fix journalism » think tank

Aspen Insitute: how to save American journalism video replay

Michael Higdon — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:24:21 +0000

Click the headline for archived video footage. Taken off of homepage because of autoplay.

Follow the Poynter Fellows on twitter

Michael Higdon — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:23:33 +0000

We're tweeting about Poynter College here: Twitter trend: #pcf09 or Follow me @MikeHigdon

Part 5: Group 3 prototype, the nomadic community journalist

Michael Higdon — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 07:28:30 +0000

GROUP 3 PROTOTYPE

The concept

Our group identified two major problems: the disappearance of local journalism institutions and a public disconnected from journalists. So we wondered, "how might nomadic journalists work and how would community life continue to be successful?" This idea builds on Group 2 (inadvertently), mixes Spot.Us, Innocentive.com, OhMyNews.com, uWeb/iTunes/iNews and other journalism movements: public journalism, citizen journalism, etc. [...]

Part 4: Group 2 prototype, an incentive for democracy

Michael Higdon — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 06:56:35 +0000

GROUP 2 PROTOTYPE

The concept

This group wanted to develop a point system on a news website. For every activity users do, they receive points. People receive more or less points depending on their level of engagement. For example, commenting on a story nets maybe 2 points, but writing your own story is worth 10. The site basically becomes a customized delivery system with an incentive to participate in democracy. [...]

Part 3: Group 1 prototypes, reviving public spaces

Michael Higdon — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 05:07:30 +0000

GROUP 1 PROTOTYPES

The concept

They wanted to create a news experience around a physical public space, likened to town halls of Benjamin Franklin's day. So they chose to partner with places like Starbucks, Wal-Mart and other congregation areas within communities. In doing this, you create a cohesive community that centers around news, interest-based conversations and tasty merchandise. As a business model, you're giving incentive to companies to participate and encourage participation with the news and other media companies. This allows journalists to go where the people go instead of forcing them to come to the news, enforcing a beat system and community-driven content. [...]

Part 2: Discoveries and highlights, where journalists and IDEO intersect

Michael Higdon — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 04:45:38 +0000

DISCOVERIES AND HIGHLIGHTS

How might we?

The rest of the day was spent identifying a series of problems in journalism. I unfortunately can only speak for my group but I think these were important points:

News is horribly fragmented/decentralized
Journalists produce for journalists because there is no reliable system of feedback from readers
If readers need to learn "media literacy" there is a design flaw in media

With these and other problems, we must ask "how might we do X?" This is the part where we get to be wild and crazy. Here you come up with questions surrounding these problems.

Brainstorm

On day two we get to brainstorm ways to solve these how might we questions. For these we thought of a few ideas:

Decentralized news: Create a system that allows people to get all of their news in one place.
Journalists for journalists: Create a people's choice awards for journalism. Pulitzer Prizes are all well and good but not when they don't measure the impact of a story on a community. Or do a reality show about journalism where people can vote on their stories or journalists (Las Vegas Sun internship on TV). Or make a system, such as Spot.Us where readers assign stories instead of editors

[...]

Part 1: The Process, how IDEO leads us to new worlds

Michael Higdon — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:18:02 +0000

THE PROCESS

IDEO has a particular approach they use to invent or redesign products. They are a design firm with clients ranging from Bank of America to bicycle stores to cleaning companies. Here is part 1 of a video about IDEO's process. You can find the rest on YouTube: [...]