As noted in my last post: Anyone can try beat blogging. I’m following the 13 organizations listed to
the right here closely – but I’m keeping my eye on as many reporters as
possible.

One such reporter is Matt King. Matt is also contemplating starting a Wiki on his town of Warwick, NY.
A clever idea indeed. If he finds the right angle and the right people
to join him – the wiki could produce some real value.

I sent him the following ideas, but I think more are an order. If you have ideas or experience working with wikis – please chime in.

First: one of the better blog posts on journalism and wikis I came across.

Thoughts: Wikis are a great tool because the threshold to participation is sooooo
minimal. You don’t need to sign up, you don’t need to make friends. You
just click edit and type what you know.

My assumption is that wikis work best for quick one-offs, like the recent TrueHoops wiki to collect links about New Orleans during All-Star weekend.

Note: That wiki (and no wiki) should start out as a skeleton without
any meat one them. Henry Abbott went in before we made the wiki public
and
seeded some links and gave it that general structure. Building the
structure is THE most important part.

If the wiki is about a town,  you might want to consider narrowing the
task at first: Start by using a wiki to focus in on one particular
subject in your town. Example: If you were a paper in Alaska – make it
a wiki on
everything related to Salmon. If you were a wiki in Epcot – make it a
wiki on Disney World. Find something particular to your town and make
that the subject of the wiki.

If it’s a success, you can always move that to a new page of the wiki:
And then start a new topic to attack with an active wiki community
already there.

This is essentially what Wired did with Geekapedia. Except Wired
has the luxury of a non-geographic beat, passionate net-savvy
readers, etc.

Another model I’ve seen used is posting a story you are going to publish on a wiki first – and letting readers edit it. Example.