The NewsCloud Blog

Announcing the Alpha Release of Social Media Toolkit

Updated: See Social Media Toolkit Alpha v0.11 with RSS, Twitter posting, Google Site Maps, ReCaptcha, Mobile support, blog page with SimplePie integration and ad rotation.

I am happy to share an early testing release of the NewsCloud Social Media Toolkit with you. 

Alpha Release of Social Media Toolkit
What is it?
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The Social Media Toolkit (SMT), is an open source platform designed to help organizations run community-driven, topic-based and geo-centric news websites, similar to NewsCloud.com, albeit simpler and more streamlined.  You can see examples of the SMT running here: http://election.newsi.us, http://sarahpalin.newsi.us, http://seattle.newsi.us, http://tech.newsi.us and http://climate.newsi.us.

The alpha release is a preliminary testing release to gather feedback from organizations and open source developers. The initial alpha feature set and design/stylesheets are very basic - but show the potential of the new toolkit. We hope to add more features and improve the default design in the near future.

What can I do with the Social Media Toolkit
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Essentially, you can quickly set up and publish one or more topic-specific news sites with great social media features such as registration, voting, comments, newswires, posting and resource links. Stories are initially seeded from NewsCloud's topic clouds. It's easy to create new topic clouds if you want to. (During the test period, the SMT is restricted to approved clouds.  If you would like to propose a new topic related to your organization or are interested in using the SMT for commercial purposes, please email us.) Organizations with similar missions can also collaborate to moderate specific topics.

Reclaim the Media's Media Heroes Trading Cards

I wanted to let you know about Reclaim the Media's beautiful new Media Heroes Trading Cards (bubble gum not included). Reclaim the Media's team are Seattle friends of NewsCloud and its mission.

Recently announced at the media reform conference in Minneapolis, the full color media heroes trading cards recognize the accomplishments of twenty-one praiseworthy journalists, media activists, and educators. The fun and informative cards are a fantastic teaching tool for students, or an exciting gift for friends, family or budding media activists.

The Media heroes being honored include historical figures such as legendary anti-lynching reporter Ida B. Wells, Newspaper Guild founder Heywood Broun, and Elias Boudinot, founder/editor of the first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix. Also recognized are contemporary media movers and shakers, including intrepid PBS producer Bill Moyers, Paper Tiger TV co-founder DeeDee Halleck, Puerto Rican community activist Richie Pérez, and others. Organizations or collaborations singled out for hero status include news program Democracy Now!, media watch group FAIR, and the Children's Television Workshop, creators of Sesame Street.

RTM executive director Jonathan Lawson says of the cards: "We're proud to honor just a small handful of our heroes - media activists, journalists and teachers who have worked passionately and creatively to promote justice and civic engagement. We hope that these educational cards will inspire more people to follow the examples of our heroes – expanding critical conversations about journalism, and ensuring the health of media that supports democratic values and communications rights."

Each 'Media Heroes' card features original artwork by Seattle artist Michael Leavitt and a brief biographical profile.

All proceeds support Reclaim the Media's work for media democracy and media justice.

You can learn more about them and order here.

Technorati Tags: media heroes, reclaim the media, trading cards

Another NewsCloud story crosses over to the mainstream media

Last October, NewsCloud broke the story that YouTube purged its videos of Comedy Central content. This story was shortly picked up by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters and others. In January 2007, NewsCloud broke the story that the Gates Foundation revoked its pledge to review the responsibility of its investments. This story was later picked up by the Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, and Seattle Times. Today, the New York Times picked up the story on Facebook's obscenely named groups such as Fuck Islam, a story NewsCloud reported last week. This is a good track record for an emerging open source journalism platform. These are the kinds of successes we need more of to have an impact on what people read and what the media covers.

Technorati Tags: facebook, media, new york times, newscloud

NewsTrust: High quality stories from a few days ago

I've been following the NewsTrust feed with great interest. I think their ranking system is a fantastic idea. However, it does seem to be suffering from a lack of adequate community of people to rate stories as they break. Timeliness is an extremely important quality in news - as much as quality and accuracy. The stories that come across my NewsTrust feed are three or more days old in most cases. They are interesting, vetted, well-written but old.

It could be that they don't have a large enough pool of people rating stories. It could be that the complexity of their rating system turns off new raters.

I also heard through the grapevine that they use a content management system that is very difficult to extend and will probably have to switch platforms before they can significantly improve the Web site. This is mostly speculative but I heard it from a good source.

Kudos to NT for a great concept and decent initial execution, but it's time to speed up that ratings queue!

Technorati Tags: newstrust

The Web of Dan Gillmor, the most powerful man in citizen journalism

If you're wondering which citizen journalism and media projects Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, is involved in, here is a list of the disclosures on Center for Citizen Media site.

Dan’s current disclosures:

* Member, U.S. advisory board, FON, a collaborative Wi-Fi company.
* Member, advisory board, NowPublic, a new-media company.
* Investor, Wikia, a consumer Wiki company (Jimmy Wales, founder, is a member of the Center for Citizen Media Board of Advisors).
* Investor, Enthusiast Group, a new media company (Steve Outing, founder, is a member of the Center for Citizen Media Board of Advisors).
* Dan’s previous enterprise, Bayosphere, has been sold to Backfence.com, and Dan has a continuing relationship (including financial) with the new owner.
* Dan holds a small number of shares in these media companies: McClatchy Co., the New York Times Co. and Dow Jones Inc.

