Author: Michael Higdon | 03.12.2009

I finally have a chance to sit down and write about the Future of Journalism Think Tank at the Reynolds School of Journalism‘s J Week. To make it easier to digest and easier to write, I’m breaking it up into six parts, that way if you don’t care about certain sections you can skip them. If you want the whole story, you can read it all.

To make it all easier, here’s a table of contents for the six parts:

1. The Process
2. Discoveries and highlights
   
3. Group 1 prototype
   
4. Group 2 prototype
5. Group 3 prototype
6. Critique & launching point

GROUP 3 PROTOTYPE

Group 3 consisted of Donica Mensing, Larry Dailey, “Augie” Grant, me and Nicole Oncina (see Part 2 for full list of people and links to their information).

Remember, these prototypes are rough concepts of what we wish news could do in a more or less perfect world.

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?”

We created a fictional site where community members can post public problems, such as trash build up in poor neighborhoods. Then journalists come along and bid to cover the issue. Users have ratings so community members can see who has credibility, etc. and they pick who they want to investigate.

Then a journalist goes out and covers the public problem, assembles a story and sells it to the community. Their work can then be syndicated on the website, to other companies and whatever else.

The idea here is that journalists will no longer live in newsrooms, they will live in the community and hold office hours at local establishments. They will also often require help from community members and as a trade, will mentor citizens to become semi-pro journalists in exchange for being mentored about the community. Those citizens can then become journalists competing for stories on the website.

As a business model, everyone gets something but not everyone gets enough. The idea here is that journalists are no longer full-time, instead they become members of the community with “regular” jobs. Those who want to be full time will spend a great deal of time covering stories, fostering conversations and continuing to investigate issues.

This idea builds on Group 2 (inadvertently), mixes together Spot.Us, Innocentive.com, OhMyNews.com, uWeb/iTunes/iNews and other journalism movements: public journalism, citizen journalism, etc.

Wild ideas

• If people don’t understand the news, the news is broken not the people.
• Everyone is and can be a journalist, so give them the power