Zombie Journalism » crowdsourcing

B.S. Detection for Journalists

Mandy — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:20:07 +0000

Eds Note 10/5: It was brought to my attention that the links in this slideshow are not clickable in the embed here. I included them all below this post.

Ever see a tip that’s too good to be true (it probably is) or a photo so amazing you just can’t believe it (don’t)? Sometimes you can’t just [...]

Sarah Palin’s emails and a call for collaborative journalism

Mandy — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 14:05:54 +0000

If you were committing an act of news on Friday, June 10, chances are every national news organization missed it.

Why? We all had boxes and boxes of printed emails of an ex-political official to go through. From the New York Times to Mother Jones/MSNBC/ProPublica, the Washington Post and my own employer – many national news sources spent enormous amounts [...]

Interacting with the audience as a news brand

Mandy — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:02:41 +0000

Last week I went over a few tips for setting a social media strategy and persona for your news org’s branded account(s) and tips for using those accounts as a brand. Today, let’s get into audience engagement on social media tools. These tips have served me well as both a brand and as an individual, helping [...]

There’s a whole Internet outside of Twitter, so don’t forget it

Mandy — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 18:15:19 +0000

Pew released a new study on Twitter demographics today that found only 8 percent of Americans on the web use Twitter. Of that 8 percent, only 2 percent use Twitter on a typical day. Keep in mind that about 74 percent of American adults are internet users, meaning that the Twitter users make up about [...]

How TBD’s election day experiments turned out

Mandy — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 16:52:32 +0000

As promised, I’m reporting back on TBD’s election day experiments.

The Voting Issues Crowdmap seemed to be successful. We had a lot fewer reports than in the primaries, but considering D.C. turnout was lower and there were fewer issues reported overall, I’d say that’s accurate. We got 20 accepted reports in and some were very intriguing. Take [...]

Link roundup: Facebook deals, Times paywalls, ONA and news experiments

Mandy — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 22:49:30 +0000

Geolocation meets deals

Last news first. Facebook announced today that it will be doing more with its location feature, including offering deals tied to location. This could spell trouble for other geolocation providers like Foursquare and Gowalla, group buying sites like Groupon and, sadly, news sites looking for revenue streams. Facebook is offering these deals [...]

Using Foursquare and Crowdmap to track local elections

Mandy — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 02:17:14 +0000

With the midterm elections coming tomorrow, lots of news outlets will likely be launching their fanciest new toys and social media ideas to best pull in that coveted election night audience on the web. TBD’s no exception, though our election day experiments are based in off-site crowdsourcing to better inform our on-site coverage.

As we did with [...]

How to build, manage and customize a Crowdmap

Mandy — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:20:13 +0000

So you’ve got a great idea for a user-contributed map you need to launch RIGHT NOW. Ushahidi’s Crowdmap makes it pretty easy, and hopefully this post makes it even easier. All examples shown are from TBD’s Crowdmap for D.C.’s election.

First of all, if you’re mapping a crisis, Crowdmap recommends checking our their Emergency Response Strategy [...]

Quickly create a collaborative map with Crowdmap

Mandy — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:40:14 +0000

Every election since I started my professional career has led the news organization I was working for at the time to say, “We really should have a map of election problems.” Then we’d build some UGC map held together by virtual duct tape. Sound familiar?

User-populated maps have come a long way in the past few years [...]