Here we find information and newsy items, advice and ideas regularly flowing in from readers as the blog becomes a platform for extending the network of the beat outward until hundreds and thousands of people are helping to… cover the beat.

But — truth be told — there aren’t any beatblogs that get it all right. Mostly, this is due to lack of time and resources. Where one blogger spends time on original content, another blogger spends time on two-way communication with readers/commenters.

So, let’s say that it were possible to create the perfect beatblog; that time and resources aren’t an issue. And let’s say that we created this blog using only elements from existing blogs. In other words, a mash-up.

What would this blog look like?

The Creators

First of all, it’s important to note that a beatblog does not have to be run by a large media company. It can be created by a single person or a team, a pro or an amateur journalist. The idea is that the creator(s) whoever he/she/they are, are people who care deeply about regularly covering a beat and focusing on content that is not only valuable to their readers who are interested in the niche topic, but also focus on content that their readers suggest be written or covered.

In other words, the creators “get it” — all of it. From the look and feel of their blog, to its subject to their linking ethics and social media leverage — they focus on truly becoming a “beatblog” and not just a blog that “happens to have a beat.”

They would have the reporting drive of Kent Fischer, the networking savviness of Monica Guzman, the friendly, open-mindedness of Brian Stelter and the entrepreneurial spirit of Daniel Victor.

The Design

It must be stressed that design goes a long way online. As much as “Content is King,” design can really change the way readers approach your blog and interact with it.

A beatblog that really hit the nail on the head in terms of theme and design is GothamSchools. It’s a blog focused on breaking news and analysis of the NYC public schools. If you take a look at the site, you’ll find that it’s header is properly tied in with the subject — it has the New York City skyline and the image of a public school.

The rest of the page is very minimalist and straightforward, designed to look like the pages of a notebook. What is great about GothamSchools is that there is no way anyone can get lost or confused with where to find more information, how to contact the creators or what the site is about. Everything is neatly organized and tagged, exactly the way beatblogs should be.

I’ve stressed before that many beat blogs fail to provide enough transparency and contact information on their pages. This is because so many of the best beatbloggers are attached to legacy news organizations, and thus, their pages are not stand-alone sites but rather limbs of the main news site.

I think the proper way to run a beatblog is to make it it’s own Web site, with it’s own contact information and “about” page. It shouldn’t just be a link from a drop-down menu on a news organization. Of course, if it’s affiliated it should have the proper attributions and links, etc.

But making the beatblog it’s own page can make it more comfortable for readers, easier to find and easier to interact with. Just as a news site’s Twitter feed or Facebook page is separate from the organization and more personalized, so should a beatblog be.

The Strategy/Execution

Properly running a beatblog can be difficult if there are time constraints or not enough helping hands. For example, Pharmalot, a beatblog run by journalist Ed Silverman about the pharmaceutical industry, featured really good daily journalism and link journalism. It was a beatblog that doggedly covered its niche.

But it would have been much stronger if had the same community building as the DISD Blog. Pharmalot might have been the best beatblog from just a pure content perspectiveve, but it always lagged in the two-way communication department. Silverman spent so much time delivering incredible content by himself that he simply couldn’t do more two-way communication.

Then you take Alexander Russo’s District 299 blog, and it has great two-way communication but could be stronger in terms of original content.

Again, if time weren’t an issue, what would the proper mash-up look like?

1. Clear beat: GothamSchools
2. High volume of commentary: SciGuy
3. Harvesting of comments “Here’s what you said about this…”: Come Heller High Water
4. Inquiries/questions asked to readers: Security Fix
5. Daily roundup: The Daily Wrap
6. Filtering and linking: Today in the Sky
7. Comments or e-mails from readers run as posts/used for story ideas/improve stories: Central PA NewsVote
8. Comments hosted in blog entries: Inside Ed
9. Reader blogs: Seattle PI
10. Hoisting Comments: Dallas ISD Blog
11. Live blogging: The Caucus
12. Frequent blog posts by author, i.e. several per day, updates: Glenn Greenwald
13. Contact info/Transparency/Accessibility/Brand identity: Security Fix
14. Good use of Twitter: Alex Roarty of PoliticsPA
15. Quality writing/grammar/style: Slate.com

The Results

In the end, it’s all a time and money game. There’s not enough of either. And that’s okay — for now.

Beatblogs are still in their infancy, and it’s going to take time to evolve into something powerful and profitable. It’s always important, however, to keep fresh ideas in mind and constantly try to break the mold.

