Via Online Journalism Blog

There’s a great interview with NPR’s Andy Carvin over at Poynter where he talks about their coverage of Hurricane Gustav. It’s a classic example of what I’ve previously called ‘Distributed Journalism,’ and a lesson for any news organization in how news production has changed:

“For Hurricane Gustav, he has led 500 volunteers putting together the Gustav Information Center, which includes a Wiki and a site called “Voices of Gustav.” The Voices site is set up to accept calls from people who have been displaced, with the idea that volunteers would transcribe the calls and post them online in a searchable format. That effort tapped into the Utterz Web site. The effort includes three Twitter feeds including GustavAlerts, which is a breaking weather feed. GustavNews follows news stories and GustavBlogs focuses on how blogs are reporting the storm. Another another team of 50 or so volunteers is working on transcribing reports from ham radio operators and other radio scans.

It’s been a LONG time since Assignment Zero. It’s often referred to as a successful failure. I still disagree for various reasons. We had all kinds of obstacles - but the end product I think speaks for itself.

Still - when the radio host at A World of Possibilities asked questions about it, old memories began to resurface. One day I would love to do a more thorough brain-dump about Assignment Zero because it was such a huge lesson for me (and I hope the larger journalism industry).

Listen to it here.

From Eat Sleep Publish:

Jay Rosen, who I follow on Twitter, got me thinking about newsroom curmudgeons with his tweets last week. It got me to suggest that we compile a giant, handy-dandy guide to these curmudgeonly views and their counterpoints.

This is that guide.

And so, without further ado, here the is the ultimate guide to newspaper curmudgeon talking points:

READ MORE

Via The Orlando Sentinel.

“I’m going to try a little citizen journalism experiment for the launch of the iPhone 3G. Since a lot of the early adopters who will be buying iPhones use Twitter, I’m soliciting reports from them while they’re at Apple and AT&T stores getting an iPhone or stopping by to see what the scene is like.

Basically, I’m interested in hearing from as many people as possible what it’s like at Apple and AT&T stores around the world. So make sure you include your location in your Tweet so we know where you are.

These reports will automatically be displayed in a widget.”

The widget can be found at the bottom of the article.

Via Steve Yelvington…”Mayhill Fowler, the non-journalist who has broken at least two major campaign stories this season by simply not playing the usual game by the usual rules, reflects on an interview with an Al-Jazeera reporter”

She writes: For the first time I realized what is most obvious about the work other OffTheBus correspondents and I do. We are citizens, first. As Americans, moreover, we have the right any time any day any year to step out of our homes to inquire and to investigate. The inclination to do so, which Meena found fascinating, is certainly not exclusively American; but it is quintessentially American. Sitting in the Reuters studio on Times Square, I was proud, most proud, to be a citizen journalist.

Read more: Mayhill Fowler: On The Road Again, With Begging Bowl And Stick - Off The Bus on The Huffington Post

Via OffTheBus.Net: It’s the electoral race of the century. Political maps are being redrawn, and rules are getting rewritten across the board. Fundraising record have been broken. The candidates are even comparing the size of their email lists.

The mainstream media is tripping over itself to report on every last press release and campaign announcement. But do any of us REALLY know what’s going on?

With your help from the frontlines, HuffPost’s OffTheBus can change campaign coverage.

CAN YOU HELP US? Join OffTheBus’ Special Ops team, and report back to us on what’s happening in your town and state.

Via J.D. Lasica and Steve Outing.

Boss Rosen on the Mayhill events. J.D. has a thoughtful writeup on his blog.

How citizen journalism is changing campaign coverage from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

“We’ve completely rebuilt every single page on NowPublic for your enhanced viewing pleasure. Yes, a site re-design that preserves all the site’s current functionality but makes the content more readable, the news more relevant and the tools more usable.”

More.

I still believe NowPublic is positioned to be the “OhMyNews” of North America. But positioning isn’t everything. It will be interesting to see where it goes from here.

More coverage from Mashable.

Via Mathew Ingram

There’s a great piece in the Los Angeles Times about Mayhill Fowler, the 61-year-old “citizen journalist” who has become a lightning rod for critics of the practice, after not one but two somewhat embarrassing scoops from the U.S. campaign trail, the first of which involved Barack Obama and the second of which — just last week — involved former president Bill Clinton. Fowler is one of dozens of amateur reporters covering the campaign as part of the Off The Bus project, a joint venture between Huffington Post and Jay Rosen’s New Assignment venture.

Jeff Jarvis comments here.

OffTheBus has gotten quite a bit of attention for the work of its citizen journalist contributors. This past week we expanded the definition of the term, at least for us here at OffTheBus, by including among our staff eight citizen-journalism editors! Nearly all of the OpEd posts on OffTheBus this week and last have been edited and proofed by this team, taking turns working day and night shifts from their spots around the country.

The team is diverse and includes filmmakers, journalists, teachers, university students, a former film-industry flack and at least one Army reporter. They have written short posts introducing themselves that we’ll be including tonight in a feature on OffTheBus. All of them to various degrees have been contributors to the OTB project and are interested in seeing the evolution of a new kind of more responsive journalism. As Editor Beth Morrissey put it in her introduction: “I have followed the candidates through battleground states … and what surprised me most was how traditional media chose to cover the exact same stories [about the candidates and the campaigns] in the exact same ways… Some of the most exciting stories this election story have been broken by citizen journalists.”