The Center for Citizen Media has released a report called “Frontiers of Innovation in Community Engagement.” It’s worth a gander, because it walks through many of the areas we talk about a lot here, and shows where there is success as well as failure. It was apparently written primarily by Lisa Williams of H20town and Placeblogger, who’s actually commented on a post here.
I personally was attracted to the recommendations section of Dan Gillmor’s writeup (where I found out about this report):
- Experiment and take risks. Make risk-taking part of the newsroom and business cultures of the organization.
Make technological flexibility a priority. Favor experimentation and iteration over roadmaps and grand strategy.
Approach community building with confidence, teamwork, and appropriate expectations.
on Mar 13th, 2007 at 8:10 am
Hello again!
Hey, one thing I’ve been thinking: Placeblogs offer a really unparallelled way for journalism students to get clips. Many allow contributions without even needing to pitch anybody. Pick a story, write it, hit enter.
Oh, and for style points:
– respond to all comments on your story
– if you didn’t get any, reflect on why (maybe it’s that most people don’t feel like a traditionally written newspaper story is a prompt to conversation. Hint: Just asking a question at the end doesn’t work. Humor does work).
– Take bad cellphone camera pictures. Take decent digital camera pictures. Add them as a slideshow. Invite others to add their photos.
– Figure out how to shoot and edit short videos, embed a YouTube clip.
– Do the whole story as a podcast.
– Add it to your list of clips.
– Lather, rinse, repeat!