Be creative. Think outside the box. Learn from the best.

Run the best damn beatblog that the Internet’s ever seen.

How Daniel Victor’s ‘Central PA NewsVote’ is raising the bar on beatblogging

The media industry is in trouble. That much is clear. But instead of grieving the death of a long-suffering system, the important question we should be asking is, “What can journalists do about it?” Daniel Victor, 24, is a reporter for The (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot-News, and he thinks he’s got an answer.

“My new assignment editor? You, the community” is the headline of the post written by Victor on PennLive.com’s blog. Left alone, it sounds like a gimmick. Yet, the first sentence dispels any ambiguity in what Victor means by his title: “In the face of some skeptics, I stubbornly believe PennLive readers should be involved in deciding which stories we write.”

Pitch your stories. Vote on them. I’ll write them. I’m all yours.

On March 3, 2009 Central PA NewsVote officially launched. What is it? How does it work? As a “hybrid mobile journalist/general assignment reporter,” Victor will take the best story ideas from the comments section of his blog, create a poll on the site and allow readers to vote on which story he should do next. Then, the chosen story is the one he will write.

The people are his assignment editor.

Already, in the first week Victor received dozens of story ideas which he compiled into a small poll widget. The idea is to report on the hyper-local stories that matter most to the people. The result is that the blog will eventually become the number one, go-to site for members of that community.

“If you check this new blog every day, you will always learn about a new wrinkle in your community,” writes Victor. “That’s a wonderful promise for a news site to make.”

Tackling the Skepticism

It’s a wonderful promise, indeed. But is it even possible? Can a reporter really rely on an often-snarky forum culture that lives on the Internet? What if the readers contribute bad stories? What if they don’t contribute at all? Is there a plan B? All these questions press upon Victor’s new endeavor.

“I am trying to build up a bank of story ideas that people can vote on; that’s the backup plan,” Victor explains. “I can get my own pitches and let people vote so they feel like they’re participating, even if their not producing story ideas.”

Victor has already done a lot of work to get things started off on the right foot by using social media, and building a small army on Facebook and Twitter in order to get people used to sending in pitches.

According to Tech Dirt’s culture blogger, Mike Masnick, a mere voting mechanism sort of misses the point of what the community can add. It should go beyond voting to actually helping out — giving tips, feedback, ideas, facts and opinions, he writes. Masnick suggests letting the community go so far as actually helping to research a story.

“That’s kind of what I’m doing with Twitter,” Victor said in response. “That’s my main way of reaching people. I could see possibly using the blog to say, ‘this story won.’”

How It All Started

Victor, who has been covering Hershey, Pa. local news for almost three years, is not your typical journalist. Ever since he graduated from Penn State, he has focused on reaching out to mentors in the industry who were changing and innovating the way of thinking about the business. Call it insight or intuition, but Victor simply knew that beatblogging (along with mobile journalism and crowdsourcing) was journalism’s future.

Victor’s first pet project was acting as a guinea pig for Jay Rosen’s BeatBlogging.org, a site that is aiming to push the practice of beatblogging by following those who are doing it and recruiting and teaching those who want to do it. Victor took his beat, the local community of Hershey, Pa. and created a Ning network under the Patriot-News name.

In case you’re not hip with the new media lingo and you haven’t heard of this beatblogging stuff, it is, put simply, the implementation of social networking into beat reporting, often through a blog. This could mean using Ning to build an online community, creating and promoting Twitter hashtags to track trends on a beat or scouring the comments on a blog and using story ideas straight from the readers. As long as you have a beat, utilize social media and/or a blog and you engage the readers, use their ideas, ask them questions and treat them as real, professional sources — you are beatblogging. The idea is that using the community to produce stories will make the reporter’s task easier, and as a result, make stories more important because it’s what the people want to read.

Convincing The Editors

After finding mixed success in the Ning site, Victor set out to try improve on his original ideas.

“It was kind of a lightbulb moment,” he said. “It has always been an interest of mine to be interactive with readers, but it’s just a matter of making ourselves open to them. It hasn’t really been done.”

Victor started with an e-mail to his editors. It stated a new concept, wherein he would be the author and community manager of a new blog.

“It was fairly easy,” he said. “I walked over to the corner office, explained my idea and my editor was receptive to my pitch. Then, people just kind of bought into the idea.”

