I also had the chance to catch up with Adrian Holovaty who, for many, needs no introduction. He is most known for pioneering Django, a model/view/controller framework to deploy web applications and then using that framework to create EveryBlock.com – a news feed for your block.

I asked Adrian only two questions. First – to explain a little known aspect of EveryBlock whereby the editors help explain some of the obscure aspects of city infrastructure. My take away: If you still have any doubt that aggregation is creation or that filtering is an editorial service that journalists can hone and use to make money….. you are missing a VERY lucrative bus.

The second was Adrian’s advice to a young journalist/programmer. Scratch your own itch.

I am the co-founder with Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds of Porkbusters, and spearheaded the “Secret Hold” effort which resulted in the passage of the historic Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act which will require that all federal spending be posted online in a searchable database accessible to all citizens. Resurrecting a key government transparency bill from oblivion, the Secret Hold campaign was one of the most successful and effective online activism efforts ever (and was also a lot of fun).

I am also the founder of The Victory Caucus, a grassroots organization and web portal aimed at educating the American public on the realities and importance of the Iraq war, in particular by drawing attention to the work of independent embedded journalists like Michael Yon, Bill Roggio and Michael Totten. In September I was honored to be invited to the White House to spend an hour with President Bush and a small group of milbloggers discussing the war in Iraq and the role of online media in the information war.

For my efforts online, I was awarded the first-ever “Blogger of the Year” award in March 2007 at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and am also a member of The Heritage Foundation’s New Media Advisory Board.

What are your goals?
To continue to play an active role in citizen’s journalism and new media through both my “non-profit” efforts as well as my business (see below).

Lesson you’ve learned (including mistakes you’ve made)
Not every grand idea for online journalism/activism works. Some flop. That’s OK: just try the next one!

Are you getting revenue for this? How?I don’t get revenue for my “non-profit” efforts like Porkbusters, but have now launched Kithbridge, Inc., which leverages the infrastructure I have developed for The Truth Laid Bear and my own experience and knowledge to help paying clients understand and connect with new media. Kithbridge offers customized blog monitoring to help clients understand what is being said about them and the topics they care about online, automated blog feeds which can be integrated into clients’ websites, and general strategy consulting to help organizations navigate their way through the blogosphere and identify how best to engage with new media communities.

Notable achievements?
We are a very new project. We launched in the middle of the summer, and since then have published several noteworthy stories, include several produced through distributed reporting. For example, “Romney Buys Conservatives” came about as OffTheBus members researched the 2nd quarter FEC reports. We most recently launched our Campaign Field Guide, a wiki complete with full lists of campaign staffers on all the campaigns.

Lessons you’ve learned (including mistakes you’ve made)
The biggest challenge is how to turn input into content. Only a small percentage of our members contribute blogposts or articles to us, and most send through research, tips, paragraphs, snippets, etc.. We have experimented with different types of content and features in the last two months, and now regularly produce, among others, a group-collaborative humor piece called Roadkill daily. What we’re learning is that we have to invest a significant percentage of our time and effort into our writers, and then we can begin our distributed work.

Are you getting revenue for this? How?
We’re funded through donations and grants. No revenue. Arianna Huffington is a publisher of the project, and the Huffington Post has very generously provided us with technical support, site hosting, etc..

What’s next? What do you need to get to the next level?
Several things:
* We are looking for more correspondents who report back on the impact of the presidential campaigns, local organizing, etc. in their towns and states.
* We are looking for partners who want to work with us on distributed journalism projects.
* We share content. If anyone else at the conference is producing content you think should be profiled at OffTheBus or is interested in featuring our content on their site, let’s talk.

