Leaderboard for 2-9-2009: Crowdsourcing edition
This week’s Leaderboard focuses on crowdsourcing and interacting with readers.
A beat blog is a great way to find out what people are thinking, and unlike the print edition that may run a few thoughts from readers, a beat blog can allow anyone to comment. Plus, users can interact with each other, share links and debate topics.
A beat blog is also a great way to ask readers what they would like you to cover. Want to know what your readers think? Ask them.
Jon Ortiz | Sacramento Bee
- Ortiz is using his blog to crowd source opinions on what it’s like to be back after a day of being furloughed. Due to the budget crisis in California, it’s mandatory for state workers to take several furlough days. Ortiz wants to know what morale is like now that furloughs have officially begun.
- This blog post has been a sounding board for state workers who were furloughed. The post itself is interesting because of all the comments that users have left. It doesn’t take a lot of effort for Ortiz to ask a simple question about morale, but this post has yielded a lot of good information.
- The post will also help Ortiz create more content. He can take the best comments and make a new blog post or print story with them. He can also ask in a few weeks how morale is after employees receive their first reduced paychecks. He can then compare and contrast comments left this week with comments left after employees receive their smaller paychecks.
- A beat blog makes it much easier for a reporter to write stories like these. Before the Web, Ortiz could have contacted a few state workers and used their opinions for stories. After the story was published, additional state workers could write in. But with Ortiz’s beat blog, anyone can comment, and this post has led to a wide swatch of state workers form different departments commenting on how morale is.
- People are much more willing to share their stories when we make it easy for them. It’s much easier to leave a comment after a blog post than it is to find a newspaper’s number, call the newspaper and try to get a hold of an individual reporter.
John A. Bryne | BusinessWeek
- “What’s Your Story Idea?” gives BusinessWeek.com readers the chance to have a direct impact on the publication’s coverage. Editor-in-Chief John A. Byrne reviews reader comments and then assigns them to journalists. When the story goes live, the reader gets the credit.
- Each week at least one story pitched by a reader is assigned to a BusinessWeek staffer.
- Bryne also provides feedback to stories pitched by users, “As Editor-in-Chief of BusinessWeek.com, I’ll respond to your suggestions just as I do to my own reporters. ‘Tom, that’s a brilliant and original idea with importance significance to our readers.’ Or, ‘Frank, I’ve read that story a hundred times. What can you possibly add that’s new?’”
- This feature is not only good for unearthing new and interesting story assignments, but it’s also a good way to get user feedback on existing content. Is BusinessWeek covering the stories that its readers are interested in? Why not just ask?
- This sums up what BusinessWeek and Bryne are trying to accomplish: “User engagement. That’s what we believe in.” User engagement is a must to succeed on the Web.
Gene Sloan | USA Today
- Sloan is live blogging all week from the Carnival Fantasy cruise. His live blogging is cool enough, but Sloan is also engaging users in the comments section after his posts and answering questions.
- Sloan is living blogging this week so he can report on, “What’s it like to sail on one of the refurbished Fantasy Class ships? I’ll be on board the Fantasy for the next five days as it cruises to Mexico, posting my impressions and answering your questions (leave them in the comment area below).”
- As he leaves impressions throughout the day, users have been leaving comments and asking questions. Sloan has been responding to their questions and trying out some of their suggestions (which activities to try, what to eat, etc).
- Before the Web and live blogging, Sloan could have ridden a cruise ship for a week and written a story about his experiences. Now he can post updates and photos throughout the course of his trip and interact with users along the way. The ability for users to leave comments and suggestions makes this form of journalism much more interactive and engaging for users.
Leaderboard for week of 1-26-09: Participation
This week’s Leaderboard is all about participation.
We are featuring three distinct ways beat bloggers are getting their users involved and harnessing the collective intelligence of their communities. In today’s era of limited journalism resources, utilizing a knowledgeable user base just makes sense. Users are a tremendous asset and the best beat bloggers have learned to tap into their collective wisdom.
These beat bloggers have found ways to not only harness the wisdom of the crowd, but they have also succeeded in getting their users to participate. Participation is a big part of the Web, and these three beat bloggers offer distinct ways to get users involved.
Gene Sloan | USA Today
- Sloan made the Leaderboard this week for a cool feature of his, “Reader Tip of the Week.” Each week Sloan asks readers to send in tips on a cruise-related issue. This week he is looking for advice on going on a cruise with teenagers.
