User Profile: Michele McLellan

After consulting the team, we've changed our name to: The Open Book on Creative Crowdwriting. Thanks to Celestina and Gerrit for contributing the ideas. We're pulling in a lot of interesting info on several crowdsourced novels. Some people are reading and reviewing them. Others are interviewing organizations.
But there's more to be done and we're looking for more contributors. We're particularly interested in contributors willing to contact people who have participated in crowdsourcing novels and people who can help build our list of such projects. Just a few minutes of help on these would be great. We've got more time-intensive assignments as well. Check out our page and join the fun!
-Michele

The new site design feels transformative. In the last couple of days it has facilitated a great discussion on the Crowdsourced Novels team. Some fantastic team members had been working energetically but largely independently, unaware of the entire team and what other work was being accomplished. Sort of chaotic and mysterious.
This week we've been able to "see" each other on the topic home page, share contributor work (which is considerable) and discuss how we want to go forward. As topic editor, I thought my best role right now was to offer a possible way to further organize ourselves. It can be tricky because you want enough structure that people see a path but remain open to new lines of reporting as they emerge. (One of the problems in mainstream media is lack of people/time to keep new lines of reporting fresh. CS could solve this problem!) On the Novel topic homepage I posted a discussion note and asked for quick feedback from the team.
I focused on my "Fantastic Four" tools for thinking about story:
Scope of further reporting. How wide, how deep.
Themes of reporting already filed. Emerging patterns.
Structure of the story and sidebars we might want to produce
Timeline for completing our work
The team members responded very quickly and smartly with additional ideas and suggestions. I encourage you to read their posts (link below). It has really been fun to learn more about the people on board. We seem like a pretty diverse group that has this topic in common in a big way. That makes a fun energy.
My next step is to update the assignments to reflect our reporting strategy. Then we're hoping to recruit more contributors!
Meanwhile, I also had a good conversation with Jay today. He suggested other ways to spruce up the Novel home page. Now that we have this great topic home page, we can really improve on what we''re offering readers or potential contributors. I'm going to share some of that with my team and get their feedback. So stay tuned.

Meanwhile, I apologize for the clunky links. I keep forgetting how to do it right!
Crowdsourced Novels and team members: http://zero.newassignment.net/assignmentzero/crowdsourced_novels
Team discussion thread on reporting strategy: http://zero.newassignment.net/cs_novels_how_shall_we_focus_our_efforts

Cheers, Michele
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Michele McLellan
www.newsimproved.org

I'm a big fan of News University (www.newsu.org) that my friend, Howard Finberg has developed at the Poynter Institute (www.poynter.org). The online classes offer great content in highly interactive formats. It's a great place to learn how to do journalism.

I asked NewsU's Casey Frechette, an interactive learning producer, if he could recommend a few NewsU classes that would give AZ contributors some of the basics. Here's Casey's list:

*The Be A Reporter Game - Step into the shoes of a reporter; learn to work with sources
*Math for Journalists - How to include relevant and accurate numbers in any story (includes statistics)
*The Interview - Skills every reporter needs to conduct effective interviews
*The Lead Lab - Reviews the kinds of leads and shows how to craft them
*News Sense: The Building Blocks of News - What is news? What is journalism, and why does it matter?

I've done the first four on his list and really liked them. News Sense is on my list for this week!

Michele

As Lauren noted Friday in the Scoop (www.assignmentzero.net) , AZ editors like me are taking a good look at their topic areas early this week and cutting some of the topics that don’t seem to be drawing much interest. I’m supposed to give Lauren et al a revised list of what I’m up to and with whom. So I thought I’d just blog it …

My topics are taking me out of my comfort zone (print journalism) which is a lot of fun. I got into this because I know I have a lot to learn. Hooray. I’m learning!

