A Brain Trust for Better News
Requested amount from Knight News Challenge:
$800,000Total cost of project including all sources of funding:
$800,000Expected amount of time to complete project:
2 yearsThis project has no description.
How will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?
Best of the Web for each State
Blogging demonstrates the power of individuals to write about current events and reach a wider audience based on their ability to passionately and capably articulate their opinion. There are 1.6 million blog posts each day: people have opinions to express and are often able to marshal compelling evidence to make their case.
Good posts sometimes become viral or are picked up by larger media outlets. Fundamentally, though, there are no successful attempts to aggregate and rate blogs about current events to let the best content rise to the top. There are no mechanisms for synthesizing larger reports from piecemeal but otherwise quality blog posts. The content is being produced each day but the web needs a better way to sort, discuss and rate it.
The BrainTrust Project would allow content to be tagged by subject and geolocation (national relevance or state relevance). Through member efforts to discuss and rate the posts, communities would be able to access top content from around the world related to current events in their geographic area.
0 commentsHow is your idea innovative? (New or different from what already exists.)
Bringing It All Together
The web is exploring different ways to rate content, including Digg, Reddit and Delicious. Unfortunately, these sites are not dedicated to social and political issues and are often cluttered with photos of cute kittens, invective against Republican candidates, photos of beautiful women and lists of websites on the internet. The internet needs a more powerful way to promote responsible and compelling content.
Like some of these existing sites, the BrainTrust Project would allow content generated by any individual to rise on its merit to the community. The BTP community, however, would be focused on political and nonprofit issues, and would be empowered with a structured set of tools to rate and collaborate submitted content.
0 commentsWhat experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project?
Experience
I started an earlier iteration of the website in spring 2007, which received press in Southern California and 50,000 web hits over three months. The site was targeted at academics, which presented a host of problems in attracting new content; I also should have hired an additional programmer to develop a better user interface.
The BTP requires an outstanding CTO and supporting staff to make this vision a reality. I have a host of experience in organizing for nonprofits and political campaigns and have started several ventures, but lack the technical capacity to develop the next iteration of the website.
0 comments