Anyone you’d like to talk with, learn from, or work with at the summit
* Robin Sloan
* Michael Mcintee
* Alan Levy
* Jennifer Carroll
* Derek Willis
* Lisa Williams

I started in January 2007 making YouTube videos in my Georgetown dorm room with a $60 webcam and an aging Dell laptop. I rose to quasi-prominence by critiquing how the 2008 Presidential candidates were using YouTube. After getting a lot of mainstream coverage for this, I’ve since graduated, interviewed seven Presidential candidates, and covered the CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate and the Iowa Straw Poll. As of this week, I’ve been officially hired by Politico.com to video blog for them full-time. I’m very excited, because now I finally have a full-time job doing what I love – making goofy videos about politics and putting them online.

What are your goals?

My immediate goals are to create compelling and funny video content for Politico.com . My long-term goals are to increase my standing as a combination of an online political journalist, commentator, and entertainer – in other words, a political video blogger.

Notable achievements?

I conducted the first-ever dorm room interview with a Presidential candidate when Ron Paul dropped by my Georgetown single in April. Since then, I’ve interviewed six more Presidential candidates, including John Edwards.

The Economist has called me “probably the world’s foremost expert on YouTube videos posted by Presidential candidates.”

I managed to turn my dorm room video blogging hobby into a full-time job.

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

On the internet, no matter what you say or how nicely you say it, some people are going to hate what you say, and hate you for saying it. As my popularity grew online, this was a difficult fact for me to adjust to. Now that I am relatively adjusted, it makes things easier – and more fun.

Are you getting revenue for this? How?

Yes. Since I’ve been hired by Politico.com, I now finally have a way to make a sustainable living doing what I love.

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

I need for million and millions of people to watch and love what I do at http://politico.com/playbook , and to keep coming back for more day after day. That will put me in the best possible position when my contract with Politico is up.

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

• Jeff Howe – I love Wired magazine
• Arianna Huffington – who wouldn’t want to meet her?
• Overall, I’ll be interested to talk to pretty much everybody on the list.

Sunlight has started several distributed research projects to bring more transparency and accountability to Congress. Each project differs greatly; we’ll describe just a few here. Congresspedia, which we launched with the Center for Media and Democracy, is a wiki-based “citizen’s encyclopedia on Congress” that anyone can contribute to and edit (though we have an in-house editor to oversee it for fairness and accuracy). Our “Is Congress a Family Business” project /research/familybusiness/\u003c/a\>) \nprovided\u003c/span\> citizen researchers with an online tool that guided them to \nonline databases to look up information about spouses of House members \n(specifically, whether or not a spouse drew a paycheck from the member’s \ncampaign committee), and enter their findings into the form. \u003cspan\>The tool both guided their research and collected their \ndata, even displaying updated totals on the number of members checked and the \nnumber who had been tentatively identified as paying their spouses. \n\u003c/span\>We engaged citizen journalists an effort to find out which Senator had \neffectively blocked passage of S. 223, a bill that would require Senate \ncampaigns to electronically file their contribution information with the Federal \nElection Commission (as House and presidential candidates already do); they \ncalled all 100 Senate offices in an effort to find out, and reported what they \nlearned to us via comments on blog posts and emails. Finally, we have recently \nlaunched EarmarkWatch.org, a site that lets users connect the dots between \nlawmakers, lobbyists, campaign contributors and earmarks, plus share info and \ncomments on whether earmarks meet pressing needs, pay off political \ncontributors, or are simply pure pork. The site is at once an investigative tool \nfor finding information on earmarks, a repository of that information, and a \nsocial networking site for those who want to bring transparency and \naccountability to congressional spending.\u003c/font\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp\>\u003cspan\>\u003cfont face\u003d\”Arial\” size\u003d\”2\”\>Additionally, we have \nprovided grants to other organizations involved in citizen journalism, including \nCapitol News Connection (\u003ca href\u003d\”http://www2.pri.org/cncnews/index.html\” target\u003d\”_blank\” onclick\u003d\”return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)\”\>http://www2.pri.org/cncnews\u003cWBR\>/index.html\u003c/a\>) for \na project that would allow citizens to have their questions asked of \nlawmakers by CNC reporters; the Center for Indpependent Media (\u003ca href\u003d\”http://www.newjournalist.org\” target\u003d\”_blank\” onclick\u003d\”return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)\”\>”,1] ); /provided citizen researchers with an online tool that guided them to online databases to look up information about spouses of House members (specifically, whether or not a spouse drew a paycheck from the member’s campaign committee), and enter their findings into the form. The tool both guided their research and collected their data, even displaying updated totals on the number of members checked and the number who had been tentatively identified as paying their spouses. We engaged citizen journalists an effort to find out which Senator had effectively blocked passage of S. 223, a bill that would require Senate campaigns to electronically file their contribution information with the Federal Election Commission (as House and presidential candidates already do); they called all 100 Senate offices in an effort to find out, and reported what they learned to us via comments on blog posts and emails. Finally, we have recently launched EarmarkWatch.org, a site that lets users connect the dots between lawmakers, lobbyists, campaign contributors and earmarks, plus share info and comments on whether earmarks meet pressing needs, pay off political contributors, or are simply pure pork. The site is at once an investigative tool for finding information on earmarks, a repository of that information, and a social networking site for those who want to bring transparency and accountability to congressional spending.