Victor calls it a “community-directed reporting” experiment, (a term he enthusiastically admits he stole from blogger/journalist/web developer Ryan Sholin). His goal is to have at least one originally reported story per day; stories that are “next-door slices of life that are usually the first to go because of shrinking staffs.” These types of stories could include a new playground, a business closing, an art gallery exhibit, a street being repaired, etc.

The Real Problem? Snarky, Spamming, Anons

What Victor is most worried about are the sarcastic, unforgiving, filthy-mouthed commenters whom he openly refers to as “smartasses.” For example, take the one anonymous commenter who mocked Victor’s new project and wrote: “How ‘bout naming it ‘Farmed Out’ because you’re too cheap to go get stories, so you want them to come to you.”

One of the important things Victor learned from his from his first beatblogging experience with the Hershey Ning-powered social network was how to create high level discussion.

“It’s certainly unavoidable, we’ll have some bad eggs,” he said. “It’s up to the productive people to set the tone and make the unproductive people feel unwelcome. It’s an ambitious goal, but it could work if we focus on creating that environment from the start.”

Overall, Victor is pleased with the positive feedback he has received from Facebook, Twitter and other bloggers he has met in real life. He truly believes that by setting an example from the beginning, his idea of a “for the people by the people”-type reporting system might flourish.

“I would love it if something really does work out well,” he said. “I would love to see other papers try it. Some reporters have said that they should try it. We’ll see.”

So Who’s Doing It Already?

No one! At least not really.

There’s BusinessWeek’s Editor-in-Chief, John A. Byrne who asks readers “What’s Your Story Idea?” and posts their comments online. Then there’s British magazine, The New Statesman, which encourages readers to vote for the investigative journalism stories the paper should cover and/or suggest topics the paper might have missed. Followed by the SciGuy, Eric Berger, who asks his readers what kind of science stories they would like him to report on and selects the best one. And lastly, HULIQ, an independent news site, which offers bloggers the ability to make their own sites popular by covering news and publishing it on HULIQ.com.

All four examples are just a few of many organizations that promote citizen journalism. However, the missing ingredient is the one Victor offers: complete, unchallenged control. Victor isn’t merely highlighting readers’ suggestions, or picking what he or his editor find as “the best story” or even suggesting that anyone’s story can make it to the front page. What he is proposing is a system where the readers contribute, vote and decide. Then, he is completely at their request and demand and must tackle the story as promised, without any say in the matter.

Focusing on the End Goal

Victor ultimately has faith in the people. He believes that a lot of normal, everyday readers who care about the community have story ideas but don’t even realize that they have them. In attempting to democratize the news process, Victor will allow these readers to have a direct impact on what hits the pages of The Patriot-News and PennLive.com, both by making reporters aware of stories and by deciding which ones will be told.

“Our role is shifting,” writes Victor on his blog, ByDanielVictor.com. “We are not just story-tellers, we are community-builders. Harnessing the power of the Web is a crucial part of that.”

And judging by the snark-free, positive comments that are swamping the young reporter after only one week, he may be onto something big.

A beatblogger isn’t just a blogger.

Twitter isn’t merely “Facebook Status Updates.” It’s much more. Likewise, beatblogging is more than just a journalist being assigned to blog for a major news publication. A beatblogger, simply put, is a beat reporter who uses their blog as a tool to engage their readers, interact with them, use them as sources, crowdsource their ideas and invite them to contribute to the reporting process.

When a beat reporter uses social networking with the community to create hyper-local and hyper-focused stories – that’s beatblogging. As a result, the beat is better researched because the community that is directly involved with the subject is actively participating in creating news.

Your readers are your new BFF’s. Get to know them. Invite them to dinner.

Okay, so you don’t exactly have to invite them into your home, but you get the idea. Beatblogging requires reporters to start conversations with their readers. But simply replying to a few comments doesn’t cut it. It’s the year 2009. You have to be way more active than that. This means asking questions, replying to comments, seeking out tips, using their story ideas and building stories upon their conversations.

More often than not you’ll be required to continue conversations on older stories even when you are already working on a new project. This can be tiring, time-consuming and hard work. But the trade-off is that much of the researching and source-chasing that journalists used to undergo is eliminated through the first degree contact with the community.

If you haven’t spoken to your audience, if you don’t know who your most loyal reader is, if you haven’t written a story based on a tip from the comments section of your blog and if you haven’t asked the crowd for help — you’re losing. You’re not using 2009 tools to be at the forefront of the digital revolution. And you’re certainly not a beatblogger.

Be everywhere. I’m not kidding.

