Newsecology-breakout-franchise-savino
These are notes taken by Bill Densmore of discussion during a breakout session on March 2, 2009, at the Poynter Institute convening: "Journalism That Matters -- Adapting Journalism to the New News Ecology." This was one of multiple breakouts called by the 85 participants in the four-day event. The title for this session: "Democracy now: Envisioning a model for franchising news."
Leigh Montgomery suggests talking to Ali Savino, http://realist-idealist.com/ali-savino/ citizen journalism expert, co-founder of and until recently from, the Center for Independent Media: http://newjournalist.org/about/ (UPDATE: Leigh talked to Savino and notes of her conversation are below:
BUILDING THE NETWORK:
She helped found the center 2 & half years ago to ³support a network of local networks and journalists²
They built a network(had experience doing this with political organizing with the Howard Dean campaign).
Had journalists ³go into a state, build a list of top bloggers² some of this was done with talking to people, others by searching for top bloggers via apps such as Technorati http://technorati.com/
³Fellowships were offered to top folks² and these trainers would help
conduct Investigative Journalism 101 seminars for various communities,
coaching potential citizen journalists in reporting methods, research, etc.
Eventually they assigned state directors as organizers of the state bloggers and respective blog submissions. Said they were trying to cultivate / attract bloggers with the ³unique skill set² of ³journalism and activism² since that is what they are about.
Savino said they went through some stages, eventually settling on some core fellows to develop issue areas, she really wanted them to get into investigative journalism and mentor people to pursue these, and becoming more of an ~Leditor-driven structure.¹
They built it to about 60 bloggers which she wanted to expand, but they decided to cut back after the election was over. She has since left the Center.
I asked if there was anything standout or that she was particularly proud of; she said that the Michigan voter caging story was broken by one of the CIM bloggers: http://michiganmessenger.com/4076/lose-your-house-lose-your-vote
WORKFLOW:
We discussed two models.
Model 1:
When I asked about workflow, she said that it was more ~Lbottom-up thinking,¹ that the bloggers were encouraged to go out and find the topics, suggest them to their editor, who would then pick and choose what to get behind.
A topic, such as what she called a Big Feature, would be about 800 1200 words, but in multiple posts, with about a 400 w per post, and follow / update the story, and it would develop as it happened.
A big story might be framed with ³little stories around it,² or ³whatever was cut from the original,² making sure that any smaller / successive posts link back to the original story.
Model 2:
She also suggested this model, as we have a large readership, is to identify a topic and then ask for contributors to help tell the story, once you have a core list of contributors, have them contribute to this single story and have them or others submit documents, other materials. Said to take a look at the HuffPost¹s Off the Bus http://www.huffingtonpost.com/off-the-bus/ which was an effort to tell the story of campaign 08 from every county in the US and what they were doing for election prep. (I have heard of another news org doing this, to investigate some public entity, could find it if interested).
Savino that this second model requires someone dedicated to going through the material on a full-time basis.
At any rate, I hope some of this is helpful for the future, or affirmation we¹ve been on the right track. Said she would be glad to talk to us again, she has a referral for someone who has experience with this second model if you¹d like to consult her expertise.
