crowdsource reporting
DESCRIPTION
My 3/5/12 Discussion with students at the Harvard Kennedy School about my experience with crowdsourcing story content with web based tools for two public media projects, one covering the effects of the economic crisis in 2009 from an NYC perspective, the other a call for stories about the current gay rights movement.TRANSCRIPT
Harvard Kennedy School Digital Communications Workshop:
Crowdsourced Reporting(Storytelling from multiple vantage points)
Annie ShrefflerDigital Producer, WGBH
#crowdsourcing @annieshreff
City of Toronto Archives, archival citation Fonds 1568, Item 177
What’s crowdsourcing, anyway?
Jeff Howe coined the term “crowdsourcing” at WIRED magazine:
Since Howe’s article, the concept of crowdsourcing has fostered hundreds of variations of social collaboration.
May 2006 Google search for “crowdsourcing”: 3 resultsHowe’s WIRED article in June 2006 changes that to to 182,000 results
Latest Google search for “crowdsourcing”: ~ 10,500,000 results
Covering the2008 Electionwith citizenreporters
Early Crowdsourcing ExperimentsWNYC Radio’s The Brian Lehrer Show
“How Many SUV’s on Your Block?”
Comparing the cost of groceries across NYC prompted a City Hall investigation
Producer: Jim Colgan
Timely Personal Easy to Respond
Your UncommonEconomic Indicators
WNYC Radio
2008 -2009New York Metro Region
“What signs of economic crisis do you see in your
neighborhood, on your street?”
TimelyPersonal
Easy to Respond
833 Stories22 Videos/260 Photos
31 Show Segments
Audio promos and the tag line “Bringing you uncommon
economic coverage”
Scanning entries for trends
January 2010 http://fieldguide.wnyclabs.org
Community 1. A group with joint ownership or liability, unified by common interests
2. A feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests and goals
Crowdsourcing is based on the notion that working together we can accomplish a large goal.
Crowdsourcing a story builds a sense of community among those in a news organization and the participating audience.
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#02JUL 29–31 2011
LONGSHOT Print Magazine and Radio
Collaborators across the U.S. convened, in person and online, to create a magazine in 48 hours
672 submissions / 68-page print publication
40 visitors to a “Story Corps on steroids” booth set up at the McNally Bookstore
Producers & editors sign up to help from Baltimore to Berlin
The Ask:We want submissions ranging from 140 characters to 4,000 words. Please send us your strongly reported narratives, design fictions, interviews, data visualizations, cartoons, family portraits, how-to guides, maps, obscure histories, recipes, war reporting, photo-essays, blueprints, ships’ logs, scientific papers, charticles, wood cuts, curio boxes, product reviews, and box scores.
longshotmag.magcloud.com
Long Shot Radio Showcase
Some advice from thought leaders on working with the crowd:
Pro-Am Journalism
Ground-level access
Networked intelligence
Distributed labor
Respect for journalistic standards
Objectivity replaced by transparency Amanda Michel
Director of Distributed Reporting at ProPublica creator of Huffington Post’s OffTheBus
“The timing for a new social contract between the press and the public could not be better. There will be no reason to mourn the loss of its audience if the press fully understands and exploits the new reality that its audience can now be its ally.”
Amanda Michel: Mobilize Your Audience
news delivery is changing
new models are created every day
some might actually stick
you can’t stop the technology
people are taking news into their own hands
CUNY J-School Prof Jeff Jarvisphoto credit: Christopher Wink
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Jeff Jarvis: Embrace change
Clay Shirky, Writer & Lecturerauthor of Here Comes Everybody
“[In the 20th Century], news was something we got.” Now a news organization can act as a site of coordination, “finding the people who care about a story and helping them take action together.”
Clay Shirky: Work Together
“People will work together if you have the perfect mix of promise, effective tool and good bargain, in terms of time.”
Alan Rusbridger Editor of The Guardian
Openness is shorthand for the way in which the vast majority of information...is part of a larger network, only a tiny portion of which is created by journalists. By collaborating...we can be infinitely more powerful than if we believe we have to generate it all ourselves.
Alan Rusbridger: See the power in numbers
Thank you!
Annie Shreffler
#crowdsourcing @annieshreff
“More on Crowdsource Reporting”
Delicious.com/annieshreff
http://www.delicious.com/stacks/view/C7jPNI