Global Voices

Global Voices, is a site that provides the news in many different languages across the globe. From English to Swahili, Polish to Indonesian, this site has ’em all.

Global Voices provides updated news stories while providing crowdsourcing and pro-am journalism features. Upon visiting an article, the article gives you a list of languages the story is written in, the countries it involves, and the major topics highlighted in the article. Then the author display their written piece. Under their piece is followed by others who have shared ideas on the article and have given some insight. The author incorporates the ideas into their article by introducing the person and their general idea followed by the actual comments they submitted. This idea of crowdsourcing helps readers add additional information to the original work. Helping to shed light on areas of the topic, possibly in more depth, to make the information as a whole, more knowledgable.

Under the article is a toolbar with options to share the topic on facebook, twitter, del.icio.us, stumbleupon and others. Then below that is another important part of a new reporting method called linking. It links to other sites on the topic, that helps display other ideas on the topic and for further information or other stories on a similar place or people.

Below the linking then is a spot for general comments titled “join the conversation.” This pro-am journalism styled area gives readers the opportunity to collaborate with the writers by posting their opinions and ideas on the same page as the news outlet.

Overall Global Voices is a site that advocates the new journalism methods of linking, crowdsourcing and pro-am journalism. Their site is offered in globally in global languages to emit the global voices to be heard. Global Voices does an excellent job in engaging readers on important topics of discussion, gain feedback, and interact with one another.

-Desiree

Jezebel.com, revisited

Collaborative journalism can bring society closer to democracy. It is not intended to replace democracy (or journalism) but rather to make it more effective.

Jezebel.com uses pro-am journalism to fuel its website. Pro-am journalism allows users to publish information on the same site that the people who run the site publish on.

On Jezebel, there is a large “SHARE” bar at the top of the site, inviting you to “let your fingers do the talking” under the name “#tips.” 

Many users submit posts under names that relate to the topics they post about. These user-categories include titles like #deathrowdilemma (for the story about Teresa Lewis), and #seeingisbelieving (for the story on Photoshop).

There is what seems like too much information on the homepage, which can be overwhelming to look at when first accessed, but once navigation starts it is rather easy to use.

Users comment on each other’s posts and post themselves. There is a lot of linking going to users’ sites and comments.

According to Technorati, Jezebel ranks #19 out of the top 100 blogs. (last checked 9/21/2010)

Can anyone guess what number 1 is?

                                                                                                    -Clesceri

Pro-am journalsim?

Pro-am journalism, or community journalism, is a good idea in concept, but I haven’t seen it done well in many places. One example of something I wouldn’t even call journalism is neighborsgo.com

This site is hosted by The Dallas Morning News and lets anyone write a story for the site.

neighborsgo.com, journalism or free advertising?

But on this site there is a lot of the “am” and not so much of the “pro.” If you click on the “read stories” link, hidden below the “post stories” link, it opens a new window with a list of stories in descending order.

Lets look at the first stories listed.

Alzhiemer’s Caregivers Support Group:

This is an advertisement. This is not journalism.

GAAP Grant Writing Training for Churches & Non Profit Orgs.:

This is an advertisement. This is not journalism.

Are we seeing a pattern?

Is this the hard hitting reporting that journalists should pride themselves on?

Next an advertisement for a production of a play appears about five times. Lets hear it for spam.

Now the site looks good, it’s well designed and maintained but it is not journalism.

There is some, and I mean some, journalism on the site. Take for example the featured story. It is about some trail and how good it is to live in this town. But…

A) This man probably lives in this town so there is a conflict of interest.

B) The story is not really well written, after 2 years of editing others work if I see the word you in the lede I generally don’t read on.

The print edition is a bit better because it takes the few stories that are mildly good and puts them in the paper. But in today’s world where newspapers are disappearing this doesn’t mean much. What it does, is provide an incentive for people to write. Seeing your name in print still has an affect on people. And I can imagine this actually creates a mild profit for The Dallas Morning News, since they are not paying any of these “reporters” while taking in advertising money.

I have nothing against the pro am model. I think it can work. CNN’s ireport is an example. It is more filtered then neighboorsgo.com. But it did cause Apple’s stocks to plummet when someone posted that Steve Jobs died so there are obviously some kinks to work out in this model.

-Frank Posillico

A Look at Two Types of Journalism: Pro-am; Open-source

I think CNN’s iReport is a particularly good example of a pro-am journalism news website. The premise is pretty simple, as it says on the homepage:

Readers can sign up and contribute their own ideas for stories, or even submit their own stories. CNN clarifies that posts that have not been “vetted” are unedited and basically just raw material straight from the participant. However, stories that have the vetted badge mean that they have been both edited and fact-checked by a CNN reporter. It’s reassuring to know that a legitimate news source  has checked some of the articles on the site, so the reader knows which articles to believe 100% and which to make a mental note that the facts may not be completely accurate.

What I like the most about the site is that it’s easy to navigate. It’s got the standard CNN navigation bar up top, but the iReport section has another navigation bar underneath.

The site is easy to get around, clean and pleasing to the eye. Also, there are two main things that make me really like this site:

Two Things I Like About The Site
1. To get published by/on CNN, a legitimate news website, would be enough of an incentive to participate.
2. The fact that there is an “assignment desk” would make me feel real special.

There is even a section that tells you how to write a news story if you need help! (Which, of course, none of us do…)

In contrast, an open-source website is Global for me, which is similar to Spot.us in that readers vote and donate money to a story idea, and if  a certain story gets enough donations, then the site will assign it to a professional journalist to cover it.

My qualms about this site are as follows:

Three Things I Don’t Like About The Site
1. It’s simple, but ugly. I would not care to read anything on this site; it’s as sterile as a hospital room.
2. Legit? Not legit? At least with CNN I know it’s CNN. Brand loyalty.
3. The donation factor really dampens things for me because I’m a broke college student who needs every penny I don’t have for cup noodles on a cold autumn night, and because the whole process seems like it would take forever to complete.

So through this critique I’ve discovered that website design, legitimacy, and finance are key factors in determining my opinion of a good news source website.

-Klara