- There are some fantastic tips left by readers that help Sloan do his job better. One reader pointed out that certain cruise lines offer teen programs and suggested that people with teens avoid lines that do not offer teen programs.
- This weekly feature servers several purposes: It gets users involved and talking about issues, it taps into the wisdom of Sloan’s community and it serves to help Sloan report better. It’s also a very easy feature to produce.
- The best readers’ tips are put into the print edition of USA Today. A little bit of work can go a long way.
Etan Horowitz | Orlando Sentinel
- Horowitz is employing some networked journalism this week by asking users to report on Circuit City liquidation sales. Standard operating practice during a liquidation usually sees a store raise prices to MSRP before offering discounts. Few retailers attempt to sell items — sale or no — at MSRP.
- This means that a discount of 10 percent off, for instance, during liquidation might actually be more expensive than Circuit City was selling it for before liquidation.
- Prices and availability vary greatly per store during liquidation. One Circuit City may be barely discounting items because of brisk sales, while another may have begun deep discounting.
- Horowitz is asking users to report on the prices of items they see at their local Circuit City. He is also asking that they list which store they went to. Horowitz couldn’t do this all himself, but he is smartly employing the power of his users on his site to piece together this story.
- Horowitz’s users can help other users determine whether or not it is worth shopping at a particular Circuit City.
- Networked journalism is a great way to get users involved and to report on topics that a reporter couldn’t do alone.
Buzz Out Loud | CNET
- “Well actually” are two of the most famous words on this daily podcasts. Listeners write in to correct the hosts or to clarify tricky tech-related information.
- Covering a wide range of tech topics isn’t the easiest, and Buzz Out Loud’s vast, knowledgeable audience provides a lot of fact checkers to ensure accuracy.
- BOL’s Tom Merritt, Natali Del Conte, Molly Wood and Jason Howell know tech well, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t use some help in covering a broad and nuanced topic. Users send in tips and news stories every day that help BOL report on tech in a more efficient manner.
- Listeners also correct the hosts when they are wrong. It’s not often that one of the hosts is blatantly wrong, but many tech topics are extremely nuanced and can be hard for most people to get 100 percent right. The BOL gang may report on computer encryption, for instance, and the next day a computer security expert may call in to clarify a point or to add additional insight.
- This show is all about user participation because it wouldn’t be possible without a lot of help from listeners.
Leaderboard for week of 12-15-08: Asking users for help
Our users know more than we do.
In aggregate, the knowledge of our users far outstrips our own. This is a valuable asset for beat reporters. An asset, until the advent of the Web, that was hardly tapped into.
This week’s Leaderboard is all about beat bloggers who are willing to admit that their users know more than they do. They’re willing to ask their readers for help.
Gene Sloan | USA Today
- Sloan was nominated for his post, “Who has a question for Holland America CEO Stein Kruse?“
- Sloan is giving his readers the opportunity to chat with industry CEOs in his “Chat with the Chief” feature. This is a great little feature that builds user loyalty, generates traffic and gets your users to ask a lot of interesting questions for you. Plus, this doesn’t take a ton of time to produce.
- The feature is pretty simple. Sloan finds industry people that his users would be interested in interacting with and invites them to come to his blog and answer questions from his users. His user post comments at the end of Sloan’s post, and the person that Sloan selects answers users’ questions in the comments section.
- This feature is open for three days and generates a lot of questions. It is also an interesting feature for people to read if they don’t have a question to ask. Plus, Sloan’s readers are knowledgeable people and ask interesting questions.
Jon Ortiz | The Sacramento Bee
- This is the kind of short, little post that works perfect on the Web, but would make no sense in print.
- First, the post is linking to a colleagues story and generating more traffic for that content. His colleague wrote a story about how a California state legislator shifted campaign cash to a legal defense fund. Ortiz used that story as a springboard to his post asking for user opinions.
- Ortiz, however, primarily made this post to solicit user opinion and to get people talking. Starting conversations can be a good way to build a community. Also, Ortiz could use the comments he gets as the seeds for a new post.
Eric Berger | The Houston Chronicle
- Berger is asking, “What would you ask … France’s chief climate negotiator?” Berger has the opportunity to interview France’s Brice Lalonde, and he wants his users to help him out.
- This is an excellent way for Berger to get his readers involved. Plus, Berger’s readers are very knowledgeable and many of them are scientists. They can provide him with some great questions to ask. Win-win.
- This is a great way for Berger to use the collective intelligence of his readers to think of great questions. At Beat Blogging, we use Twitter all the time to harness the wisdom of our users.