Additionally, we have provided grants to other organizations involved in citizen journalism, including Capitol News Connection for a project that would allow citizens to have their questions asked of lawmakers by CNC reporters; the Center for Independent Media ) to train \ncitizen journalists and establish a Washington bureau to cover Congress; \nCitizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (\u003ca href\u003d\”http://www.citizensforethics.org/\” target\u003d\”_blank\” onclick\u003d\”return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)\”\>\u003cfont face\u003d\”Times New Roman\” size\u003d\”3\”\>http://www.citizensforethics\u003cWBR\>.org\u003c/font\>\u003c/a\>) to create an Open Community \nOpen Document Review System, enabling citizens to review and annotate documents \nobtained from the government through the Freedom of Information Act; and we\’ve \nalso supported both NewAssignment.net and the Center for Citizen Media (\u003ca href\u003d\”http://citmedia.org/\” target\u003d\”_blank\” onclick\u003d\”return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)\”\>\u003cfont face\u003d\”Times New Roman\” size\u003d\”3\”\>http://citmedia.org\u003c/font\>\u003c/a\>). A full list of our grantees can be found \nat \u003ca href\u003d\”http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/grants\” target\u003d\”_blank\” onclick\u003d\”return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)\”\>http://www.sunlightfoundation\u003cWBR\>.com/grants\u003c/a\>. \n\u003c/font\>\u003c/span\>\n\u003cp\>\u003cfont face\u003d\”Arial\” size\u003d\”2\”\>\u003c/font\>\u003c/p\>\u003cfont face\u003d\”Arial\” size\u003d\”2\”\>\u003c/font\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp\>\u003cfont face\u003d\”Arial\” size\u003d\”2\”\>2. What are your goals?\u003c/font\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp\>\u003cfont face\u003d\”Arial\” size\u003d\”2\”\>Our main goal is to bring transparency to Congress, \nand each project we do is designed to further that goal. Sometimes we are \ntrying, explicitly, to answer a question (how many House members were paying \ntheir spouses from campaign funds in 2006; who has the secret hold on a \ntransparency bill) that require the same steps to be repeated dozens or hundreds \nof times (calling Senate offices, looking up expenditure records for House \ncampaigns). For other projects, the goal of aggregating the distributed research \nis secondary to the task at hand (scoring each member’s official Web site for \ntransparency; evaluating the merits of individual earmarks), though we can still \nanswer big questions (how many members post their schedules on their Web sites; \nhow many earmark recipients lobby Congress).\u003c/font\>\u003c/p\>\n\u003cp\>\u003cfont face\u003d\”Arial\” size\u003d\”2\”\>”,1] ); / to train citizen journalists and establish a Washington bureau to cover Congress; Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington to create an Open Community Open Document Review System, enabling citizens to review and annotate documents obtained from the government through the Freedom of Information Act; and we’ve also supported both NewAssignment.net and the Center for Citizen Media. A full list of our grantees can be found at http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/grants.

