This is a fantastic case of young journalists scratching their own itch. The group recently formed their own nonprofit and are discussing what they need to do to get to the next step.

Next step? They are already getting college publications off College Publisher and onto WordPress. They are being the change they want to see in the world. They are already making waves, their next step is simply iteration and scaling.

Meet Greg Linch one of the forces behind CoPress who gives more details.

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.

Tristan is the founder of Apture. Similar to two other Stanford computer scientist, Tristan understands and wants to improve how people find information on the web. Apture allows reporters to link out easily without necessarily losing the reader to another page.

More intriguing to me, however, is Tristan’s general experience as a young journalistically minded entrepreneur.What has he learned and what is advice to those that may come after him?

The first half of this interview focuses on Apture and his experience creating it – the second half about working on a startup in general. Never quit…..and be honest with yourself.

Untitled from Digidave on Vimeo.

As CEO and co-founder of BlogTalkRadio, Bob Charish and I have created a platform that is currently allowing over 3,000 hosts to broadcast live call in shows online. This social broadcasting platform allows anyone to have a voice and say they’re peace. You don’t have to be Rush Limbaugh to be a host on BlogTalkRadio—you just need a phone and a vision, and you get to be a citizen journalist when you speak what’s on your mind.

What are your goals?

To be the largest social broadcasting platform in existence and we’re well on our way.

Notable achievements?

Our new site has expanded our core functionality (using phones to produce live audio streams that are instantly archived and made available as a podcast) to include more community tools. Like Facebook, hosts can now add favorite shows, add friends within BTR, and leave comments on each other’s internal blogs. We’re excited to be growing our community so hosts can help support one another in their efforts.

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

You have to always be evangelizing about your vision. I’m deeply passionate about BlogTalkRadio as I see it as such a great tool to bring voices to blogs where there was only print before we came around. I think the lesson there is to never underestimate the power of any conversation you have with anyone you meet. I think a mistake might be to assume that just because you don’t make a sale of your product or have someone instantly love what you do you should feel that you
failed. If they learned about your business or heard your message, it means they walk away knowing about you when they didn’t before. That’s a big deal.

Are you getting revenue for this? How?

Yes. We’re monetizing in two primary ways at this time. First, by rolling ads into our content and doing a revenue share with hosts. Secondly, we’re selling the private label version of our software (our “Business Solutions” platform) where people can either license our tools to put them in their own branded environment or build an Enterprise Station on our network to help drive unique traffic to their content.
What’s next? What do you need to get to the next level?

We’ve incorporated video into our text chat and are building up that infrastructure as hosts have asked for video and we like to respond to their request as quickly as we can. To get to the next level we’ve mainly been adding staff at this time to handle all the growth we’ve dealt with in the last few months.

I’ve spent the last year and a half bootstrapping Faneuil Media, an online news startup. Initially, my partner Theo Burry and I focused on creating content for news sites using public data and open applications like Google Maps. Last year we broadened our scope with Atlas, a mapping tool that simplified map and data work for news sites.

Last week we launched our newest project, 9 Neighbors. 9 Neighbors is a local news filtering service for several Boston-area communities. The site uses social data — primarily relationships and browsing histories — to determine which bits of content are most useful to members of a community.

What are your goals?

We have two goals:
(1) To build a healthy, growing business.
(2) To make it easier to find quality, relevant information on a local (town and neighborhood) level.

Notable achievements?

The launch of 9 Neighbors is our most significant, concrete achievement. More broadly, we are proud to have enabled and been responsible for lots of online news experiments. Our mapping and and data projects on Boston.com, NYTimes.com and other sites were some of the first of their kind published on major news sites. Atlas, our mapping tool, made it possible for dozens of major newspapers and local news sites to begin experimenting with Google Maps and data. Our business has also been an important experiment, demonstrating one more approach to independent online news.

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

We’ve learned that today it is very, very hard to build an independent business when your primary product is content. Content is abundant, and therefore cheap. Attention is scarce, and therefore valuable. This is why we’re now focusing on filtering tools, which help people use their valuable attention more efficiently.

Are you getting revenue for this? How?

We’re earning money from advertising, right now primarily from our mapping tool, Atlas. In the future, we expect 9 Neighbors to generate additional advertising income.

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

We just launched 9 Neighbors, so right now our focus is on getting feedback from users in our Boston communities, then iterating on the product. We’re also beginning to look at how we can partner with local publishers.

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

I’m interested in speaking with people who are producing local content.

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.

I started blogging, RSS and podcasting, and have worked with various organizations to level the playing field so that anyone can participate in gathering news.

What are your goals?

Better information flow so we can have richer lives and solve the big problems before us.

Notable achievements?

I’ve created several award-winning products, open standards, and developed new technologies. I was one of the first bloggers, podcasters, online publishers.

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

Progress comes slowly.

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

I’d like to see open newsrooms so bloggers can start working together collaboratively. I think the local professional news organizations should host this.

Anyone you’d particularly like to talk with, learn from

I wrote up the two ideas I’d like to discuss at the conference here…

http://tinyurl.com/3xpkmo

Within the sphere of journalism, MixedInk will allow large groups of people to co-author op-eds and news articles. As journalism becomes increasingly transparent, crowdsourced and collaborative, we will help citizens and amateur journalists brainstorm, vet ideas, and craft effective narratives together.

What are your goals?

At a concrete level, our goal is to enable masses of individuals to express their opinions through collectively authored text in a fun, community-driven environment. Speaking more broadly, we aim to help bring about a more democratic public sphere.

Notable achievements?

We have not yet launched publicly and are currently in the midst of early (private) beta testing, so we don’t have much to brag about yet. When the time comes, you’ll hear from us.

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

We have learned that there are often trade-offs between democracy and usability. Specifically, after watching how new users respond to our tool, we have had to compromise on some of our loftiest goals in order to make our platform simpler and more fun to use. If we cannot encourage participation, all our ambitious, idealistic aims are for naught!

Are you getting revenue for this? How?

After launching, we will offer a free, ad-supported version on our site, and a white-label, enterprise version to partners and clients.

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

1) We plan to expand testing over the next couple of months to larger and larger groups. We have the first several of these groups lined up, but will require additional partners to organize testing at the largest scale.
2) We are looking for investment to help build our organization and finalize the development of our software as quickly as possible.
3) We expect to launch publicly in January 2008.

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

Pretty much everyone in attendance is doing interesting work, and many are potentially partners, so please feel free to approach me. In particular, though, I would be interested in speaking with Jonathan Weber, John Wilpers, Michael Meyers, Steve Rubel, Mike Krempasky, Micah Sifry, Emily Gertz, and the organizers, David Cohn and Jeff Jarvis.