Journalists in the 21st century can no longer hide behind their bylines. I can’t stress enough how important it is for bloggers to be accessible through all networks and social sites. Where’s your “about” page? Is your e-mail easy to find? Do you have a photo up?  Even some of the most successful beatbloggers today have not been doing a good job of making themselves transparent.

It’s important to bridge the gap between reader and source and build a circle of trust. And the only way this can happen successfully is if both sides agree to be transparent. If bloggers are annoyed by snarky, anonymous commenters, then lead by example. Don’t hide information about yourself either.

Be accessible. That means I should be able to find your name, a photo, e-mail, Facebook page, LinkedIN account, Twitter name and possibly an e-mail. That’s it. It’s not too hard, and it will make your beatblogging experience world’s easier. (P.S. Want to be a top search result when searching for the term ‘beatblogger’? Then make sure to add the keyword multiple times in your various social profiles!).

Learn by example. It’s okay to copy practices. Don’t worry, it’s not plagiarism.

Journalists hate to copy. They don’t like anything that isn’t original or different. They like to be the first to report on a story or have a certain angle. But sometimes it’s okay to copy, especially in the case of beatblogging. What this means is that you should look at what current beatbloggers are doing successfully and emulate their methods to form your own beatblog.

Take a look at Kent Fischer from the Dallas Independent School District Blog, who is building a “blog on steroids.” Fischer’s blog is essentially a micro-site, a niche publication that covers the education system in Dallas, Texas by combining beatblogging with database reporting.

Learn from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Monica Guzman as she innovate with her weekly office hours for readers. Guzman connects with her users on her blog, The Big Blog, on social media sites like Twitter and in person. Guzman is a master conversation starter and uses her networks to get people talking about issues in Seattle and about the PI’s content. The Big Blog is all about cultivating conversations and there is no one better than Guzman at that.

Check out Brian Stelter from the New York Times who is beatblogging at “TV Decoder,” where he covers the day’s on-screen and behind-the-scenes developments, with insights into Nielsen ratings and the machinations of the TV industry. Stelter has found that it’s easier to share stories, ideas, links and be able to ask for advice, contacts, and sources. He is always opening himself up to opinions, more points of view and more sources. Likewise, users send Stelter feedback and actually like to contribute because they feel more connected. He is a real person they can interact with.

Watch Daniel Victor, the twenty-four year old reporter for The (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot-News. Victor is trying his hand at mobile journalism, and he’s convinced that community-building and crowdsourcing are the two biggest keys to journalism’s future. Victor experimented with a Ning network that ultimately didn’t work out, but it hasn’t deterred him from innovating. Victor’s latest venture is a blog where Victor asks his reader’s to be his assignment editor. Readers are, literally, his assignment editors — researching, contributing ideas and suggesting stories.

Lastly… INNOVATE!

The most marked characteristic of beatbloggers is that they all took it upon themselves to pitch new ideas to their editors and take on radical experiments that had never been attempted in the world of journalism. A true beatblogger never stops trying to innovate and create new ways of using the community and social media tools to improve journalism. Don’t be afraid to use your own methods. And when you do, be sure to send us your work our way!

Did this article help? Comments or questions? Be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments or send a tweet to @MsBeat.

Word recently came that the Pennsylvanian government wanted to axe the Scotland School for Veteran’s Children because of budget issues. The school serves at-risk children of veterans, but closing the school would save the state $10.5 million.

Victor’s assignment was to go out in the community and to talk to people about the decision to close the school and also to get in touch with alumni to get their reactions. Normally, this wouldn’t be that easy of a task to do, but thanks to social media, Victor was contacted by dozens of people who wanted to share their stories and reactions.

“It was absolutely critical,” Victor said about using social media to help report this story.

He sent out a tweet and got a few responses on Twitter, but Twitter wasn’t nearly as big of a help as Facebook was. Victor found an alumni group for the school on Facebook and joined the group. He explained what his story was, and he left his cell phone number.

One of the alumni who read his message on Facebook sent out a text message to an alumni network that helped spread the word about Victor was doing. Soon he was contacted by 48 alumni who wanted to be interviewed, and he was able to interview almost two dozen of them.

“They ended up doing the work for me,” he said. “It’s amazing how much of a difference it made for my story. Everybody had a stake in it, and for them to all be in one place, and for me to have access to that, that’s pretty powerful.”

