find out that they are more alike than they ever thought.

Recent news in the space has included Orato and Ground Report making shifts to require higher editorial standards in the submissions they accept and publish.

Alfred Hermida wrote a post on Reportr.net titled “Orato turns its back on citizen journalism,” in which he notes that the site used to focus on first person narratives of events but….

Instead the focus is on “concrete and trustworthy information that is objective and under-reported.” The owner and founder of Orato, Sam Yehia, said the changes were made to “further professionalize the site, focus its newsworthy content, create and enforce a viable business model and keep pace with Web 2.0 standards.”

When I met up with longtime friend Rachel Sterne, founder of Ground Report, at the Beyond Broadcast conference she explained that her network was making a similar change. While I’m one example shy of a trend, I think these two shifts warrant
some thought.

Rachel Sterne explains the changes happening at Ground Report:

What is the shift on Ground Report?

From what I gathered, there are four main shifts in Ground Report’s editorial policy.

1. Content from new users goes through a longer vetting period. Ground Report is trading speed for accountability.
2. Content from a trusted user or source skips this vetting period — but only because the contributor has proven themselves.
3. Expanding the powers of volunteer editors, who can now edit anything on the site. Again, these are trusted contributors.
4. A part-time managing editor who is in the process of writing editorial guidelines. This is a tough line to walk because they want to preserve the uniqueness of the writers’ voice but also make sure they are up to the higher editorial standards.

The reasoning

Sterne explained the logic behind the new system: “It is something that in the commercial world has just started to enter the dialogue while it seems obvious in an academic world.” There are several reasons why the policy change makes sense to me:

1. Trading speed and accountability seems like a no brainer to me. Twitter has come on the scene to dominate the speed world, which means citizen journalism networks can offer an added value of accountability.
2. Ground Report, Now Public, All Voices and others are looking to syndicate their content to larger distributors. To do that, they must provide a sense of trustworthiness.
3. iReport, YouTube and other large user-generated sites have begun highlighting well produced work from dedicated contributors while making the larger mass of content they host harder to find.

Even more interesting, according to Sterne, contributions on Ground Report have dropped 50 percent in the month since the site began implementing the changes, but traffic has increased 10 percent. That seems to be a trade off that most publishers would take — giving them a more streamlined workflow and process along with higher traffic.

Some things to note

According to the Wikipedia page on Citizen Journalism:

Allvoices was also the first citizen journalism site to measure the credibility of contributed reports and their authors, providing readers with a gauge launched in March 2009 for assessing the accuracy of news accounts.

I am friends with several of the folk at AllVoices and hope to follow up with them next time we speak.

Most people don’t know, but I am the editor in chief of citizen journalism network Broowaha. We have had similar conversations with our own members and internal team. Not surprisingly, some of the most dedicated contributors have voiced a preference towards structure, guidelines and policy.

Where are we left?

I don’t claim to have a crystal ball, but I wouldn’t be surprised if more citizen journalism networks make this shift. I think it is perfectly possible for these networks to be picky about what they publish without being exclusive. This will be a fine line to walk so as not to lose their citizen journalism souls as they try and up their game.

So what’s new?

NewsTrust.Net
Many of you know that before Spot.Us became a reality I was a contributing editor at NewsTrust.net (disclaimer). I’m happy to see that they’ve finished the redesign (which started just as I was leaving). From time-to-time Fabrice and the NewsTrust team would call me in as a fresh pair of eyes, so I know just how much thought and effort was put into this massive overhaul.

The site is aesthetically the same, but has been moved to Ruby on Rails, which means future development will happen quicker. But the site itself also moves faster, feels cleaner and is easier to navigate and use.

I always thought that NewsTrust’s biggest hurdle was that they asked so much of the user. I think this is a step in lowering the bar. I am a big believer that aggregation is creation and that linking is an editorial service. NewsTrust, along with sites like Publish2.com and NewsCred are pushing this practice. Journalisim should find a way to own this space and with the right tools I believe that is possible.

ReportingOn.com
I am a HUGE fan of Ryan Sholin‘s. Always have been. Anyone involved in journalism just needs to take a few glances at his personal blog to become a fan as well. His effort at Wired Journalis has been a collosaul success. Ryan has probably done more singlehandedly to evangelize the “get on the web” effort than anyone else.

I was truly excited that Ryan was a Knight News Challenge winner as well – and very happy to see his ReportingOn.com launch. He is the type of colleague whom I’m honored to call my colleague.

Journalism That Matters

Journalism That Matters has a new Drupal based site up which can organize the many tentacles of this organization. If you already know JTM, then you know what a fantastically idealized organization it is. They essentially organize unconferences about media all across the country. When they started planning one in Silicon Valley – I jumped up and did my fair share of the organizing.

The problem as I understand it, was that JTM is trying to be more than a conference facilitator. I believe it’s trying to start its own little movement and create a culture around journalism. If you’ve ever been to a JTM then this would make sense. Again, it comes from the unconference world, so don’t attend thinking all your questions will be answered. In fact, you should be prepared to leave invigorated with three times as many questions as you came in with. Some people find that unsatisfying – I love it.

But to be more than an unconference facilitator JTM needed a single hub where they could collect all their achievements and let participants meet and greet each other online. This Drupal site is the first big step in that direction. That they’ve accomplished so much without a real hub site just goes to show how much force has been behind JTM – the people running this are its life blood.

Spot Us

Okay, so here’s the part where I’ll be brief, because if you’ve been following this blog, you know that Spot Us is moving forward and is getting closer and closer to launch.

But here’s an interesting update. As many know I’ve been as open and transparent about this process as possible. I’ve been very lucky that my developers and designers have seen value in this as well. My developers are also entrenched in the Ruby on Rails community – and their openness has attracted some attention from other developers who get a chance to peek into how they do things.

The interesting thing about this project was that the source is freely available on Github for any Joe Bloggs to pour over (link).  Not only that, but the client taped his reaction upon seeing the application for the first time: (link).

I had a quick looksee at the application, and what I saw blew me away – how’d they get so much done in such a short space of time?

Here’s some of the stuff I noticed….

That’s it for now.

Next week I’ll be flying over to Jacksonville Florida to, you guessed it, spend some more face-to-face time with the developers.

The goal was to be finished by the end of next week. As things are right now – we might need one more week, but I’d hardly consider that a failure – the amount of work that is involved in building a website is huge, waiting one extra week wouldn’t kill anyone.

Also: Check me out at PSFK as a source in citizen journalism gone awry via the Steve Jobs incident on iReport. Lots can be said about this. I simply don’t have the time to opine.

Digg Recommendation Engine from Kevin Rose on Vimeo.

Now watch the second video which is more interesting (in my opinion). It’s a conversation with Anton Kast.
I’ve written about Anton before after we met in Atlanta at the Computational Journalism conference. From what I can tell – he is the mad scientist behind Digg. Or, as I once put it “Anton Kast is a rare breed of brilliant.”

I think Kevin Rose would agree – and the respect Kevin obviously has for Anton comes off in this interview.

It’s not as bite-sized as Kevin’s first video – but if you really want to geek out and think about the implications of Digg, especially as it relates to news consumption (something we should all be concerned with) – take the time and listen to how Anton describes Digg as a working system. Listen to his rhetoric and choice of words. I don’t think they are off the top of his head. I think he has zenned out on what Digg represents and how he frames it is important.

Anton Talks About The Digg Recommendation Engine from Kevin Rose on Vimeo.