Dan is also a member of the board of directors of the California First Amendment Coalition.

I had thought Dan was also involved in Daylife but don't see a citation for this, so I am probably wrong.

I would also expect that Dan is involved in the judging for the Knight Foundation News Challenge but have no information on this either.

If anyone has updated information or links, please post them here.

Technorati Tags: center for citizen media, dan gillmor, gillmor, we the media

Justin Cole of Media Matters is This Week's Spotlight Blogger

Justin is the Online Outreach Coordinator of Media Matters for America. His first post this week is about Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a faggot and how the media is covering or not covering it. Read the story and join the conversation.

Technorati Tags: media matters, justin cole, ann coulter, john edwards

When the mainstream media gets it wrong...and doesn't correct itself

Since posting at NewsCloud, I've broken two stories:

1) In October 2006, I reported that YouTube began a purge of Comedy Central clips, sending out copyright notices to users and taking down Daily Show, Colbert Report and South Park clips.

2) In January 2007, I reported that the Gates Foundation revoked its pledge to review the social responsibility of its investment practices.

I've been fascinated in each case at how the mainstream media inadvertently propagates false or outdated information and often never corrects itself. Online media and search engines are often equally wrong, but sometimes serve to publish corrections that the mainstream sites don't.

After the Los Angeles Times published Dark Cloud Over Good Works of Gates Foundation, the foundation told the Seattle Times that Bill and Melinda would personally oversee a comprehensive review of its investments. This report was repeated over and over again, here are just a few examples:

Gates Foundation to Review Investments (Seattle Times)
Gates Foundation to Reassess Investments (Los Angeles Times)
Gates Foundation may shift billions into ethical stocks after attack on investments (Guardian UK)
Gates Foundation Reviews Investments (Chronical of Philanthropy)
Gates Foundation to Review Investments (UPI)
Gates Foundation Reviewing Investments (AP)
Gates Foundation launches investment review (The Register UK)
Review in train as social conscience pricks Gates (The Age AU)
Gates Foundation to review investments after criticism (The New Standard)

Then, after NewsCloud reported that the Gates Foundation revoked this pledge (also linked by Slashdot), only a few updated articles were posted, few if any corrections. I don't think UPI ever published a correction to the wires, though AP did. Most of the coverage of the revocation occurred in different sources:

Gates Foundation faces multibillion-dollar dilemma (Seattle Times)
Gates Foundation to keep its investment approach (Los Angeles Times)
Gates in snub to ethical investment movement (Financial Times)
Gates Foundation not changing investment practices (AP)
Whiplash at the Gates Foundation (Huffington Post)

With Google, you can now track the evolution of these kinds of reports, just search on Gates Foundation, click News, then sort by date. You can see the thread as it evolves over time. But Google is no truth-meter. Google on Gates Foundation today and you will still get the impression that the Gateses will review their investments. This story appears on the first page of results but no mention of the updated story appears until you click for following pages.

In Anatomy of a Fast One, Geov Parrish discusses the benefits of this to the Gates Foundation, the weakness in commentary of the Seattle Times and the loss to the public:

What we have, then, is a massive investment firm (embedded in a multi-billion dollar philanthropy) smoothly reassuring the public while changing its odious practices not a whit; and the hometown paper first publicizing the odious practices and then, obediently, helping make it all right and sunshiney again.

The only losers are the millions of people around the globe victimized by the practices of firms invested in by the Gates Foundation; and local news consumers who think that the Seattle Times, for once, cast an unfettered, critical eye on a feelgood local institution. In both cases, it’s bad news.

Kudos to Seattlest for laying out the facts and crediting us as a source for the follow up story.

Technorati Tags: bill gates, comedy central, gates foundation, journalism, mainstream media, parrish, viacom, youtube

Microsoft's Approach to Citizen Journalists: Buy them

Apparently, Microsoft's attitude toward citizen journalists is that they can be easily bought, perhaps for less than the mainstream media. The company gave out free laptops to a number of bloggers.

Technorati Tags: microsoft, citizen journalism, bloggers, free laptops

Using journalism to save lives

A rash of carbon monoxide poisonings in the wake of Seattle's recent windstorm led the Seattle Times to publish a multi-lingual warning (PDF) about using indoor heating elements on the top of their front page. This is a great example of journalists using their unique place in our cities to save lives. Kudos to the Seattle Times and kudos to the LA Times for noticing.

Now if we could just get them to endorse candidates with the same sort of ethical considerations rather than routinely endorsing Republicans to push for an estate tax ban in one of America's most liberal cities.

Technorati Tags: seattle times, windstorm, seattle

Eben Moglen on The One Laptop Per Child and Citizen Journalism

As I mention here, I finally watched Eben Moglen's keynote from the 2006 Plone Conference that my friend Jon has been raving about for weeks. Moglen made some great comments on the potential of the One Laptop Per Child project to affect citizen journalism:

"What is journalism like when every village has a video camera and is on the net? ...

What does it mean if the next time somebody starts some nasty little genocide in some little corner of the Earth the United States government would prefer to ignore, that there's video all over the place all the time in every living room?

What does it mean when children around the world are networking with one another over the issues that concern them directly without intermediation, everybody to everybody?"

Every OLPC is specified with a video camera. Here's a recent New York Times article on the One Laptop Per Child project.

It made me happy that I released most of my work from the past two years to the open source community this week.

Technorati Tags: eben moglen, open source, plone, one laptop per child, olpc