1 Crowd-Powered Front Page for Chicago - WindyCitizen.com
Requested amount from Knight News Challenge:
$300,000Total cost of project including all sources of funding:
$380,000Expected amount of time to complete project:
2 yearsWindyCitizen.com applies collective intelligence, or crowd-power, to the problem of identifying what's newsworthy and interesting in Chicago. For decades the public has ceded this job to small pockets of editors. With today's online collaboration tools, this needn't continue.
In 5 months I’ve built the first iteration of the site and gathered 34 Chicago bloggers to anchor it. This fall we roll out the social news piece.
The service is structured as a social, local news service backed up by a vast blog network of local experts in Chicago.
It gives people in Chicago a central place where they can share, discuss and vote up interesting local links. The best stuff surfaces, creating a crowd-powered front page.
Using this approach, visitors get their news from a wider array of sources as well as an at-a-glance look at what's hot in their city.
You can visit at http://www.windycitizen.com. I am applying for funding so we can bring on a full-time developer, a designer and an editor to oversee the blog network. This will let us scale better and provide a more useful service.
0 commentsHow will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?
Letting the audience choose what's news...
By giving residents a central place to share, rate and discuss local links, the "metro conversation" would be expanded beyond what editors deem newsworthy. This would make for a richer news experience.
It would also give placebloggers a means to actually get some readers. Blogging is incredibly tough. Blogging about local issues is even tougher. A social local news site would give local bloggers a fighting chance, provided they produce quality work.
If we're serious about encouraging people to write about their communities, we need to be just as serious about giving these people a way to get readers.
0 commentsHow is your idea innovative? (New or different from what already exists.)
A local filter for what's interesting....
This project innovates by disrupting traditional metro news models and creating a shorter, more direct path from news to news consumer. It gives people a structured means to become more active in the local conversation.
Also, there is no other project currently applying collective intelligence to the problem of determining what's newsworthy and interesting at the metro level.
EveryBlock and Outside.in show you what's happening near you. They make no distinction between interesting links and uninteresting ones. If I want to know what's happening in my block, I go to EveryBlock. If I want to see what's interesting? I've got to jump between 40 blogs, 17 local magazines, 50 community papers, a dozen radio stations and 9 television networks, not to mention Chicago's 4 dailies and 4 weekly papers.
The Chi-Town Daily News and other citizen journalism sites endeavor to teach amateurs how to write stories like professional journalists. They attack an important, but different problem.
Newsvine.com has local channels but is dominated by national political news and has no real local presence.
Yelp lets anyone review local businesses, venues and services. There's no focus on news.
Going.com lets young people find hip new events. No focus on news.
There's no service out there actively seeking to apply collective intelligence to filter for interesting local links. This would be a first.
0 commentsWhat experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project?
I'm already in the trenches making it happen...
In the last five months I've recruited the first 34 bloggers and built the first iteration of the social voting site. We have some momentum already. Funding will let me bring in a team to see it on to success.
I am a former Carnegie-Knight Journalism Fellow and have been immersed in local, social media for years now.
Finally, I'm passionate about giving local bloggers a place to compete with the local mainstream media based on my own experience trying to find readers to a Chicago news blog I published for 18 months. I know how hard it is and believe WindyCitizen.com can create opportunities for them that will pay dividends for the city at large.
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