citizen journalism

Last week, I blogged about the Guardian’s experimental decision to share part of its newslists with the public. The move was somewhat risky. Traditionally, newspapers keep their lists of upcoming stories close to the vest in an effort to scoop the competition.

A little more than a week in, and the Guardian’s experiment is going well, writes Dan Roberts, the paper’s national editor. So well, in fact, that they are extending the process and including more sections of the paper in the newslists made public.

“… the remarkable thing about our experiment publishing the Guardian’s list of upcoming stories is why newspapers have been so secretive about such information for so long,” Roberts comments in the blog post. “Whatever competitive advantage may have been lost by giving rivals a clue what we were up to was more than made up for by a growing range of ideas and tips from readers.”

This begs the question: Should more newspapers/news organizations consider an open news approach?

Read more

With the first caucuses and primaries just months away, Google is turning to the crowd to find neat election trends using the Internet giant’s myriad of tools.

In a post yesterday on the company’s Politics & Elections blog, Jake Parrillo sent out a call for help.

Search trends could help explain poll fluctuations, he wrote, using an example of how Herman Cain (who is surging in the polls) is widely being searched for in Texas cities, where Rick Perry (whose poll numbers are declining) is governor. Read more

For independent journalists, raising funding to pursue your stories can be difficult. Crowdfunding through Kickstarter can be a great way to raise awareness about your project and build momentum around your cause.

Currently, Kickstarter is the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world and has helped users raise over $40 million since its inception in April of 2009. While film, music, and design projects tend to be the most successful, there are also a great number of journalism projects available. Pledges on some of these campaigns are as little as $1.

Here are a few great journalism proposals on Kickstarter which span a wide range of voices. Do your part and pledge your support to any or all of these campaigns!

Read more

Hurricane Irene, which slammed into the East Coast over the weekend, largely spared the New York area, which was forecast to take a direct hit.

Vermont wasn’t as lucky. Parts of the Green Mountain State were damaged by devastating floods. Whole towns, like Rutland, were cut off from the outside world by impassable roads.

The catastrophic damage in Vermont came as a nasty surprise, and many news organizations, including the Weather Channel, did not position crews there.

So how did the Weather Channel initially cover Irene from Vermont?

They used Storify, and curated pictures and video from Twitter and YouTube. Read more

Mainstream news reports about the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East increasingly draw on tweets, home videos and pictures from local eyewitnesses.

One site many journos rely on for this type of reporting is Storyful, which monitors activists and local citizens who use Twitter to coordinate, distribute aid and spread news.

“Twitter is the place where conversations and communities develop out of these events,” says Storyful founder Mark Little. “There are people who say things like, ‘Hearing reports of protest on this square, in Damascus,’ and someone comes back and says, ‘No, no, that protest has moved to another square.’”

The online community around the story is the gateway to eyewitnesses, so Storyful compiles Twitter lists for different countries and regions of people who are reliable in crises.

“It comes down a lot to networks that you trust over time,” Little says. Read more