Victor regularly uses social media for crowd sourcing. When news happens, Victor looks to get the news up his paper’s breaking news blog and Twitter ASAP.

“That’s kind of an accepted part of my reporting,” he said about Twitter. “If something is going to be breaking, I’m going to check with my network.”

Because Victor is much more accessible now with social media, he gets a lot more tips. Recently, somebody alerted him to an accident with an EMS responder, where the driver had heart attack. Because of Victor’s online networks, the Patriot-News was able to get that story quicker than they would have otherwise been able to.

“People just kind of know that I’m available to them,” he said.

Recently some bank robbers got loose and were being chased all over the Harrisburg area, Victor said. Roads were being closed, and the story was quickly developing and changing. Victor was able to monitor in real time people’s reaction’s on Twitter.

People were discussing which roads were closed, what the best detours where, analyzing the news and more. The Patriot-News was unable to keep up with Twitter for breaking news, Victor said.

“I kind of equate Twitter to the police scanner, the way that the police scanner kind of gives us this constant monitoring of what is happening in the cop world, he said. “I feel like Twitter is giving us a constant taste of what is happening in community news.”

Some other topics discussed:

• How has your ability to harness social media changed within the last year now that social media is becoming a lot more popular?
• Which beats are best suited for Facebook?
• And more.

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

His experience setting up a social network for his beat hasn’t gone that well, but Victor is not giving up on using social and Web tools for his beat. This is just the beginning of his Web efforts and Ning has been a learning experience for him.

Listen to Victor discuss what went wrong, what went well and what he will be doing in the future with social networking for his beat:

Click here to stream the interview. Or click here to download the MP3.

Ning is a service that allows people to set up their own social networks on any topic. Victor called his “Hershey Home,” because it was a place for people from Hershey, Pa. to talk about what was going on in their community. He also wanted to make contacts, and he did make some worthwhile contacts through the network, just not that many.

The problem was that the social network never got enough buy-in from the community, and Victor admits its not a very technologically inclined population. Just 36 people signed up and only 15 wrote something in the discussion forum. Only five members started their own discussions.

He’s not going to close the network, but he is stepping back and
concentrating on other Web efforts. Ideally, Victor would like to find
a community member to take over the network and try to make it into a
community gathering place. At first, Victor wanted it to be a place to discuss hard news, but he eventually realized that it would make more sense if it were a community gathering place to discuss any issue.

Victor, however, is not giving up on building an online community. His paper is launching a new blog for Hershey, which might allow for Victor to organically grow a social network. They are even allowing users to make their own blog posts (moderated, of course).

The idea of allowing community members to make their own guest posts whenever they feel like it might be a good way to get buy-in from the community. Whether or not community members will regularly make guest posts remains to be seen.

The other big issue with Ning is that it’s not part of Victor’s newspaper, The Patriot News. People have to go out of their way to get to Hershey Home. The new blog, however, will be part of his paper’s Web site. That should make it much easier to get buy-in from the community.

Kent Fischer told me that he wishes he started blogging before trying to set up some other social networking utilities around his beat, and Victor came to the same conclusion as well. Those efforts didn’t pan out for Fischer, but a social network organically grew around his blog. Once a blog gets established with regular users, a Ning network might be a way to take it to the next level.

In many ways, blogging before something like Ning is like learning to walk before you run. Establishing a successful, dedicated social network is difficult for anyone to pull off, especially if there wasn’t an online community to build around in the first place. A blog can give you that base to build from.

“At the beginning it showed some promise,” Victor said about the Ning network. “People were contributing a lot, but by the end the participation had gone down a lot.”

Victor originally hoped that people would make their own posts and that he would be more of a moderator, but he found out that he had to the catalyst for discussions on the network. Victor didn’t always have the time or energy after he got done with his other work to be starting discussions.

Victor also listed on his blog what worked well and not so well with Ning:

WHAT WORKED WELL:

• Though the network didn’t bear much fruit in terms of immediate translation to the print product, it did help create offline relationships that were very important. Contacting these people, either by phone or by e-mail or by messaging new members, meant I was able to make personal contact with 36 potential sources I might not have otherwise. A lot of public and private messages on the forum led to productive phone calls.
• As I detailed in an earlier post, the site’s mere presence was an advertisement for my willingness and desire to hear from residents. I called it an “Open for Business” sign.
• Due to my insistence that members use their full, real names, the quality of conversation was usually higher than some of the noxious forums that are used otherwise. The members often expressed appreciation for that.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK WELL:

• It hasn’t been the “Set it and forget it” reporting solution I hoped it might be. One time a big story broke, and I only had about two hours to gather community reaction. I took 20 very precious minutes to pull into the Panera Bread parking lot to use the wifi and solicit reaction on the site. I e-mailed all the members to let them know of my desire to hear from them. When I came back two hours later to see the mountain of riches that had come in, there wasn’t a single message in response. I ended up just calling one of the members.
• In a community with very little activity on social networking sites, it was difficult to find a full buy-in to the concept.
• The site did nothing to overcome what residents have repeatedly called a “culture of fear” when it comes to criticizing local officials. So in some of the most contentious and important issues, the ability to be anonymous elsewhere redirected traffic to those other forums.

None of this is to say that a Ning social network can’t work for your community, or that “Hershey Home” won’t be popular one day, but it may not have been the best first course of action for social networking.

Listen to Victor discuss what went wrong, what went well and what
he will be doing in the future with social networking for his beat:

Click here to stream the interview. Or click here to download the MP3.

“I love the beatblogging project because it’s innovation in real newsroom laboratories, as opposed to tsk-tsking and dreaming.

My foray into it has had its ups and downs, but I recently had a kind of success story that I didn’t expect when I signed up.

And it shows why I believe so much that social networking can revolutionize small-town beat reporting.

A woman in the town I cover believed that she had spotted an
injustice. (I won’t go into detail for competitive reasons, and because
my work on the possible story is ongoing.)

But she didn’t know what to do with this knowledge, so like any
other computer user, she turned to Google. She typed in the name of a
resident in town who her neighbors had recommended, a person who might
know what to do with this information.

One of the first results took her to The Hershey Home, the Ning network I set up for the beatblogging project. The resident she sought has been a frequent contributor to the network.

Once there, she strolled around the site. She read all of my
solicitations for story ideas, background information on stories I was
already working on, and feedback for stories I’ve already written. She
went ahead and e-mailed me to set up a meeting.

After she spilled the beans at our meeting, I asked her why she contacted me.

“I just read through your comments on the site, and you seemed like
the type of person who would want to hear this,” she responded.

Imagine that! I may have stumbled upon a high-impact story based on a tip from a person who isn’t even a member of the network.
She chose to contact a reporter because the network put up an “Open for
Business” sign,  and revealed that I have a genuine interest in hearing
from as many residents as possible.

An obligatory listing of our e-mail address at the end of our
stories doesn’t invite our readers to contact us, it just allows them
to. Setting up this kind of network, interacting with people online,
and really advertising that we really, really do want to hear from
people can directly lead to stories.”

I’ve had conversations with all 12 of our beat bloggers (number 13 is TBA and will have catching up to do) and wanted to give an update on the first four now. The remaining eight will be highlighted in subsequent posts.

Click to read more.

News org: Dallas Morning News
Reporter: Kent Fisher: Spoke with on Monday November 20th

Current status: Kent is in the early stages of thinking about
how he can build an active social network considering some of the
unique challenges he faces covering the Dallas public school district.
He knows the general approach he wants to use, which is to use the
social network as a megaphone to broadcast out to his sources. But also
to connect folks that he’s not currently talking to.

He contrasted it with the explanation Jeff Jarvis envisioned here: “But
now the role of the reporter can and should be different: as a
moderator, vetter, enabler, encourager.” After I sent that link out,
Kent explained that what he wants is a way to keep in touch with
everyone to inform his reporting. If it creates a side discussion that
leads to change, he is happy with it, but his goal is still going to be
to get better reporting.

Still to come: As a result of the special concerns below, Kent
plans on doing some shoe-leather social networking first. He has to
present his case to the right people to get them online and part of his
network. Off in the distance Kent has the idea of creating online
forums for all 227 schools. A district water cooler where people can
congregate online. One concern is that 227 different forums will be too
fragmented and people will end up in chat rooms by themselves. Another
means of organizing them into larger forum groups is under
consideration.

Special concerns: When Kent approached an administrator at the
school district the reply was “that’s a great idea, but it’ll never
work in Dallas.”

The school district in Dallas is amid serious reform, so principles are
overworked. The district is largely poor and minority, so many parents
don’t have online access. Tens of thousands more don’t even speak
English. Yet, those parents are the sources that Kent wants to reach,
because that’s where the story behind Dallas’ public school system is.
There is also the question of anonymity. “The Dallas district has a
long history of punishing people who don’t tow the party line,” said
Kent. Several teachers Kent has asked to participate were excited about
the idea, but they feared they’d get in trouble for speaking their mind
on a public blog.

