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Journalism Next by Mark Briggs Chapter 3

As the digital age becomes more digital the journalism community is catching on and using it to its benefit. The audience wants to be more involved in their community and newspapers want to cover as much as possible. Hence a win-win situation.

Newspapers, blogs and other journalism mediums are using 3 new tools to harness their audience.

1. crowdsourcing

2. open-source reporting

3. pro-am journalism
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Crowdsourcing

“Crowdsourcing,” says author Mark Briggs, “harnesses the sustained power of community to improve a service or information base.”

Basically, crowdsourcing uses the reader base of an organization and asks them to contribute their knowledge on a topic.

“News organizations have used crowdsourcing,” explains Briggs,  “to find instances of voting problems, follow local distribution of disaster payments from the federal government and map potholes on city streets.”

Crowdsourcing taps into the reader’s knowledge and lends it self to the story. The audience knows more than just on reporter, so the more information given to the reporter the better the information sent out to the audience in the end will be.

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Open-Source Reporting

Open-source reporting gives the audience an insight into what a reporter is working on. It asks the audience for an opinion about the topic and the reporter can tailor the article to what the audience needs. It is a great way to find an angle that many members of an audience would find beneficial.

“When people see how the process works, “states Mark Briggs, “they are less likely to hang on to any perception that reporters are biased or operating with nefarious motives.”

It also gives the reporter plenty of sources to work from for an article topic.

“Here’s the story so far, ” says Jay Rosen, a New York University professor, “We’ve collected a lot of good information. Add your knowledge and make it better. Add money and make it happen. Work with us if you know things we don’t.”
Open-crowd sourcing has also led to ideas like: beatblogging and link journalism.

Beatblogging can allow the reporter to see what a particular audience set is interested in on an issue.

“A beat blog,” states Patrick Thorton, editor of BeatBlogging.org, “is a great way to find out what people are thing, and unlike the print edition that may run a few thought from readers, a beat blog can allow anyone to comment. Plus, users can interact with each other, share links and debate topics.”

Link journalism is when an article links to other sites on the web that has more detailed information about a topic. A great example is Google.

“All Google does is send people away from itself, “explains Mark Briggs, “And all people do is comeback.”

“Either way,”adds author Mark Briggs,  “they [links] provide value to readers, a layer of navigation that is a new form of journalism.”

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Pro-Am Journalism

Do It Yourself journalism has been making its way into the hearts of many online users because of easy and free publishing. Practically anyone, if they want to, can publish whatever they want. So newspapers, blogs and online news sites are latching on to the idea of making its audience works for them.

“audiences are going to be reporting everything from breaking news to church club events somewhere online, ” author Mark Briggs commented, “So, it might as well be happening on organization news sites, alongside their own reporting, thus providing a fuller selection of news and information for the audience.”

A great example of this is CNN’s iReport. They invite their audience to post pictures, videos and commentary on events in their community that are newsworthy.

This entry was posted on February 25, 2010 at 9:25 am and is filed under "Journalism Next" Chapter Blogs with tags "Journalism Next", Crowd-Powered Collaboration, Mark Briggs, Meridith Kaufman, online journalism, onmason. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.