Here’s my list from the world of Media and Publishing: http://zero.newassignment.net/desk?filter0=245

Crowdsourced Photos
The very energetic Shazz Mack is our first contributor. Shazz already interviewed iStock contributor Lise Gagne and I read Shazz’ Q&A (http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/cs/2006/11/ive_always_said.html) as my intro to this new way for photograpers to get their work seen by people, including buyers. Shazz and I have been e-mailing a little bit about her focus. We are thinking she could follow up with Lise and get some examples of actual work. How it started all the way through publication. Shazz is also interested in the Canada angle – three major services started in Canada.
Meanwhile, we foresee a lot of assignments for people who only have time to do a couple of calls or maybe a few e-mails. Things like researching the major services online, helping us identify other services and buyers who have switched from traditional stock photo services to online.

Crowdsourced Novels
We’re looking for a good list of crowdsourced novels and an indepth look at a couple of them (read them, talk to participating writers.) Newsvine has been working on this. On Monday, the Newsvine folks will file their reporting to the AZ site and then we’ll coordinate more of a plan.
Meanwhile, though, two great contributors have jumped in to each read a different novel and identify participants. George Karimalil has started reading “A Million Penguins” and Kristin Gorski is reading “These Wicked Games,” a crowdsourced romance novel.
We’re looking for as many contributors as possible to help us interview people who have participated in writing crowdsourced fiction. We want to get to the human/creative aspect of the experience.

Crowdsourced Non-Fiction Books. Just getting started here with one potential contributor so far. I hope to be in touch with him Monday. I think Tapscott and Williams, authors of “Wikinomics” fits really well under this umbrella. Would love to get contributors with further ideas.

NewsTrust. Muhammad Saleem interviewed the founder of this Web site, which allows users to rate the quality of the news they receive. Muhammad is interested in following up.

That’s it for me for now. I’ll give this to the AZ editors who are, as Lauren said, going to be pruning the hedges next week. Meanwhile, I’ll be working with contributors to focus assignments (and looking for more contributors.) Once the redesigned site is up and running, I will make the assignments a little more organized in hopes of luring a few more people to help out!

Michele McLellan
www.newsimproved.org

I've been e-talking with contributor Shazz Mack about CS Photos, an exciting new way for photographers to share their work on the Web. Shazz has a great idea for a story (see below). Since it will involved a lot of moving parts, we could use some help.

Shazz' idea: A "six degrees of separation" sort of longer piece the follows the story of a crowdsourced image from the "final product" that used the image ... back to the graphic designer, web designer, printer, photographer, model, teacher, camera shop, etc. I think this could be a very interesting story (reminds me of the Web site that followed everyday products like your coffee beans back to their source) and really good from a visual perspective. Also brings the human angle and features the businesses that now rely on this kind of resource.

Interested? Please contact me at michele.newassignment@gmail.com

Hello. I'm Michele McLellan and I'm just getting stated in Media and publishing. I am a longtime newspaper editor and spent a lot of time coaching reporters and writers so this job is right up my alley. I also spent a lot of the 90s (at The Oregonian in Portland) working to bring citizens and newsrooms closer together. That's when I met Jay, who gave me a lot of good advice when I was politics editor at The O. I went on to become the ombudsman and finished in 2003 as projects editor, which was a combination of producing major products in the newspaper and producing culture-change in the newsroom. That led to my current job, which is director of Tomorrow's Workforce at Medill School of Journalism in Illinois. I have spent the past few years in newsrooms, looking at how smart staff development can make change-resistant newsrooms more adaptive and more innovative. More on that in new book (www.newsimproved.org) by me and Tim Porter (wwww.timporter.com/firstdraft). Last week was the book launch so I am happily ready for something new and this is it!
So far, Steve has asked me to e-talk with one contributor about working on crowdsourcing fiction so I've been reading what's been compiled so far. It's quite fascinating. As soon as I finish the book I'm reading right now (Mao: The Unknown Story) I am going to read a crowdsourced book It looks like great fun. It'll be great to hear from others working on this as I get up to speed.
Cheers, Michele