What are your goals?
Our main goal is to bring transparency to Congress, and each project we do is designed to further that goal. Sometimes we are trying, explicitly, to answer a question (how many House members were paying their spouses from campaign funds in 2006; who has the secret hold on a transparency bill) that require the same steps to be repeated dozens or hundreds of times (calling Senate offices, looking up expenditure records for House campaigns). For other projects, the goal of aggregating the distributed research is secondary to the task at hand (scoring each member’s official Web site for transparency; evaluating the merits of individual earmarks), though we can still answer big questions (how many members post their schedules on their Web sites; how many earmark recipients lobby Congress).

What are some of your notable achievements?
Using the Web in innovative ways to make the distributed research process user friendly and even enjoyable: We launched “Congress’ Family Business” at 3:30 p.m. on a Friday of a holiday weekend, and expected the research to take three or four weeks. Within 40 hours, the project was completed—citizen journalists found that 19 spouses were paid by a member’s campaign committee in the 2006 election cycle, totaling more than $636,000. The amazing thing about the project was that our researchers found that doing the research was almost addictive. Most participants researched multiple members—anywhere from 10 to 100. And remember, this project involved searching through campaign committee expenditure reports—the sort of task that normally causes eyes to glaze over.

Designing research projects around available data sources: One of the most important things we do is to steer our volunteer muckrakers to reliable data sources they can use to find information for our projects, providing enough instructions to familiarize them with their use. Our hope is that by making them aware of these resources, they will check them again when they need government information in the future.

Lesson you’ve learned (including mistakes you’ve made)
We’ve learned a lot as we’ve gone along, largely through making mistakes. Our first effort in this field, after Sunlight broke the story of then-Speaker Dennis Hastert personally profiting from a $207 million earmark for a highway project, we asked our readers to investigate their own member’s personal financial disclosures, and let us know what they found. We had about 100 eager volunteers, but no way to train them and, except for email, no way to communicate with them. There was also no methodology, no set of questions we were trying to answer, just a suggestion that people take a peak at their lawmaker’s financial disclosure form and report back to us on anything that looked odd. While a lot of people did a lot of work looking, only one story emerged from it (and that one on the Web site of Harpers, as one of our citizen researchers tipped off a reporter there to what he had found). Our second effort, a 2006 project called Exposing Earmarks (conducted jointly with a coalition of other groups) similarly suffered from a lack of thought on the front end: While a lot of people looked at individual earmarks, there was no means of collecting and correlating that information at one site, so that we ended up with a scattered effort. Since that time, we have learned that there is no substitute for having a research tool that helps guide research and collect information. Our newest effort, EarmarkWatch.org, also allows for interaction among researchers–a research, publishing and social networking tool.

Are you getting revenue for this? How?
No, we don’t get revenue for this. The Sunlight Foundation is a 501(c)3.

What’s next? What do you need to get to the next level?
What we need most of all is more transparency from Congress! Beyond that, we’d like to develop means of distributing tasks like fact checking, we’d like to be able to create a network of volunteers who would take on more responsibility for running the projects we create. We’d also like to come up with more cool tools using data from other sources while allowing others to make tools using our data.

While I write the blog entries, the site really is driven by the content created by lawmakers, candidates, government agencies, advocacy groups, think tanks, media organizations and, last but not least, citizen journalists. I created the site to corral all of that great content into one place so it’s easier for people to access the best audio and video without visiting dozens of Web sites. Via the “Podcast Of The Week” and “Producer’s Picks” features, I narrow the content even further, using journalistic instincts honed over nearly 17 years in Washington to highlight the stories that strike me as most newsworthy and interesting.

I currently work full time as the editor of National Journal’s Technology Daily, and my work there prompted me to start Beltway Blogroll, a blog that tracks the impact of blogs on politics, policy and the media. I’ve been covering the citizen journalism world for a few years now and have spoken about the subject at various events.

What are your goals?

