by Denise
In late May, Google announced its newest application, Google Wave. This application is supposed to revolutionize the Internet. Google developers described it as what email would look like if it were invented now.
A combination of live email threading, instant messaging and wiki editing, Google Wave dazzled web developers and professionals across all disciplines. To boot? It’s open source. For everything there is to know about Google Wave, read Mashable’s complete guide.
After four months of drum roll, Wave debuted in late September. Since then, there’s been a bit of confusion. For anyone who’s watched the Google I/O presentation on Wave, it’s exactly as the video described. Due to the sparse number of people using Wave, it’s also created this sort of experience:
In the one-and-a-half months since Wave hit the scene, there’s been very little news about what developers are doing with it. Invites have been slow to come. After more than a month on Google Wave, I only recently got the ability to distribute 20 invites. As we’ve seen in the past, developers create the infrastructure, but the most innovative uses for web apps come from users. Perhaps Wave would benefit by widening its early adopter pool.
Anyway, The Rapidian and Wave: I personally hope that Wave will replace our static commenting system.
In this social media age, conversations on the same topic in different forums is common. This is amplified if the original source for the material (i.e.: an article on The Rapidian) has a barrier to entry (i.e.: site registration; take a look at Chris Apap’s article). The material is reblogged, tweeted and crossposted to Facebook. Although these sites aren’t specifically themed, Quantcast will tell you each are dominated by socioeconomic strats and more. With these walled-off conversations, there is little cross-pollination of diverse perspectives. Often times, instead of building on a conversation, the same ideas are being rehashed.
Waves are embeddable on blogs and Web sites. My hope is there will be tweaks so that users do not first have to register a Google account to register for a Wave account; for Wave to be compatible with the way user accounts have been structured (i.e.: all Rapidian site users agree to a no-anonymity policy)*; and for existing accounts to be easily ported over to Wave accounts on the hosting site. Assuming this pie in the sky is possible, if Wave becomes the universal platform for commenting, then everybody would be participating in the same town hall despite where in the interwebs they’re coming from.
For more cool ways people are using Wave, check out Lifehacker’s compilation.
*I realize this has its own issues because not all sites prescribe to a no-anonymity policy. It looks like the web is starting to trend this way, but maybe if more sites became OpenID hosts?
by Denise
Having come from a journalism background, I care very much about the industry’s future. But as the citizen journalism coordinator for The Rapidian, I’ve heard more than one professional journalist say, “I get paid for my content.” Sometimes, it’s said with a degree of smugness and other times, with desperation.
Traditionally, citizen journalism has been viewed by professional journalists as the amateur hour. Regardless of what it is, it can still be useful to professional journalists.
As a citizen journalism experiment, we’ve billed The Rapidian as a supplement—not a replacement—to a dwindling local press. Together, journalists and citizens will have to find a solution to the shrinking news scape.
Of course, professional journalists are not only concerned about the existence of solid information but also the suspension of their livelihoods. Meanwhile, almost every journalism theorist and expert is emphasizing the importance of entrepreneurship in this uncharted and potentially innovative chapter of journalism. You see it in J-schools. You see it in tweets. You see it in posts like this. The self-starters will be the ones who get ahead in this rocky news climate. In the absence of a formula, the common advice is to catch up on your Flash, HTML and Wordpress. Register on Digg. Become the Jack and Jill of Internet trades.
But having taught social media classes where there was always at least one laid-off journalist, registering for a Flickr account just to keep up is not necessarily the right answer. After all, many people who are successful in social media are driven by their passion for the Internet or a particular hobby.
No, no.
This is where The Rapidian comes in. Not as journalists but as local citizens: Why not contribute to your hyperlocal news source?
I’m not saying report for The Rapidian the same way you would produce a story for WZZM. That’s up to you and your employer. There are so many opportunities to highlight topics that wouldn’t normally make it past the cutting room floor. Are you into architecture? Do an urban exploring photo essay that highlights unusual building cornices around town. Planning a family outing? Let other people (especially new families or new parents) know about family-friendly places and events like Eastown Street Fair. Use a medium that you are not expected to use in the professional newsroom. Photo slideshows, audio clips, comics, Flip-cam it up!
Professional journalists who are the most indisposable tend to be embraced outside of the newsroom. Take Tommy Allen of Rapid Growth Media or GRPress’ Gonzo. Not every journalist is granted a blog, though. Most journalists cover very specific beats.
The marketing hype around social media can basically be melted down to this: Social media is about making a brand of your life and interests. Twitter, Drop.io, Bit.ly—they’re just tools you can use.
The Rapidian is another of these platforms. It’s shaping up to be a positive place for the Grand Rapids community, and that community grows every day. Arguing for the validity of journalism as an industry doesn’t do much for saving specific jobs, but making yourself a fixture in your community makes you an asset to any company’s reputation.
Flickr photo by ShironekoEuro, used under Creative Commons
I am a husband, father of two and journalist who would rather be a proponent of free speech than sell my abilities for market value.
by Denise
Drew Storey, The Rapidian’s content facilitator, passed away unexpectedly yesterday.
Drew has been involved with The Rapidian since before it was named The Rapidian, when “Log Jam,” “Red Button,” “16th Bridge” and others were part of the naming smorgasbord. He spearheaded our editorial committee as a volunteer chair and hammered out a comprehensive editorial policy that has been the beacon for The Rapidian. After joining The Rapidian staff, Drew said being content facilitator was his dream job.
