Lessons from Beat Blogging - by Patrick Thornton on Wednesday, February 13, 2008 9:00 - View Comments

TrueHoop Has a Quick Hit: Help Find Coverage About New Orleans


It was a 15 minute phone conversation that occurred yesterday between myself and Henry Abbott, who really gets it: If you have a blog, you can try quick experiments like this no problem.

Abbott wanted to paint a picture of New Orleans "as a multi-layered, not a simple happy Disneyland."

And that’s what the NBA PR team is probably trying to convince us all of right now – that all is fine in New Orleans.

He’s on a plane today – so I’m on troll watch at the wiki which has been set up for his readers to contribute links and stories about New Orleans.

What’s great about this little experiment – it’s not just for basketball fans. If you know anybody that might be interested in helping out – send them the link.

A natural question, one I ask myself, is where the line is drawn between beat blogging and citizen journalism. How is this project a "social network for sources" and not just changing the way journalist and readers engage. The full answer will have to wait for another post. The short answer: When you open yourself up online 99 percent of the time, people who step forward to help you are exactly the people you wanted to find. It’s a self-selecting process and when it’s done, you have new sources.

clipped from myespn.go.com

Tell Me the Story of the All-Star Game in New Orleans

New Orleans may have the richest culture of any American city. Writers and reporters had a hard time describing the city even before the complicating factors of first the hurricane, and then to a much lesser extent, the All-Star Game.

I have no idea how TrueHoop, ESPN, or even the entire assembled media could do a thorough job of keeping track of everything that might happen. Last year in Las Vegas some of the best portraits of the scene in the city came from citizens — cab drivers, waiters, dealers and the like.New Orleans

With the help of David Cohn, I just started a wiki about All-Star in New Orleans.

Go on, put your writing and researching hats on and click that link.

If you’re from New Orleans, and have a story to tell about having the All-Star game in your city, please share it here. If you find a great article or video about New Orleans, this is the place for it.

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About BeatBlogging.org

BeatBlogging.org was a grant-funded journalism project that studied how journalists used social media and other Web tools to improve beat reporting. It ran for about two years, ending in the fall of 2009.

New content is occasionally produced here by the this project's former editor Patrick Thornton. The site is still up and will remain so because many journalists and professors still use and link to the content. BeatBlogging.org offers a fascinating glimpse into the former stages of journalism and social media. Today it's expected that journalists and journalism organization use social media, but just a few years ago that wasn't the case.

About the Author of this post
Patrick Thornton is the editor and lead writer of BeatBlogging.Org. He is @pwthornton on Twitter.