Ultimately, I hope to find a way to feature more citizen journalism on AirCongress. For instance, I envision bloggers from across the country interviewing their local congressmen or political candidates and contributing content to the site. I’d also like to use the site as a venue for getting future journalists (citizen or professional) some nuts-and-bolts experience in covering Washington.

I’ve had preliminary discussions with BlogTalkRadio about how AirCongress and BTR might work together, and I am eager to pursue content and/or business partnerships with innovators in the new media field.

Notable achievements?

AirCongress was one of the first Web sites to discover the “Big Brother” video aimed at Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and generated more than 10,000 hits in a single day. Linking to that viral video resulted in the biggest traffic day by far for the site, and searches for that ad continue to drive traffic to AirCongress.

And I just learned today (Sept. 25) that AirCongress was listed in the “influential blog index” that Adfero Group compiled for an August 2007 study on the impact of blogs on policy debates. The list of more than 150 blogs included neutral news sites like AirCongress, as well as blogs of various political leanings.

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

I’ve learned that it’s next to impossible to start a media business on your own, in your spare time. I initially planned to make AirCongress a nonprofit hobby, soliciting contributions online and posting content sporadically. I did not envision it as a commercial enterprise with steady content until I approached a Web design company that nudged me in that direction. The company offered design and marketing services in exchange for a stake in the company.

Our negotiations ultimately did not result in a deal and I decided to hire another designer and keep the business “in the family.” I’m not yet to the point where I think that was a mistake — but I am wishing I could hire someone to promote AirCongress because it’s impossible for me to work a full-time job while also producing editorial content for AirCongress and promoting the site. For the business to achieve its potential, I need to find a way to get more people involved.

Are you getting revenue for this? How?

A couple of blog ads appeared on AirCongress early in 2007. I also have made a small amount of money from Google ads and syndication. But all of those revenue vehicles have potential if I can drive traffic to the site. That gets back to the lesson learned about promotion.

One syndication vehicle for AirCongress is Voxant’s Newsroom, which allows bloggers to embed video content from traditional newswires, newspapers and broadcasters. The publishers get a small cut of revenue from the ads built into the videos, with the rest divided among the content providers and Voxant. As AirCongress gets more traffic, those videos theoretically will generate more views and thus more money. But I primarily use those videos on days when I don’t have time to blog. That staple of AirCongress is the user-generated content.

I also syndicate AirCongress’ content through a service called Newstex, a “content on demand” service that works with bloggers.

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

I need a promotional plan to drive traffic and an influx of cash to make that promotional plan possible. Political and policy professionals inside the Beltway and C-SPAN junkies outside the Beltway are the target audience. I need to figure out how to reach them and find the money to make it happen.

Anyone you’d particularly like to talk with, learn from, or work with at the summit.
Narrowing the list is a challenge, but here are my picks, in order of preference:
– Jeff Jarvis – Organizer, CUNY
– Jay Rosen – NewAssignment.Net
– Arianna Huffington – The Huffington Post
– Amanda Michel – OffTheBus
– John Havens and/or Alan Levy – BlogTalkRadio
– Bill Allison and/or Ellen Miller – Sunlight Foundation
– James Kotecki – YouTube Reporter
– Chris Lydon – Open Source Radio
– Henry Copeland – Blogads
– Mark Potts – Recovering Journalist, Backfence
– Jeff Burkett – Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
– Jon Landman – New York Times
– Mark Tapscott – Washington Examiner
– Solana Larsen – Global Voices
– Andy Carvin – NPR
– Derek Willis – Washington Post
– Jonathan Dube – CyberJournalist
– Andy Solomon and/or John Bracken – MacArthur Foundation

Recent examples of networked journalism at McClatchy include the recent acquisition of Fresno Famous (see writeup) and a part of the News & Observer in Raleigh North Carolina is a community site called the Share Triangle. McCaltchy’s networked journalism efforts can be as simple as an Alaskan paper asking for pictures of the biggest fish caught, to their upcoming ambitions to create a participatory journalism project through their DC bureau.

