Thought of the Day: beatblogs as mini newspapers

Today’s Thought of the Day comes from Theodore Kim, a beatblogger and reporter for The Dallas Morning News.

Because of the realities of today’s newsroom and tough economic times, Kim said pretty much all reporters are contributing to blogs in some ways. He said that blogging is just more efficient:

As much as I hate to say this, blogging is becoming a far more efficient way of publishing news than a newspaper.
As we’ve come to find out, a beat blog is, in essence, a tiny newspaper.

The blogger acts as reporter, editor, designer and publisher. In that vein, the blogger also serves as a, kind of, traffic cop for feedback (much as someone overseeing letters to the editor might). That construct, I think, is made for leaner newsrooms and times.

Theodore, like many beatbloggers, feels ownership over his blogs. He monitors and guides comments after his posts and actively engages users. His job is much different than a reporter of even a few years ago.

I have to wonder if a news organization composed of individual beatblogs like Theodore’s could be a good model moving forward. Beatbloggers would have a large degree of autonomy over their beatblogs, would post most content unedited and would cultivate communities around their beatblogs.

Leaderboard for week of 7-21-2009: Dave Levinthal memorial edition

We’re sad to see another outstanding beatblogger leaving the industry.

It’s been a rough for years for journalism, and many of the top beatbloggers we have been following have left the industry. People like Kent Fischer and Ed Silverman helped pioneer the practice of beatblogging, but now they have moved on to new, non-journalism careers. Our first leaderboard member this week, Dave Levinthal, was inspired by Kent Fischer and modeled his beatblog after his.

But Levinthal like his inspiration has left journalism.

Dave Levinthal | The Dallas Morning News

• Another great beatblogger, political reporter Dave Levinthal, is leaving newspapers. Thankfully Levinthal will remain in a role as a government watchdog. He is moving on to OpenSecrets.Org as their new communications director.
• From the press release of Levinthal’s hiring, “Through its award-winning, publicly accessible Web site, www.OpenSecrets.org, CRP examines the influence of money on elections and public policy, especially in the U.S. Congress. Levinthal will oversee the center’s original journalism and blogging, and serve as its spokesman to the news media and other organizations that rely on CRP’s research and analysis.”
• I can’t think of anyone else that I would want overseeing online journalism and blogging at a politically-oriented organization than Levinthal. He is one of the best modern political reporters. He combines strong journalism skills with new media skills and should fit in well at OpenSecrets.Org. We’ll have more later this week on Levinthal’s new gig.
• Our previous content on Levinthal: 1) Podcast: Levinthal on starting a beat blog to meet users’ needs, 2) Levinthal shows how link journalism is done, 3) Levinthal makes leaderboard for his innovative coverage of a local election and 4) Levinthal made the leaderboard for hoisting comments.

Jon Ortiz | Sacramento Bee

• Ortiz is taking his link journalism to the next level by incorporating Publish2 into his work flow. This will allow his users to submit their own links to interesting content from around the Web. Together, their link journalism should be very good.
• Ortiz started a Publish2 group for news from around the Web related to state workers.  The beauty of a Publish2 group is that Ortiz can allow users of his blog, state workers and other knowledgeable people into his group. Publish2 has a verification process that keeps marketers and spammers out, and that’s a big reason why we like Publis2 for link journalism, as opposed to sites like Delicious. Ortiz can hand select who he wants to let into his Publish2 group, which should help him get the most out of his link journalism efforts.
• One of the things that Ortiz is doing with his link journalism is linking to state worker-related news that isn’t just about Californian state workers. This will allow Ortiz to showcase state workers issue from around the country and compare those to issues facing state workers in California. Ortiz is one of the best reporters on state government in California, but the only way he could tell the larger story of state employees across the country is by linking to the best.
  

Stimulus Spot Check | ProPublica

• ProPublic was nominated by Ryan Sholin, who said this about the Stimulus Spot Check project, “I’m moderately fascinated by ProPublica’s crowdsourcing process (and platform) for listing, assigning, and gathering information on local stimulus projects.”
• The stimulus is a massive bill with billions of dollars being spent all over the country. Crowdsourcing is the most logical way to track how stimulus spending is going. ProPublica’s Stimulus Spot Check is an interesting case study into how effective crowdsourcing can be. Perhaps more importantly, this project is a great case study into how to build and manage large-scale crowdsourcing efforts.
  
• ProPublica is looking for users to “help us figure out the status of these projects — whether the project has been started or has been completed, what company got the contract, and how many jobs the company says it retained or created for its stimulus contract. Everyone who contributes will be credited in our story.”
• The project is very young and there aren’t many results yet, but this is a massive crowdsourcing project worth keeping an eye on. As resources continue to be cut at traditional news organizations, harnessing the wisdom and time of the crowd will continue to be more and more important.