Although softspoken, Drew was all about community. He was an active volunteer with The Rapidian for nine months prior to being hired on, a board member for the Grand Rapids Community Media Center and also volunteered with many local groups to help with their communications.
He is survived by his high school sweetheart and wife of many years, Danielle (née Schmidt), and their young daughters Madison and Taylor.
The Rapidian will post information as we receive it in the coming days including how the community can make contributions to help with expenses and provide support to the family. For full obituary and memorial service details, please visit MLive.
by Denise
George and I recently presented at the Alliance for Community Media’s central states conference. Many people asked for our slides, so here they are:
by Denise
As a part of our Knight Foundation Community Information Challenge grant, we’re not only establishing an online presence but also four neighborhood news bureaus hosted at community centers in each quadrant of Grand Rapids.
Dun dun dun! And the first news bureau to step up to the plate: Cook Library! Our neighbors over at the Grandville Avenue Academy for the Arts have generously staked out a corner in Cook Library to establish a news bureau in what is predominantly a Hispanic community (72.7% in 2000, not including undocumented immigrants).
While we’re eager to establish The Rapidian as an outlet for this community, there are very unique questions coming up in such a grassroots approach. We’re currently putting together a Grandville-specific committee with members from the community. In the meantime, here’s a smattering of the sort of questions we’ve been trying to answer:
Cook Library is the first “guinea pig,” but “hyperlocal” isn’t just a way to describe news content, it’s also the definition of grassroots community building. I’m pretty sure every bureau that is established will become a guinea pig in its own right.
by Denise
Here at The Rapidian, we’ve tried to create a framework for honest and relevant content. A week and a half after launch is still too early to assess the outlet’s strengths and weaknesses, but here’s what we’ve learned:
Content type
Since the beta launch, we’ve discovered our site structure is not sufficient. Currently, we have three main categories: News, local life and opinion. News has the most sections, but the majority of content we receive are features that fit under local life. Of the rest of the submissions, it’s a toss up between news and opinion, but even news submissions aren’t necessarily time-sensitive.
Coverage
With little prodding, few people are initially going to look at citizen journalism as an opportunity to explore issues they don’t know the answer to. People are going to start out creating content on what they care about, what they know and what they’re involved in.
With our general target audience, it might be a hyped up assumption that citizen reporters are most valuable because they cover what’s not published by professional media. In professional journalism, the news section is the heftiest because news pieces are generally succinct. They don’t necessarily ask the audience to think critically as they consume. At least in the first week, we’ve realized that citizen reporters will naturally start out reporting on specific aspects of news that have not been explored in-depth by mainstream media.
Disclosure
So what does this mean? Ithaca College Student TJ Gunther asked, “what’s more important, freedom of citizens to report or truth and preservation of the Rapidian name?”
To us, these aren’t polar opposites; they go hand-in-hand. We’ll only have a name to preserve if our citizens report truthfully, and the citizen reporters will determine what reputation we have to guard.
However, we also need to do our part to tease out content that is relevant to everyone. Quality information can sometimes be obscured by first-person narratives that keep audiences from digesting content critically. To address this, once we take care of the quirks on the Web site, we’re going to add another text field to each submission that goes something like this:
Disclosure: What motivated you to create this piece? (300 characters max)
We’ve received pieces that use first person in the intro but then continue as features. We’ve also received some very self-promotional pieces that needed to be edited down. The disclosure text field is our attempt to nudge citizen reporters to focus on the subjects in their pieces rather than their first-hand experiences by providing a separate space for that.
Drew Storey, the content facilitator for The Rapidian, is an ex-homecoming king who simply assumed he’d become famous one day. Surprisingly, none of the jobs he’s had since age 15—bus boy, pool boy, pizza boy, janitor, postal carrier, cab driver, park ranger, truck driver, warehouse worker, reporter—led to stardom.
While cutting his reporter chops at a local weekly community newspaper, Drew honed his limited, but natural writing abilities and found his voice. When a deeply-ingrained contempt for authority led to his termination, Drew dabbled in freelance writing, movie making and experimented with creating a local literary zine. He spends his free time reading, playing outdoors and simultaneously catering to his two daughters while cursing their names.
Having lived on the West Side for the past 6 years with his wife and two children, Drew couldn’t help but develop a pride for the City of Grand Rapids while feeding an appreciation for Polish food and beer. He looks forward to using the aforementioned experiences to help mold The Rapidian into something unique, relevant and inspiring.
by Denise
A couple of days ago, in preparation for our beta launch, we tweeted that we were claiming #Rapidian for our own. If you saw breaking news going down in front of you, tweet with the hashtag #Rapidian to make it to our front page Twitter widget. We were expecting to see tweets like @TommyGSync’s:
Since then, we’ve had some surprising results. While most people use #Rapidian as a replacement for @TheRapidian, some particularly bright bulbs have used it to highlight pieces that actually don’t link back to The Rapidian. Before we even had a chance to turn our heads from the computer screen, @srdailey had made his mark on Rapidian history:
He had crossposted an opinion by Juliet Bennett Rylah on Founders Brewery forbidding a fundraising event on their premises for a politically controversial cause. After all, it is GR news.
Following the unveiling of The Rapidian, @ericbuist piggy-backed off the #Rapidian hashtag to bring attention to Spinneractive, a new interactive marketing group.
Then two posts from @hipphop:
All this to say that we asked our Twitter community to use #Rapidian for sharing newsworthy snippits, and you never know what sort of grab bag the interwebs will give you. These are the early stages, a time for experimenting. We’re looking forward to seeing how the community will determine what #Rapidian means.
