Multimedia Reporting at the Western Knight Center

So I'm at UC Berkeley this week as a fellow in the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism's seminar on multimedia reporting. The primary instructor is Jane Ellen Stevens who I reported on in a February post. I am joined by 15 colleagues who are working journalists from organizations like Newsday, the Washington Post, the Tampa Tribune, and the Orange County Register. I'm the only academic.

I'm hoping to further enhance my technical and content skills in creating multimedia stories. I'm also interested in what my colleagues are doing at their news organizations regarding convergence. Finally, I'm looking for ideas for teaching these skills.

Yesterday Michael Skoler from Minnisota Public Radio presented a brilliant approach to involving audience members as story sources. They've created "Public Insight Journalism". Audience members register with PIJ and indicate areas of interest and expertise. They now have over 18,000 registered in their network. Through a custome database, quieries are sent to those with interest/expertise in a topic area that has a survey. The responses are then analyzed for use in stories, sometimes including interviews. This has lead to many stories that use them as sources.

Next year they plan to make their custome software available for free to other news organizations.