All the News Where it’s Fit to Print
April 8th, 2008 | by Brad King |The New York Times and Google created a mashup tool that allows The Times’ reporters to geo-locate their news on Google Earth.
This idea is very cool, so I want to make sure this post doesn’t come off as pooping on the innovation, particularly since I don’t think news organizations are experimenting in this space. And the The Times has gone full on, 3D hog with this experiment, which is admirable.
We’re currently fooling around with 3D interfaces for touch screen kiosks at Northern Kentucky University, and it’s daunting to make it both usable, functional and un-designer-y.
What I’d like to see from The Times, though, is two-fold: the ability for readers to submit side materials for the stories, tagging their additional information with geo-located information (which would require a community manager of some type) as well as a time function (which I assume they either have now, or will have soon).
Even without those functions, though, this is a great template for other news organizations.
A tool like this could be invaluable as papers look for ways to go, ahem, hyper-local. It’s also going to make it very easy for editors — and readers — to see exactly where editors are ignoring, and exactly the biases they bring to their story selections.
That’s going to make the role of community manager — or community editor — all the more important in the digital age.
I was doing an interview for the book yesterday with Geoff Daugherty, a former Tribune write who launched a community-driven news organization in Chicago. He said one of the first hires he made was a community manager, someone who would act as a liaison with the citizen-journalists, the newsroom and the editor.
This person’s job is to recruit volunteers, work with them on assignments, make sure they are tracking what is happening and answering training questions.
It’s a full-time job, as any game company can tell you. These places have had community managers for years, actively seeding cyberspace with content — and rewarding the most active members.
