Posts Tagged “Crowdsourcing”

Mar 29 2011

Tech Blog #11: Guest Speaker Mark Potts, Owner of RecoveringJournalist.com

Posted by rpaul2 in Tech Blog (Guest Speaker), tags: , , , ,

“We haven’t fully taken advantage of the medium,” said Mark Potts, commenting on the vast world of the Internet.

Mark Potts, creator of RecoveringJournalist, his blog, came in to speak to our class today! He offered some useful opinions on great ways to tell stories.

Potts began with Patch.com.

“It’s important because it’s close to you,” said Potts, referencing hyperlocal news and why it’s a big deal. “The Washington Post doesn’t cover it.”
Then, Potts pointed out why bloggers blog. The passion for journalism was quite alive and vibrant back in the days of the Vietnam War and the Watergate incident, but nowadays, it’s not nearly as strong.

Professor Klein, though, pointed out that bloggers are the driving force behind the passion these days. They write because they want to write.

Sites with data collection Potts went over:

  • Nate Silver’s blog, FiveThirtyEight, is seriously interesting stuff. Titled off of the number of seats there are in the electoral college, the Web site examines political data and makes predictions. In short, the site is to “give the best possible objective assessment of the likely outcome of upcoming elections.”
  • Very, very cool.

Groupon is definitely a useful tool as well, says Potts.

Twitter, though, isn’t. “It’s good for keeping an eye on what’s going on, but I just don’t find it that interesting. It’s too much stuff, and it’s not that interesting.”

What is the most important tool for journalists, according to Potts?

“THIS,” he said, holding up his smartphone.

And lastly, while speaking about a journalist and their work, Potts believes in  “getting it right the first time.” Sure, a writer can tinker with their work endlessly, but, generally, write stuff “that’s ready to go.”

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Feb 07 2011

Chapter 3 — Crowd-Powered Collaboration

Posted by rpaul2 in Assignments (Chapters), tags: , , , ,

“News reporting methods such as crowdsourcing, open-source reporting and pro-am journalism are becoming the focus for more and more news operations in the United States.”

Crowdsourcing: “The Internet allows enthusiastic communities to come together and provide the value for a given Web site. Crowdsourcing focuses that community power on a specific project and demonstrates how a group of committed individuals can outperform a small group of experience (and paid) professionals.”

Open-Source Reporting: “The term ‘open-source’ refers to design, development and distribution ‘offering practical accessibility to a product’s source (goods and knowledge).’ Applying this concept to journalism means using transparency in reporting in order to provide a benefit to your audience and possibly acquire benefits from your audience.”

Pro-Am Journalism: “The most unfiltered form of collaborative journalism allows the audience to publish directly to the same platform, or Web site, that professional journalists use to publish their news. Because journalists can no longer be gatekeepers, creating opportunities for an audience to self-publish and then adding a layer of journalism on top produces broader and deeper coverage than the journalists could by themselves.”

These are Briggs’ definitions for the terms that he discusses in length in the third chapter ofJournalismNext. These definitions are all related to the idea of collaborative publishing, which, according to Briggs, “is not a fad that is going away anytime soon.”

He provides that the process of crowdsourcing “remains an experiment” due to its circumstantial needs — in other words, it works for some situations and fails for others.

Briggs states that open-source reporting is important because it “welcomes the audience’s feedback” and, by doing so, increases journalists’ “credibility and social capital.”

Lastly, the “essence” of pro-am journalism all boils down to the fact that “once you understand that no news organization can be everywhere, all the time,” it just makes sense to have it! This participatory form of journalism allows a d0-it-yourself (DIY) method to posting and acquiring the news.

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