October 23rd, 2007 by David Cohn
Everything from my response to the questions you sent in advance of the event still holds:
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 a larger 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.
I would add to this that we’re currently wrapping up our largest test to date, in which 30 simultaneous users are crafting a collective response to the question of whether the US government is ever justified in using torture. It’s gotten quite heated, as you might imagine - we’ll publish the full story on our blog. While we continue this cycle of testing and iteration, we’ll begin demoing our tool for potential clients and partners who have already expressed an interest in seeing it - a good number of which came out of the networked journalism summit.
October 23rd, 2007 by David Cohn
Just before the summit, AirCongress and BlogTalkRadio (we were both there) agreed to a content-sharing partnership. The goal is for the many political talk-show hosts at BTR to send me brief summaries of their shows whenever they interview members of Congress or other key players in federal policy in politics so I can promote the shows at AirCongress.com. We are in the process of finalizing the details.
– Since the summit, I have included content from Why Tuesday? at AirCongress. I met the folks from Why Tuesday? in the afternoon discussions.
– AirCongress also is now a sponsor of the 10Questions online presidential debate arranged by techPresident. The initiative was announced days after the summit.
– I also plan to meet with Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation in Washington. She is interested in discussing partnership opportunities with AirCongress.
October 22nd, 2007 by David Cohn
What’s next at The UpTake?
We’re doing a video citizen journalism class this Saturday. Thirty people have already signed up. It’s meant to give people an overview of purpose, ethics, and basic technical skills. This one is free. Future classes will have a nominal charge ($25 -$50) to cover costs and will delve deeper into technical issues.
October 22nd, 2007 by David Cohn
Here’s what GroundReport is up to:
We’re putting the finishing touches on our mini-publication functionality– this enables any group to instantly create a professional, branded online publication with their own dynamic front page. Groups customize with their logo, title, description and website link. They add contributors who can post content to the publication, and appoint editors who can revise and delete reports. Each publication gets its own RSS feed and an unchanging web address. To encourage communication within the community, members can post comments to a bulletin board and see a feed of recent activity from their friends.
This had been in the works, but at the Summit I was inspired by Dan Pacheco’s response to the idea. He convinced me that there is a need for the tool. I love small-town newspapers and don’t want them to die. And since the tools to publish online are so affordable that there’s no reason for these publications to disappear. GroundReport’s mission is to democratize the media by removing barriers to participation, so this is a natural next step.
Update: GroundReport launched the Group/minipublication functionality inspired in part by the Networked Journalism Summit, specifically in a conversation with Dan Pacheco. Example.
October 22nd, 2007 by David Cohn
I’m working on a lot of stuff next at TrueHoops, some of which started long before the conference, and some of which was a direct result of it.
* Getting smarter and more organized about enlisting the help of the artists formerly known as TrueHoop readers. Along this line, I already (inspired by JerseyTV) started a YouTube group that at the moment has more than 500 members.
* I’ll be working with Jay Rosen on his beat writer project.
* I’m working with ESPN to figure out setting up and selling ads across a blog network.
* I have various topics in mind — New Orleans for the All-Star game in February, and Beijing for the Olympics next summer — where I think a network of volunteer reporters on the ground could be a powerful antidote to the press release control of information.
* ESPN does a pretty rigorous job of comment moderation already, but the conference has also sparked some conversations about how we might do even better.
October 22nd, 2007 by David Cohn
I am working on www.ShelfMade.net. We just put our first page up and we are looking to let people know about our upcoming beta. The ShelfMade concept allows users to create a personalized magazine from Internet content.
On the flip side, we are building a network of bloggers from which our users can Shelv articles that will then be included in their magazines. Every time a a user Shelves an article and includes that article in a magazine, the author is paid a royalty. We think that bloggers, independent authors and journalists will want to be part of the content network for 3 reasons.
1. Additional revenue when users Shelv articles
2. Writers can spread their ideas in a medium that has been so far unavailable to independent authors, print magazines.
3. With the pass along effect of print, a new audience will read these authors and traffic to the blog should increase.
I am very excited about seeing what other people are working on.If you have any feedback for me regarding ShelfMade, I would love to hear.
October 19th, 2007 by David Cohn
The event got me thinking once again about the role of professional journalist in a world where the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. I’ve resolved to deal with the issues raised by this problem in my research for Jupiter next year.
I’ve also resolved to open up Coastsider to even greater community participation. This was already on my agenda for 2008, but NJS has given a renewed sense of urgency to solving the problems this raises.
It has given me new enthusiasm for an idea I raised at the “Local” BOF: to figure out how to create (or get someone else to create) an ad network for the region that includes Coastsider. And, it has increased my interest in organizing a conference about these issues in the Bay Area in 2008.
October 19th, 2007 by David Cohn
I will be publishing a book on Networked Journalism with Blackwell US next Spring and POLIS will be publishing a policy report on Networked Journalism in 2008 as well. We will continue to look to build links with companies, individuals and education institutions interested in developing research concepts around the future of journalism.
October 18th, 2007 by David Cohn
We just launched our new Facebook application, which allows Facebook users to create collaborative rich-media greeting cards for their friends within Facebook. It’s the first time we’re taking the Kaltura group-video-making technology beyond the Kaltura.com portal and we’re looking forward to doing so more and more.
October 18th, 2007 by David Cohn
I made a video blog of my “video notebook” for the summit.
What I’m working on next:
- Producing online video stories for Baristanet.com
- Collaborating with Chuck Olsen of The Uptake.com on
political coverage of the upcoming RNC.
- Producing video coverage of political events &
issues for Huffington Post.com
- Producing online video series on Transgender rights
and protections for The Human Rights Campaign