Letting The Community Be A Journalist's Assignment Editor

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

Tue, Feb 24th 2009 9:02pm — Mike Masnick

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.

Filed Under: assignment editor, community, journalism, newspapers
Companies: patriot-news

9 Comments

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Derake, 24 Feb 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.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Feb 2009 @ 9:58pm

Mike, you are letting people down.
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- Mike (profile), 24 Feb 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.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 25 Feb 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.
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    - Mike (profile), 25 Feb 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?
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      - :Lobo Santo, 25 Feb 2009 @ 7:40am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        Don't let him bait you man... he may be a master at it.
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Gunnar, 25 Feb 2009 @ 2:51am

Well, he is getting tips, ideas and opinions in the initial phase.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Feb 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.
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- Anonymous Coward, 28 Feb 2009 @ 1:22am
  
  Re:
  That's an odd request
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