My 3/5/12 Discussion with students at the Harvard Kennedy School about my experience with crowdsourcing story content with web based tools for two public media projects, one covering the effects of the economic crisis in 2009 from an NYC perspective, the other a call for stories about the current gay rights movement.

1. Harvard Kennedy School
Digital Communications Workshop:
Crowdsourced Reporting
(Storytelling from multiple vantage points)
Annie Shreffler
Digital Producer, WGBH
#crowdsourcing @annieshreff

2. What’s crowdsourcing, anyway?
City of Toronto Archives, archival citation Fonds 1568, Item 177

3. Jeff Howe coined the term “crowdsourcing” at WIRED magazine:

4. Since Howe’s article, the concept of
crowdsourcing has fostered hundreds
of variations of social collaboration.
May 2006 Google search for “crowdsourcing”: 3 results
Howe’s WIRED article in June 2006 changes that to to 182,000 results
Latest Google search for “crowdsourcing”: ~ 10,500,000 results

5. Covering the
2008 Election
with citizen
reporters

6. Early Crowdsourcing Experiments
WNYC Radio’s The Brian Lehrer Show
“How Many SUV’s on Your Block?”
Comparing the cost of groceries across
NYC prompted a City Hall investigation
Producer: Jim Colgan
 Timely
 Personal
 Easy to Respond

7. Your Uncommon
Economic Indicators
WNYC Radio
2008 -2009
New York Metro Region
“What signs of economic crisis
do you see in your
neighborhood, on your street?”
Timely
Personal
Easy to Respond
833 Stories
22 Videos/260 Photos
31 Show Segments
Audio promos and the tag line
“Bringing you uncommon
economic coverage”

12. Scanning entries for trends

14. January 2010 http://fieldguide.wnyclabs.org

15. Community
1. A group with joint ownership or liability, unified by common interests
2. A feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common
attitudes, interests and goals
Crowdsourcing is based on the notion that
working together we can accomplish a large goal.
Crowdsourcing a story builds a sense of
community among those in a news organization
and the participating audience.

16. Text

18. LONGSHOT Print Magazine and Radio
Collaborators across the U.S. convened, in person and online, to
create a magazine in 48 hours
672 submissions / 68-page print publication
40 visitors to a “Story Corps on steroids” booth set up at the
McNally Bookstore
Producers & editors sign up to help from Baltimore to Berlin
The Ask:
We want submissions ranging from 140 characters to 4,000
words. Please send us your strongly reported narratives, design
fictions, interviews, data visualizations, cartoons, family
portraits, how-to guides, maps, obscure histories, recipes, war
reporting, photo-essays, blueprints, ships’ logs, scientific papers,
charticles, wood cuts, curio boxes, product reviews, and box
scores.
JUL 29–31 2011
#02 longshotmag.magcloud.com
Long Shot Radio Showcase

21. Some advice from thought leaders on
working with the crowd:

22. Amanda Michel: Mobilize Your Audience
Pro-Am Journalism
Ground-level access
Networked intelligence
Distributed labor
Respect for journalistic standards
Objectivity replaced by transparency
Amanda Michel
Director of Distributed Reporting at ProPublica
creator of Huffington Post’s OffTheBus
“The timing for a new social contract between the press and the public
could not be better. There will be no reason to mourn the loss of its
audience if the press fully understands and exploits the new reality
that its audience can now be its ally.”

23. Jeff Jarvis: Embrace change
news delivery is
changing
new models are
created every day
some might
actually stick
Text you can’t stop the
technology
people are taking
news into their
own hands
CUNY J-School Prof Jeff Jarvis
photo credit: Christopher Wink

24. Clay Shirky: Work Together
“[In the 20th Century], news
was something we got.” Now
a news organization can act
as a site of coordination,
“finding the people who care
about a story and helping
them take action together.”
“People will work
together if you have the
perfect mix of promise,
effective tool and good
Clay Shirky, Writer & Lecturer bargain, in terms of time.”
author of Here Comes Everybody

25. Alan Rusbridger: See the power in numbers
Openness is shorthand for the
way in which the vast majority of
information...is part of a larger
network, only a tiny portion of
which is created by journalists.
By collaborating...we can be
infinitely more powerful than if
we believe we have to generate it
all ourselves.
Alan Rusbridger
Editor of The Guardian

26. Thank you!
Annie Shreffler
#crowdsourcing @annieshreff
“More on Crowdsource Reporting”
Delicious.com/annieshreff
http://www.delicious.com/stacks/view/C7jPNI
annieshreff@gmail.com