#MozNewsLab week one: ‘Prototyping, engaging, iterating’

Posted: July 25, 2011 | Author: Alex Samur | Filed under: MozNewsLab | Tags: #moznewslab | 7 Comments »

“Prototyping, engaging, iterating” — as Katie Zhu aptly puts it — is exactly what we challenged participants to do in the first week of the #MozNewsLab… and we got what we asked for!

The first task was no simple endeavour. We asked participants to think back and write about the ideas presented by our first round of speakers  — Aza Raskin, Burt Herman and Amanda Cox — and apply the concepts these lecturers offered to their own projects — all in a mere 500 words. All of us on the #MozNewsLab team were extremely impressed by the quality of blog posts we received — and the comments responding to them.

Some of the most interesting posts were interactive — allowing the reader to explore the author’s ideas in a non-linear fashion  at their own pace — or used video, sketches or mock-ups to illustrate their points.

Open story telling

Others dove right into proposing  news websites, apps and tools can be more open, interactive and better at facilitating storytelling.

“What would a GitHub for storytelling look like?” asks Jordan Wirfs-Brock in her post. Through doodles and sketches, she explains her idea for a tool that would make a reporter’s notebook open and collaborative, to improve news stories and engage users.

Similarly, Mark James’ ‘wiki-journalism system’ invites participants to become part of the storytelling process, allowing them to propose changes to news and opinion pieces.

Meanwhile,  Corbin Smith links to his ‘people-powered news’ — proposing a platform that engages users to help analyze and collaboratively fact check evidence and source material for a story.

‘Gamifying’ the news

Both Katie Zhu and the team behind Headliner, together with Amy Zerba, identified a similar problem:  people find reading the news a chore.  Yet each blog described very different ways to solve this very real problem.

In Headliner, the news is presented as a game, enticing audiences to “tune in” by making news consumption fun. Zhu describes her team’s approach as one that engages readers in friendly competition, rewarding news literacy.

In contrast, Amy Zerba suggests that part of the reason why young readers are put off by news is that there’s too much to keep track of and not enough socializing.  Zerba ponders whether having social and news sites, applications and windows all together in one space could help resolve this issue, and make the news more social.

Crowdsourced information sharing was proposed as a means to invite audiences into the news production process, thereby engaging them.

Trina Chiasson suggested geotagging might be one way citizens can help inform journalists of stories happening locally.

Jason Spingarn-Koff ‘s Crowdcam project addresses the necessity for free-flowing information through networks of video-enabled cellphone cameras. Through on the ground “Cam” operators, news organizations around the world can access raw footage to supplement their own reporters’ analyses.

A proposal allowing news readers to help curate news stories was pitched by Laura Hilliger.  For Hilliger, reader curation could permit readers to socialize while storytelling, becoming engaged with how news stories are told.

The above are but a small sampling of concepts being explored by #MozNewsLab participants.  With the first two weeks of the #MozNewsLab now behind us, we encourage you to keep thinking, practicing and interacting with lab participants in the weeks to come.

Not a formal participant in the #MozNewsLab, but nonetheless interested in collaborating on one of these projects? Drop participants a line here or on Twitter. And…there’s still time to send a ‘message in a bottle’ to the lab.

The next round of blog posts are trickling in right now — read them as they come in at Planet Mojo (where they are being aggregated)…and look for another post round-up, next week!

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