I, Reporter

Small Community, Big Obstacles

It might seem a good starting point for building virtual community when people already know each other in the real one. But for our nearly year-old project, Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker, we've been surprised to find that doesn't seem so true. For many potential users of our online group blog and forums, the risks of speaking about a controversial topic so openly in an online public forum appear just too great.

When we launched our project in the summer of 2007 in the wake of the city's approval of a carbon tax to fight global warming, we began with the premise that experts and interested participants from the community would have enough to say that at least some would want to become "citizen journalists," that is, frequent contributors on the pro-am group weblog we were setting up. After all, the subject of global warming was, er, hot, and Boulder had just become a pioneer in acting locally on a issue of planetary scale.

But while we got enthusiastic feedback, no one seemed to be stepping forward. We came to believe this had mostly to do with the psychological barrier of become a (capital "J") journalist, a daunting prospect for folks with little to no background in reporting and writing skills (something we hoped to address through training).

But last winter, we decided to experiment with a different approach to grease the skids for participants.

Lowering the Hurdle for Participation

I,Reporter's Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker project is about to have its second major growth spurt since its start-up last summer. Today we launched a series of online forums, and with them hope to inaugurate a vibrant discussion of the city’s unique municipal carbon tax approach. But it'll be one that will be significantly easier for local residents to take part in. Check out the new discussion boards and read on to find out more about why we've gone this route. ...

Planning for User Content

In recent months, some colleagues and I outside I,Reporter have heard more and more from clients: How do I manage the content on my site, especially if I want to incorporate web 2.0 technologies? Careful planning is definitely in order, especially if you're expecting to make the most of user-generated content. You don't want to build an expensive web site, only to discover that you can't even easily allow for user comments.

So another partner and I, former ABCNews.com colleague Dorian Benkoil of Teeming Media, have put together a document that we hope provides some of those answers. "Choosing the Right Content Management System for Your Web Site(s)" is our comprehensive  67-page analysis of content management systems, products and solutions, as well as best practices and common pitfalls. The report was written together with digital media consultant Amy Webb of WebbMedia Group. You can click here to download an excerpt.

Glimpse the Citizen Media of Tomorrow

The Knight Foundation, the funder behind the I, Reporter Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker project, today launched a new web site that provides a fascinating window into the citizen media innovation. The group blog is called MediaShift Idea Lab, and the idea is to allow the folks behind each of the Knight Challenge Grant winners to explore the progress of their innovative Internet projects with each other and in the public eye.

As the blog editor Mark Glaser puts it, "Idea Lab will be a place where you can read about what innovators are doing to help reinvent community news. The dozens of authors at this new group blog -- hosted by PBS.org and funded by the Knight Foundation -- have received grants from Knight in their 21st Century News Challenge, and are going to report first-hand on the status of their projects."

Check out our first entries on Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker-- a blog post about our initial progress with the project, and another about some lessons learned.

Paley Panel Prompts Discussion on Way Forward for CitJ

By Adam Glenn

Last night’s Paley Center panel on citizen journalism was a great give-and-take between panelists ranging from practicing citJers to former network news chiefs, and an audience of well over 100 and full of questions.

For my part, I made the case that media and news organizations, in order to take full advantage of the power of the Internet, must focus attention on the potential for citizen journalism. There’s proof enough of that in the growing number of citizen media sites – I,Reporter has identified more than 500 of them for the KCNN.org citmedia directory, while Placeblogger.com has ID’d more than 2,100 similar placeblog sites – and the fact they’re of such a remarkably wide variety in terms of who contributes to them, what type of content they post and their geographic scales. Panel moderator Merrill Brown put it this way, “Citizen journalism is not an outpost.”

"Beyond the Anchor Desk"

By Adam Glenn

If you're in New York on  Tuesday, Oct. 9, try and come by a panel I'll be sitting in on at The Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of Television and Radio). I'll be in some amazing company for the 90-minute program, called "Beyond the Anchor Desk: The Rise of Citizen Journalism," There'll be folks like ex-CBS News President Andy Heyward, long-time TV documentary producer Jon Alpert and new media luminary Merrill Brown, as well as some rising citizen journalists themselves, including Debra Galant of Baristanet, a pair of young producers from Current TV and a poster from NowPublic.com.

The general aim of the panel is to give some historical perspective on what is now known as citizen journalism, but which has been evolving for a number of years. What I hope to contribute is my own sense of what citizen journalism is, and the extent to which its varied forms are spreading. But I'd also like to explore some of the failings of mainstream media that have led to citJ's rise (as well as some of the weaknesses of citJ), and ultimately the ways the two can complement each other.

Come by if you're in town. And I'll plan on posting further thoughts after the program, in case you miss it.

links for 2007-08-06

• Professional and citizen journalists: 'symbiotic partners' - CyberJournalist.net - Online News Association - Essays and Commentary
  "William Powers, columnist for National Journal, says, "Rather than the opponents they are made out to be, citizen journalists and mainstreamers look more and more like symbiotic partners. Crowds aren't wise all by themselves -- they need editing, too."
  (tags: citizen+journalism editing mainstream+media journalism tidbits+fodder)

links for 2007-07-31

• VentureBeat » NowPublic, citizen journalism site, expands with $10.6M
  "NowPublic, the citizen journalism site that lets individuals take pictures and post articles about news they see going on around them, has raised $10.6 million in a first round of capital."
  (tags: funding citizen+journalism business tidbits+fodder)

links for 2007-07-26

• VBS.TV - Shows: Toxic Alberta
  Great independent documentary series on environmental, social, and economic problems plaguing energy-rich Alberta, Canada
  (tags: citizen+journalism Alberta Canada environment energy society video)

links for 2007-07-22

• Center for Citizen Media: Blog » Blog Archive » Citizen Media: A Progress Report
  "I was asked to offer a year-on-year progress report on the state of citizen journalism. To sum up: We’ve come a long way, and we still have a long way to go. offered 10 major points in my talk, as follows:"
  (tags: citizen+journalism)