Main Goal: It’s a new space with the same goal, to practice community journalism. “Journalism that empowers people, creates better citizens to participate in a democracy,” says Weaver.

A Surprising Realization: I’ve been more surprised by the pace of change than by its direction,” says Weaver. “To me the basic imperatives have been clear for some time, but I feel like there is an accelerating pace.”

Biggest Practical Lesson/Mistake: The biggest thing we’ve learned is having an integrated news staff and not walling off the online staff from the print staff. In some places the staffs were literally in different buildings and now we are largely integrated and encouraging people to become more integrated, including content ad-sales and management. It is a big lesson not to think of the delivery medium, but trying to serve the customer – putting the information how the consumer wants it rather than how we produce it, says Weaver.

Money: To begin Weaver had a disclaimer: “The revenue side is not my area of expertise, I’m a news guy and always have been.”

According to Weaver, McClatchy is finding revenue models online and should have $180-200 million in online revenues this year. The company has investments in cars.com and Career Builder that are promising and while the initial opportunity was in the classified it is finding that retail online is growing quickly.

Future Goals: “We think of ourselves as a mission driven company,” says Weaver. The main goal will not change and it remains the future goals as well. “For 150 years we have been trying to make the communities where we serve better places, the animating principle is public service journalism.”

What do you hope to get from people attending this conference?

We are, like everybody else, between infancy and adolescents in this process. Its an opportunity to be exposed to a lot of ideas in a short time and meet a lot of people whose names I only know from reading their blogs.

Main Goal: To serve two communities that are colliding with each other: technologists who are interested in hacking politics and political hacks who realize that they have to understand how to adapt to and make better use of this new networked environment. Personal Democracy Forum is a space to help these groups better understand each others needs and potentials.

Notable Achievements: In January Personal Democracy Forum started another side blog – Tech President, that focused on how the candidates are using the web and how the web is using them. It recently won a Knight Batten Award. Personal Democracy Forum has also become “an interpreter for lots of mainstream news reporters that are trying to understand this arena,” says Sifry.

A Surprising Realization: “The thing that never ceases to amaze me is when you combine hypernetworks and search, the result again and again is that the right like-minded people find you,” says Sifry. Often the people that PDF hears from are exactly the people Sifry is looking for, “they have their own really interesting experiences and insights.”

Biggest Practical Lesson/Mistake: “I’m a great believer in always making new mistakes,” says Sirfy. As for the conferences, the biggest mistake has typically been over-programming. In running the organization as a whole it has probably been not knowing exactly where to focus, says Sifry. The lesson has been to only do a few things, but do them well.

Money: After four years the conference itself is modestly profitable and helps drive the editorial engine, though Rasiej who is the prime backer of the whole thing still has yet to recoup what he has put in.

While the editorial is running at a loss, Personal Democracy Forum does make a bit of money back in private consulting and hopes to eventually find a new revenue stream through content syndication.

Advertising is not looked at as a plausible model “I don’t think honestly there is enough demand for this kind of specialized content,” says Sifry.

Future Goals: “A partial answer to that, we own the URL techcongress.com.” But the main focus is on the yearly conference and based on the success of last year’s conference PDF is headed towards expanding it to a two day event with a third day unconference.

What do you hope to get from people attending this conference?

I’m interested in knowing where the cutting edge is in online journalism that effects politics. The media system is a more open and dynamic and whether that’s changing the political discourse is one big subject. There is a lot of possibility to open up the political process through the use of technology and more people participating in what their representative are up to, monitoring them, giving feedback. The question is, now that the media has opened up how citizen journalism can move in and add to the role of watchdog that was formerly done by corporate sponsored media.

“If you are interested in data – the federal government is the largest producer of data there is, Washington is the place to work,” said Willis. After a brief stint at the Center for Public Integrity, Willis began working for the Washington Post newspaper only to move over to the website last February, stating that if you are working in database journalism the web is a better platform.

