I’m constantly looking for a way to guide anyone into contributing to good journalism. It’s been my goal for a long time. It should be easy for any person to learn about their community and then pitch in on what they know. Here’s a really interesting article about how the tide is turning.I’ve always felt that journalists can help deliver information better, but everyone should be able to contribute. This article explains the trend very well: “In short, the expert is back. The revival comes amid mounting demand for a more reliable, bankable Web.” It went on to talk about how many of the open source tools out there are too big and too time consuming. Journalists can help mashup that information for the viewer. (I chose the word mashup, not the writer of that article) I think it’s really interesting.I got to meet one of the creators of the EPIC 2014 project from back in 2002. They recently came up with EPIC 2015. It’s fun to speculate about what is going to happen to the journalism industry — and just the overall concept of information sharing and delivery. For now, I’m going to continue to try to deliver and share and help the public do the same. Trying to be realistic is not as fun as just speculating.

One of my students came to me and said she wanted to engage the Autism community and get input in a major Autism reporting project. I set up a really simple Blogger blog so she could add content, offer viewers a chance to post comments or email thoughts (giving the student the chance to review the posts and then add them to the blog). She then gathered a team of researchers who documented the project every step of the way. They did first-person video blogs, they posted pictures and they blogged about what they saw and learned. The lead reporter asked questions of the online viewers and shared how the project was getting constructed every step of the way. It’s amazing.
I highly recommend visiting her website: Combating Autism From Within

We could have gotten fancier, but I think the simplicity of it all is why it works. Plus, she tagged each post so you can easily search by topic or researcher name. I love it. Plus, the traffic to the site has been pretty consistently high for a blog that’s only been “advertised” on other autism blogs and periodically on KOMU’s air. Congrats to Ashley Reynolds and her team!On air stories start on the 3rd… But online stories are already posting on the blog!

I am constantly looking for ways for my web crew to interact with our audience online. For the last week I’ve encouraged the KOMU-TV audience to submit photos that show how they are Mizzou fans. I’ve only gotten 10 or fewer pictures. But today was amazing. A terrible explosion happened in the state capital. A tanker full of explosive fuel blew up, killing the driver. The explosion damaged a bridge and knocked out a lot of the city’s power. People who were nearby and far away started taking pictures. A viewer who was really close to the scene emailed us photos - Amazing photos of the devastation. Other people joined in and shared their perspective. It ended with this slideshow. We’ve had more than 870 views in the last four hours. For a small market, it’s amazing.

As a side: I don’t keep up with television schedules anymore thanks to TiVO. But here’s a funny thing: My husband was watching PTI on ESPN this evening (on TiVO) when they mentioned Charlie Brown’s Christmas special was on. So my husband hopped onto the TV schedule, hit record and now I have a cool show to watch with the kids sometime soon. I didn’t know anything about the show until I saw someone’s IM status mention the show. I said how disappointed I was that we missed recording the show and my husband smiled to show me he had already captured it. It’s a changing world.

**Update - That slideshow ended up getting more than 2,000 views in one night. Pretty darn cool.**

I love, love, love to see how major newsrooms are taking advantage of technology.

First, using the simplicity of building maps using Google Maps, the LA Times came up with this one. Also, this looks like one of the first major opportunities for MSNBC to use its FirstPerson project. It’s a pretty slick little set up that gets online users involved in sharing their personal pictures, video and first-hand account. I’m hoping to help the newsrooms affiliated with the Missouri School of Journalism to improve this kind of interactivity through a multi-newsroom election project. I’ll brain dump on that soon… But not while I’m at work. I’ll need more time to focus my thoughts.