Finally there is the concern about what will happen to the blog and his
sources during the summer break. With a few weeks of slow news, will
they come back to the network after summer vacation?

Big Unknowns: The biggest unknown is “who is going to be in the
network?” Kent wants to get people involved who he isn’t already
talking to. It’s the classic problem: How do we know the people we
don’t know? And how will we overcome the parental digital divide?

Tools under consideration: Right now there isn’t a blog for
Kent’s reporting, which appears in the paper. What Kent is working on
now is figuring out the best content management system that will allow
him to report on the blog and seamlessly broadcast out to his network
of sources. Moveable Type will probably be what they start with and
from there they will either add widgets or find a third party site to
build the network.

Where the excitement is: “Moving our beat coverage of a huge
school district to “real time” blog that will allow people to
communicate, share ideas and offer guidance as stories unfold.”

News Org: Chronicle of Higher Education
Reporter: Brad Wolverton. Spoke with on Wednesday Novemeber 22nd.

Current status: As mentioned above, Kent read the Jarvis post
and described his vision in contrast to it. Brad, on the other hand, is
singing a similar tune to Jarvis. His goal is to create a space where
discussion can take place and Brad will watch closely as the
conversation flies by. Brad is also the first beat blogger out of the
gate. He has gotten about 40 trusted sources to join a Google Group and
he may add another dozen or so in coming weeks, he says. His hope is
that he will broaden this network and tap into it in a deeper way.

Still to come: Brad is using Google Groups as a home base for
now, but is looking into other options. To begin, since these are his
sources – he is having them do short introductions to each other, so
they can get to know each other.

Special concerns: So far Brad seems to be the most gung-ho to be
as open as possible. The question is, how open should he be? He has
even been contacted by another reporter, not necessarily a competitor,
but someone close to his beat, who wants to join. Brad is considering
it. He also seemed very aware that starting up the conversation will
require some goading in the beginning on his end, and is figuring out
how exactly he can increase participation.

He will also face the immediate challenge of the holidays. Since he has
already contacted lots of sources, there will be a week or two of
general radio silence over Christmas and he’ll have to removitate
people post-holiday-mortem.

Big Unknowns: How open is Brad going to let this be? Can anyone
join? Will it be private, but his sources can invite their friends? Is
he willing to lose the “scoop” in order to be at the helm of the
conversation in this network? Right now Brad seems to be guided by the
mantra that open is better – but we are both unsure where this will
lead. He will still want to control the ebb and flow of the
conversation, but doesn’t want to do it in a top-down manner. Brad will
have to work on his finesse with the sources.

Tools: Right now Brad is using Google Groups. The biggest
problem with this tool is that it lacks a sense of getting to know the
personality of other participants. Google groups is mainly used as a
list-serve. But if he wants to get a conversation going, Brad will need
to provide more than just a group email. To help in this early stage
Brad is having a round of introductions, but soon he may need to find a
more concrete way for the people in his network to really get a sense
of one another.

Where the excitement is: Brad has a purely experimental attitude
towards this.  He says: “I’ve gotten a tremendous amount of interest in
this experiment, with one person even describing it as college sports’
version of the Pugwash Conference. While nuclear disarmament isn’t our
goal, some participants think our discussions could lead to ways for
big-time athletic departments to curb their massive spending. I’m sure
that’ll never happen, but I’m encouraged that people see a higher
purpose to these discussions than just feeding me tips. My publication
is in the throes of redesigning the architecture of our website. I
decided not to wait for that to happen, and just set up a Google group
to get a dialogue going. I suspect I’ll move the group into a more
interactive setting at some point, but for now I’m anxious to start.
I’ll keep you posted on the kind of feedback I get to my first few
discussion topics, which I hope to tee up in the next couple of days.
But my long-term goal here may be a bit different than a lot of
peoples’. I want to build a strong (and private) discussion forum that
stays a fairly manageable size, at least for now. Eventually I could
see gravitating this group into a public setting, or creating another
more public group with a similar bent. I also want to start tapping
some of the people in my group to post things to a blog I’m planning to
start early next year, giving them posting privileges similar to what I
have. I’m sure the idea will evolve, and I’m anxious to hear what
others are doing.”

