Fort Myers News Press Crowd-Sourcing September 29, 2007
Posted by Brian in crowdsourcing, hyper-local, interactivity.2 comments
I took a look at the News-Press branch in Fort Myers (I hope this is the site you mentioned, Jonathon) . Part of their site is a crowd-sourcing experiment. As expected, people post news, comment on those stories and discuss.
Sort of.
News-Press started it in 2005 (I assume, since the admin. first joined the board then). It uses phpBB, which is forum software that’s been around for a while. It looks and feels just like a forum, which is kind of drab.
The Fort Myers site isn’t using it in any spectacular, new way. People do post news items, but I believe that the medium is not suited for engaging interactivity in the news area. phpBB belongs to niches even nichier than news. There’s even spam. And the picture section is not news related, really. People post pictures of everything .
I’m giving the generation gap and a lack of people who use or want to use this as the reasons why they’re failing. It reminds me of our phone meetings and talking over AIM: it’s too choppy and broken. Perhaps a reason why people moved to video is that it seems to relieve some of that linear feeling.
old idea part 2 August 28, 2007
Posted by rebeccaperez in demographics, hyper-local, ideas, interactivity.add a comment
I was thinking on my game idea while I was having lunch, and I was thinking that this game could be either downloadable from news sites, or it could be an adobe shockwave program on the news sites. This way the papers aren’t paying to have their news as rewards for playing the game, but they may actually increase readership on the site if the game is on their own site. Plus having local papers with this game on their site enhances the idea of hyperlocalism through gaming. While I would want to play the New York Times version of the game most people would rather play a reporter in there “town”. I think a generic town would work best, but the ability to expand to more accurate “towns” down the road would be feasible. I also think that a lot of elementary and middle schools would love to have this game. The software game might be a later incarnation of this. Carmen San Diego became popular through schools, which led to parents buying the game for there kids. I also thought that a lot of parents might find this while reading the news on various sites and show it to their children. If CNN plugged this like Nick plugs its various online games we would be in business. I know I would have my son playing this game all the time once he learns how to read. I think my current revision of this game better fits the local idea, as well as why newspapers would want it.
Rob’s Idea 1 August 25, 2007
Posted by Rob Ponte in hyper-local, ideas.6 comments
Okay so this might be a bit intangible and theoretical but bear with me. It’s based on an essay I wrote for this school magazine thing about the All-Knighter Project, although it was more about the theories behind it than the actual project. I’ll post that in a comment on this post if you want to read it.
SO the idea is basically to take the spontaneity and vitality of an actual city and and bring it to online communities. In order to do that we would take the lessons of urban planning and apply them to the website, which would be a content based social network (like flickr). The content would be people’s true stories, told in whatever medium (or combination of them) they like (pictures, text, audio, video, flash, etc). Content would be sorted in any possible way (tags, geo-tags, location, standard taxonomy, type, etc) and also presented according to social significance like facebook (what your freinds looked at, what comments they made, whether they liked it and such). There would also be an AJAX based section of the page that would allow the user to see who else is reading a story and chat with that spontaneous group or browse the recent things they read or whatever. We would also try to produce neighborhoods of people, either geographic or interest based, in which similar spontaneous interaction would be possible. Eventually you would start recognizing people around the site from your neighborhood or who you have chatted with before or who’s work you had read and it would sort of start to gel like an urban city does. This would still leave room for an optional map interface, but i think would give the user the option of experiencing all these stories from their own city or from anywhere. It would be promoted mostly as a place to get non-fiction stories of interest to you. Which could include anything from overheard dinner conversations to grandma’s chicken gumbo recipe to someones life story.
Anyways lemme know what you think.
Rob
Even MTV. . . August 25, 2007
Posted by deene in hyper-local, interactivity, participatory journalism.add a comment
is getting into the local. This was a job posting someone I used to work with sent out to one of my listserves.
” Citizen journalists! Visionaries! Vloggers! This is your year. Now more than ever, the presidential candidates know that every vote counts, and that local campaign stops can be covered and spread worldwide by anyone with a cell phone. You have power.
As part of our collaboration with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Knight News Challenge, MTV is looking for one aspiring reporter from every state and Washington, D.C., to be part of our Choose or Lose team. We know that you’re already hitting the streets and doing this work. So now we’re giving you the chance to join a national team of journalists in covering this unprecedented election year from a youth perspective.
Ideal candidates will have their fingers on the pulse of issues that are important to young people in their states and be passionate about politics and the possibilities of new technology. Strong writing and reporting skills are a must. A distinctive voice and an authoritative point of view? Even better.
We’ll load you up with some production gear and bring you to MTV’s headquarters in New York City for orientation. In return, you will be expected to work in a paid, part-time capacity to file video, written or photographic stories weekly throughout the election year. Your pieces will be posted online and spread to mobile devices — and the top stories will be broadcast on MTV, MTV2, MTVU or MTV Trés each week.
