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Culture

by Mike Masnick

Tue, Feb 24th 2009 9:02pm




Filed Under:
assignment editor, community, journalism, newspapers

Companies:
patriot-news


Letting The Community Be A Journalist's Assignment Editor

from the that's-one-way-to-do-it... dept

Jay Rosen points us to the news that a journalist for the Patriot-News, in Pennsylvania, is experimenting with letting the community be his assignments editor. Basically, he's hoping that readers of his work will submit story ideas as blog comments. From there, he'll choose a few that look interesting, create an online poll, and then see what the community thinks is most important for him to work on. It's an interesting experiment, and one worth watching, but I'm not sure if it's enough by itself. It's great that he's tapping into the community, but a mere voting mechanism sort of misses the point of what that community can add. It should go beyond voting to actually helping out -- giving tips, feedback, ideas, facts and opinions. Let the community help research a story. Yes, some of that might happen in addition to the voting, but the voting by itself seems like a bit of a gimmick rather than real participation.

9 Comments | Leave a Comment

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  1.  
    identicon
    Derake, Feb 24th, 2009 @ 9:48pm

    Better then Nothing

    It's a good start, I am sure it will evolve into something good or it will die.

    Just glad to see a news person looking into other things.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Feb 24th, 2009 @ 9:58pm

    Mike, you are letting people down.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
    icon
    Mike (profile), Feb 24th, 2009 @ 10:41pm

    Re:

    Mike, you are letting people down.

    Curious if you could elaborate? Usually when people disagree with me, they explain *why* so I can respond.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Feb 25th, 2009 @ 12:27am

    Re: Re:

    Well, I'd love to elaborate but when sending the email, it appears my IP address is an unauthorized server of some sort. So if my input wasn't captured in the logs, I guess it's not worth my time.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  
    icon
    Mike (profile), Feb 25th, 2009 @ 1:27am

    Re: Re: Re:

    Well, I'd love to elaborate but when sending the email, it appears my IP address is an unauthorized server of some sort. So if my input wasn't captured in the logs, I guess it's not worth my time.

    Um, what? That doesn't make any sense. What email? What "unauthorized" server?

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  6.  
    identicon
    Gunnar, Feb 25th, 2009 @ 2:51am

    Well, he is getting tips, ideas and opinions in the initial phase.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  7.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Feb 25th, 2009 @ 4:01am

    Got to start someplace. Mike, why not add YOUR comments to his blog? Seems that would be the place where they would do the most good. Then you tell us if you comment was an anomaly or a often repeated idea; and how he responds. That would be interesting and useful.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  8.  
    identicon
    :Lobo Santo, Feb 25th, 2009 @ 7:40am

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Don't let him bait you man... he may be a master at it.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  9.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Feb 28th, 2009 @ 1:22am

    Re:

    That's an odd request

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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