Main Goal: The basic philosophy for our information work is that there are a lot of databases that the public never sees the best or most useful versions of. Those versions are kept hidden for the people who use it or sell it. At the Washington Post online we try to put the best versions of a database in the public. What you see online is the best version we have, “we don’t hold anything back,” says Willis.

Recently the Post, for the first time, opened up a story on conditions in D.C. schools and published all of its data inviting people to dig into it and contact reporters with corrections or additions – things that we could never know about all the schools.

Notable Achievements: The schools project noted above is one of several database projects Willis has been a part of at the Post.

In another, the Post is tracking where the candidates have been and where they are going along the campaign trail – building a database of several thousand campaign appearances. Bloggers have used this to try and determine a candidates strategy, says Willis. “We ought to be able to know where the presidential candidates are going and we are building on the database, adding new features like speeches.

A Surprising Realization: You never know how other people will use your data.

That doesn’t happen very often in a print newsroom, but online pretty much every time you put up a data set you can be lead in any number of directions by readers.

If one person calls a newspaper reporter — doesn’t guarantee a response — for us — if we can do something and it can be a benefit to one person — its probably worth doing it. “I didn’t appreciate that aspect of it until it happened to us,” said Willis.

Biggest Practical Lesson/Mistake: What we really have not done as well as we could do, and are really working on, is a better visual component. There are things we have learned about the way you present info to people — it has to be done in a way that is accessible — not everyone is interested in the raw data.

Future Goals: We’d like to extend what we’ve been doing on a national level — down to the state and local level — there is no reason why our voter database should only be national.

I think the more — that we do in terms of putting information in people’s hands- – the closer it’s going to bring us into contact with people who want to do journalism whether they want to work with us or not. “It’s hard for me to see how getting more people involved is a bad thing for the news industry,” said Willis.

What do you hope to get from people attending this conference?

There are always going to be people who are experts on something specific. We need those people and journalism organizations need to know who those people are — so I like meeting those people.

I’m also interested in meeting anybody who is exploring in our area, to see if there are there ways that we can do things in different way.

Main Goal: To democratize the news in three ways.
1. GroundReport allows everyone to participate by posting articles, videos or livestreaming content.
2. The community decides what is on the front page through voting – there is no editorial control.
3. GroundReport shares revenue with all contributors based on traffic to their stories.

Notable Achievements: GroundReport has 1,000 different contributors from all over the world including Zimbabwe, Mali and Pakistan.

Using various tools, GroundReport has media offerings comparable to a large news outlet. GroundReport has its own television channel and will soon be launching GroundReport radio. GR Television allows listeners to become deeply involved in the programming and reporting of content for specific time slots.

A Surprising Realization: “I’m always surprised and happy about how passionate a lot of our users are and how they identify with the mission that we have,” says Sterne.

There is also the surprise of having to strictly define things. Sterne’s original motivation was to create an open forum, but she found a need to be more of an editor than originally intended “because people need to know what you are trying to create and if what they have is appropriate,” says Sterne.

Biggest Practical Lesson/Mistake: You have to define what it is you are looking for very clearly to avoid spamming from advertisements and press releases. “I had to say ‘this is our content focus – international events, and politics’ and the result after that is contributed content that is more focused.” There is a delicate balance between openenss/participation and creating enough boundaries so that people will know what the entity is, says Sterne.

Money: GroundReport’s revenue model is advertising, but it is also under exploration. Currently the site is not profitable, but GroundReport is also assessing its readers and brand image to look into new business models.

Contributors: GroundReport takes site revenue and distributes half of them to writers democratically (in proportion to the unique traffic to their stories).

Future Goals: GroundReport will is starting Darfur Live TV, broadcasting live from the ground at united nations refugee camps in Chad using a satellite dish, a laptop and a camera.

The site is also increasing functionality so users can create their own groups that will act as mini-publications – a cost-free way to have your own website for a publication with editorial functionality built in.

What do you hope to get from people attending this conference?

Getting our name out there and learning from people. A lot of us are going through the same challenges, if I can learn how somebody else handled it, that can only help me too.