Requirements:
· You must be at least 18 years old by December, 2007.
· You must reside in the state you are covering from January to November, 2008.
· You must have the time and ability to travel within your state and file at least one video, written or photographic story per week. “
It seems like they’re taking a leaf out of the Gannett’s MoJo book. I thought this was interesting from a local standpoint. Plus it’d be kind of a cool job. However, I’m again troubled by the potential for these positions to become un-objective. After all, it doesn’t say anything about the good folks at MTV helping the budding journalist to choose what to cover. . . or what not to cover. I know I sound like a broken record, but where do you draw the ethical line?
“Reverse publishing” of online citizen journalism – it’s BRILLIANT. August 22, 2007
Posted by Jeff in competition, hyper-local, participatory journalism.5 comments
Beginning today, some Chicago Tribune readers will receive the new Triblocal print edition. Following the launch of triblocal.com earlier this year, hundreds of citizens registered to post photos, stories and events from their hometowns. This content, along with enhanced coverage from Triblocal editorial staff, is used to develop two weekly print publications serving the West and Southwest suburbs.
PR Newswire via BuzzMachine.
Reader contributions are actually being published in dead-tree newspapers. How does that strike you, journalists?
Maps! August 18, 2007
Posted by Rob Ponte in competition, hyper-local, interactivity, maps, mashups, tools.2 comments
Some updates.
1. There is a blog of mostly historical Strange Maps. Some are pretty interesting although probably not terribly useful. I found this handy map of where single males and females live (and I need to get my ass east).
[cut by Jeff due to images...] (more…)
Multimedia Content August 15, 2007
Posted by Jeff in hyper-local, maps.add a comment
As I was “enjoying” my tech-deprived state in Canada this week, I was struck with a revelation. How can multimedia content be added? I’m sure there are very ‘hyperlocal’ videos on YouTube, but how could they be integrated into a maplike interface without becoming too cluttered?
“A map on every page” August 15, 2007
Posted by Brian in competition, hyper-local, interactivity, maps, mashups.8 comments
Google is coming out with a feature that lets anyone paste some HTML into a page to get a Google Map.
The article at CNET says that “[t]he map will be fully interactive, with the ability for users to drag and click or zoom in on a location. The maps will include satellite and hybrid modes. We’d better keep track of this as well.
The HomeTown Locator August 11, 2007
Posted by deene in hyper-local.3 comments
Okay, so this post is about a geographical community and how they keep in touch. The HomeTown locator is a site offering a lot of specialization. You can look up communities on the site and it gives you the lowdown on what’s up. There’s a map, weather updates, census data, parks, education, social services and the list just goes on and on. What really caught my eye was the “newcomers” section. Irritatingly, when I clicked on the link it just sent me to the real estate site this one’s partnered with. But on the upside, just above that link was one to the local farmer’s market.
While this site is clearly created more for people who are looking to move to an area, there’s obviously a lot of really cool and pertinent information here. This site isn’t being used for community communication currently, but with all this information, we might want to consider adding some of this stuff to our layers. So take a look, plug in your hometown and see what comes up.
hometownlocator.com
~Katie
Loudoun Extra August 11, 2007
Posted by jonathan686 in hyper-local, participatory journalism.8 comments
I was charged with the task of researching or contacting Rob Curly or Jonathan Krim, the two main forces behind washingtonpost.com’s new hyper-local Loudoun Extra.
I wasn’t able to actually get in touch with either of them (Rob is so swamped with emails that he has a spamchecker and multistep verification process to get an email through to him…), but thankfully Rob has posted some excellent stuff on his blog.
In his July 16 post about the Loudoun launch he defines his key strategies for hyper-local coverage:
- Constantly updated “Big J” and “little j” journalism from Loudoun County.
- Exclusive databases filled with things that people want to know.
- Databases of public records.
- A commitment to local multimedia journalism.
- Alternate delivery/platform independent.
- Evergreen content.
- Community publishing that works the way the Internet really works.
Loudoun Extra just launched in July, and many of the searchable databases have not been launched yet. I’m curious to see what form they take when they are made available.
The first key hyper-local strategy Curley mentions is hosting both traditional and participatory journalism. Blogger Beth Lawton explains:
One of the interesting things about the new Loudoun Extra site is that it’s a community-oriented, hyperlocal site… but the site is not depending on the community. Unlike BackFence, which largely ran on contributions from locals, Loudoun Extra so far is fed mostly by professional reporters and journalism interns.
In explaining the move, Curley wrote in his blog entry, “Because — as far as we can tell — no one knows what in the heck “hyper-local” really means, we decided we’d try to take a stab at what we thought it means with this site. More importantly, we didn’t think it meant a site that was essentially just community publishing.”
