Interview John Wilpers and BostonNow participants
Reporter's Notebook
Boston just got a new free newspaper that combines traditional journalism and citizen journalism. Aimed people in their 20s and early 30s, BostonNow is attempting to integrate print and online, with reader blogs, video, and other activities. We need someone to look around the site, interview Editor John Wilpers, and some participants. (Wilpers could recommend some--and you can observe players by looking at the website). Even better-- if you live in Boston, check out the newspaper and visit this crew.
The New York Times recently took a look at BostonNOW: A Boston Newspaper Prints What Local Bloggers Write
Background
Journalism gets Crowdsourced
Crowdsourced journalism is a term that certainly sounds like a fully developed practice, but it's in its nascent stage. We want to explore the particulars to better understand when crowdsourced journalism occurs, how it occurs, why it occurs...yeah, you get the idea: the 5W's & H are still the tools we'll use. They're timeless, no matter the technology.
Examples of some crowdsourced journalism projects:
Mark Tapscott has launched the Washington Examiner Community Action Network (WeCan), which makes local government databases open to the public. Within one month WeCan made four government databases available to the public and generated several leads.
Simone Reade at the Contra Costa Times relied on information from the crowd to expose dirty business practices at the local level.
Minnesota Public Radio launched an Idea Generator.
And in Ft. Myers, Florida, a network of citizen journalists cracked the case on ongoing concerns over price hikes in their utility assessments.
We want to know all about the above examples, and many others that aren't listed here. The goal is to understand the phenomenon and be able to shed light in ways not yet accomplished. The challenge is particularly intriguing when you realize that Assignment Zero is also a crowdsourced project. We're trying to understand a phenomenon in which we're taking an active role. That's why your reflections and observations as you go through this project can be particularly helpful to the final product. So, come with your ideas and suggestions. Participate in the discussion area, share good research links, and file any of the reporting you do. Reflect on your interviews to find suggestions for future ideas to report. Don't assume all the experts and big names have figured out how crowdsourced reporting works. If we do our job right, we'll have something to tell them.
There are other assignments related to this large feature. If you want go back to the Assignment Desk and search under "Media and Publishing," you will find plenty of specific topics that will feed into and inform this big feature assignment.
Report here
Join this team to file reporting.Related Assignments
- SusanG of DailyKos
- "Mrs Panstreppon" (denizen of TPMCafe).
- Interview George Johnson/BuffaloRising.com
- Examine work at NowPublic
- Interview John Wilpers and BostonNow participants
- First Person Essay: Doing Citizen Journalism
- Report on Josh Marshall, political journalism 2.0
- Interview Jon Donley, Editor in Chief of NOLA.com (website for New Orleans Times -Picayune)
- Arizona Star Editor About Story Comments and Unruly Crowds
- What are other examples of crowdsourced journalism?
- Write the big feature.
- What are the major criticisms of crowdsourced journalism?
- How do wikis work for scientific reporting?
- Investigate the wikitorials debacle at the LA Times.
- What should we know about the Contra Costa Times project?
- Report on the Washington Examiner's WECAN project.
- Tell us about the Ft. Myers News-Press experiment.
- Assess the Idea Generator.
