Open-source News at the Guardian
Crowdsourced journalism is no longer cutting edge but this month the Guardian UK announced plans to take user involvement to a new level. The newspaper is opening up their news desk, making public a live account of the daily newslist kept by editors. Visitors are given a glimpse into the scheduled announcements, events and speeches that make up the news day.
Journalists are well aware of the goldmine of information provided by user comments on their online articles. Online comments frequently provide leads, additional information or ideas for a new story. Even being aware of the potential value in this approach, the change is still a major step for a newspaper to take.
As a Guardian staff reporter explains, “few documents are more carefully guarded in newspaper offices than the newslist. The mixture of what’s coming up and what the editors are hoping for can be so valuable that rivals have even been known to pay for a sneaky look. Some newsrooms I’ve worked in have relied on code words to describe really juicy stories.”
The Guardian national news editor, Dan Roberts points out that “Obviously, we’re not planning to list all our exclusives or embargoed content and we’ll also have to be careful not to say anything legally sensitive or unsubstantiated,”
Readers are encouraged to get in touch with reporters and editors via Twitter if they have ideas and can also see what editors think about stories-in-progress via Twitter updates. After the first week of the new system, the newspaper staff gave a positive report and provided examples of how user feedback had already influenced coverage. Upon finding readers wanted more out of coverage of theUK government’s health reforms, the newspaper responded in ways such as increasing live coverage of related government debates.
While there is speculation that the crowdsourcing approach may simply be a strategy to scale back paid staff, it may also be just what they say it is, a way to remain relevant to readers in a rapidly changing news environment.
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