Tristan Louis – TNL.Net

Posted on 03. Oct, 2007 by David Cohn in Citizen Network

Your work in networked/citizen/collaborative journalism.

I’ve been a proponent of networked journalism since 1999, when I founded Moveable Media as a company that would allow for licensing user-created content to mainstream media. The model was, dare I say, a little to early and didn’t take. Since then, I’ve worked as a networked/citizen reporter using TNL.net as my main platform for discussion of such things. Last try, I tried (and failed) to launch a scholarship program that would underwrite costs associated with bloggers doing investigative journalism.

What are your goals?

A very tough question. My goals in terms of attending the summit is to listen and broaden my understanding of how we could move this forward.

Notable achievements?

TNL.net has been followed by the mainstream media on several stories (from calculating the size of the Google supercomputer to analysing data about the growth of Second Life). In a way, the investigative piece I’ve done on the site have helped expose several stories.

Lesson you’ve learned (including mistakes you’ve made)

The first, and probably saddest, lesson I’ve learned is that few people are interested in investigative reporting because it’s hard work. The vast majority on both the press side and the blogosphere side prefers to hew to neat story lines and has trouble dealing with complexity.

The second one is that long pieces do not seem to work online. While I’ve taken to writing 1500-2000 words pieces on my site, generally shorter bits seem to work better. I am still probably mistaken in my belief that there is room for longer pieces.

Are you getting revenue for this? How?

Revenue come in two forms: advertising and freelancing opportunities. However, most of my work is more related to thought leadership than revenue generation (the thought leadership allows me to generate revenue from other, indirect, sources)

What’s next? What do you need to get to the next level?

For starters, I need a better understanding of direct revenue sources and what appeals to a broader audience. I’ve failed in breaking out of a core audience and need to understand how to properly effect a transition.

Anyone you’d like to talk with, learn from, or work with at the summit

The overseas crowd (like the guys from skynews or The Telegraph) will probably be interesting to meet in that another venture of mine (blognation.com) is more international in nature. I would also like to talk to some of the wire people (I see there are some people from AP) to see if there is any correlation between the speed of news in the blogosphere and on wires. Last but not least, I’ll be delighted to spend more time face to face with a number of other attendees I’ve met along the way.