News org: Houston Chronicle
Reporter: Eric Berger, Spoke with on November 20th

Current status: Still in the early stages. Getting a strong idea
for what he wants to achieve, which is unqiue from the other beat
bloggers. His vision is to turn his networked sources into regular
bloggers. Very ambitious and will require extra motiviation.

Future Plans: The idea is to create nine sub-blogs under his
general science blog. Each blog, on a specific science subject will be
run by two scientists and an enthusiastic laymen. He will link back to
these blogs as they pertain to the most important news of the day.

Special concerns:  Keeping people motivated and trying to get
scientists involved on a long term basis. He’s actually tried something
similar before. The difficulty is keeping people active for longer
periods of time. Everyone likes the idea — but after two months the
scientists might wonder why they are managing these sub-blogs.

Eric also wants to find the right people who will cultivate a community
of their own. He has had expeience with science blogs turning into
politically biased shouting matches, and the fear here is that the
heads of these blogs will also need to have moderating skills.

Big Unknowns: The biggest unkown is how he will keep the space
active and constantly moving forward. This means finding a way to
recognize his contributors and give credit where it is due. There is
also the question of how this will be structured. The website is
currently run on Moveable type and Eric wants to find a way to turn his
single blog into a blog ring with individual spaces for the people he
brings in.

Tools: Eric intends on building sub-blogs with the tech support
from the Houston Chronicle. The question is, how will they be
represented on the main page? Eric is currently looking into options
for his blog that will allow him to actively highlight and interact
with the other blogs. There was also talk of holding physical meetings
in the Houston Texas area inviting scientsits from all over the region
- a kind of CafeScientifique.

Where the excitement is….Eric is really reaching out to find a
way to engage these sources. He isn’t just going to rely on them to
inform him, he is going to ask them to become ambitious contributors
who write for these blogs. If you look at the growing communities of
ScienceBlogs and now SCIAM’s community site – it’s easy to see that
science blogging is on the rise, or at least, interest in it is. Eric
thinks he can better serve his readers if he invites scientists to
directly post under his blog, giving them a direct voice.
Eric says:……….”The goal is to maximize participation by working
scientists who want to engage the public, and to keep the discussions
friendly and on point. The initial target audience is Texans, but
eventually it could become recognized as a national meeting place for
those interested in science. The unique thing here is a place that
encourages direct interaction between scientists and the interested
public. So it’s not a blog for scientists, and not a blog for the
public. It’s a neutral meeting place for both.”

News Org: Patriot-News
Daniel Victor. Spoke with on November 27th

Current status: Daniel has a fairly good picture in his head of
what the network should look like with a few holes. He has been trying
to get those clearly articulated to address them. He also has started
writing his “pitch” letter to the people he will want to participate in
the network. Once it’s coherent enough to send out to an initial group,
the networking will begin.

Still to come: Daniel has a uniuqe beat in this project because
he is cover the communit at large including development, schools, the
chocolate factory (Hersheys’) and the theme park. His initial plan is
to invite a small group of trusted residents. From there the network
will grow.

Special concerns: One of my concerns has been how to translate
the content gathered in the acebook group, or whatever it is, into blog
format. My biggest concern is that there’s somewhat of a culture of
fear here…people are convinced if they speak out about the school
district, their kids will be punished. So the biggest question is: does
he invite school board members, a township supervisor or a spokesman
for the chocolate company? Or would that just serve to stifle the
discussion?

Big Unknowns: How big should the network be? That’s one of the
key questions he has been wrestling with and he may just leave it up to
the community to make the final decision. Daniel is also afraid that he
is “foolishly optimistic” in his ability to effectively moderate the
discussion, which he could reasonably see beecoming a problem down the
road. Some forums on the web site have turned into mud throwing with
very little accomplished.

Tools: Ning, Facebook, on a blog using widgets? Daniel is still
looking into where he wants the network to live. Facebook is being
thrown around, especially by other people in the newsroom as a
potential home, but Daniel isn’t 100 percent sold. Ning is another
option which he will look into. It’s looking like Daniel will use a
third party host site to get started and will incporate widgets in his
blog to tie the two together.

Where the excitement is: “I’m hoping that all the discussions
that usually happen at soccer games and e-mails between parents will
instead happen within my earshot. Those parents wouldn’t normally think
of e-mailing me but most of the time, they’d be surprised how
interesting I’d find that information.
I see this as a way to more effectively gather story ideas and when I
do have those story ideas, I’ll be able to pack them with more context
than I might have otherwise been able to quickly assemble, itseems like
everything in this town has a long, long back story.”