The Rapidian Dev Blog

GAAH Press Club on a roll!

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:13:00 -0400

You may have caught eyefuls throughout our entries about our belief that there must be physical bureaus to accompany this community news projects. It’s about meeting people where they are, bringing the tools to where people live, we believe. One of our grant commitments was to seed four bureaus in various parts of the city to diversify voices on The Rapidian. Our first to launch is the Grandville Avenue Arts and Humanities with the GAAH Press Club. The cubs have submitted their bios and first two pieces, a video interview with Miss Steffanie (GAAH program director) and their review of traveling Broadway show Grease. Excitingly, the troop’s second submission has a Spanish-language twin to keep it company on The Rapidian.

Truly worthwhile reads, I promise:

Additional coverage of the bureau on The Rapidian:

First bilingual piece on The Rapidian

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 17:29:00 -0400

by Denise

What an exciting day for us today! Thanks to Lindsay McHolme, Rapidian reporter extraordinaire, we have our first Spanish language contribution.

The story is about the conception and ambitions of the only Spanish language community choir in Grand Rapids. In the past, Marjorie Kuipers, director of Grandville Avenue Arts & Humanities (parent org of Cook Arts Center), has mentioned that they expect this to be very popular in the community.

Lindsay’s piece is especially wonderful as many households in neighborhoods surrounding Grandville Avenue are predominantly Spanish speaking, single-language homes. Here’s to helping them get the word out!

News presentation - Pushing that envelope

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 12:54:00 -0500

by Denise

Something I get really excited about when it comes to The Rapidian is how we can think outside of the box. Our contribution base is a mishmash of backgrounds, talents, passions and publishing experience. Every once in a while, we get calls from timid but enthusiastic newbies asking if we think they’d meet our quality standards (answer: we work with everyone). But honestly, that’s where we draw our strength. In the current upheaval, there’s also room to rethink how to present news.

What’s exciting about having a base not conditioned by years in the field is that they are unfettered to re-envision news presentation. Cases in point:

Collaborative live coverage of the community mini-grant series, Sunday Soup
Stop-motion video for a collaborative news brief on Live Coverage, a local art event
Fill-in-the-blank madlib on how to talk like an art critic (local life piece during ArtPrize 2010). Screenshot of an MS Word doc but effective nonetheless!
Audio piece à la Sounds of Michigan on the ambience of the local amateur boxing gym
Mapping out a walking tour of women’s history in Grand Rapids

View GR Historical Women: Walking tour in a larger map
Music performance review in comic form

So much potential! Cin-cin to more creative coverage in 2011!

GVSU class analyzes The Rapidian

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 11:04:05 -0500

by Denise

Fascinating! We’ve partnered with a professor at nearby Grand Valley State University who is having his professional writing students try their hand at dynamic web publishing.

Leading up to the assignment, students are blogging their ruminations on assigned reading and actually applying it to The Rapidian. Demographics, social and cultural reading environments, audience’s values… We’ve long suspected but never had the time to map it out. Their perception is incredible feedback for us and neatly categorized to boot.

Read all four analyses (group 3 did an especially nice job):

Group 1: Characteristics of The Rapidian Audience
Group 2: Group discussion - Considering The Rapidian
Group 3: Rapidian rhetorical analysis
Group 4: I am a Rapidian reader

Some other highlights:

It feels as though The Rapidian is akin to a local diner. It is a place where the community goes to catch up, but isn’t well known to those outside the community.
—Brennen Gorman
Grand Rapids is not that big, but such an open-ended writing prompt can make this city seem enormous. Our class alone will add something like forty new articles to the base of stories about this town of little more than 200.000. It’s pretty cool, and with so many articles being generated we can really know what is going down in GR. Hopefully we won’t get picked on for talking about ourselves too much…
—John DeRuiter
So now I’m faced with a challenge unlike any other class assignment I’ve had so far: writing a piece that I can’t take for granted will be read. I have to admit, it’s a strange situation to find myself in. As I’m sure many others have, I’ve assumed having an audience interested in what I write. But this challenge also presents an exciting opportunity—finding an opening to fill that will get readers interested in my piece.
—Dale Johnson

We miss you, Drew!

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 14:36:40 -0400

We miss you, Drew!

GRPress' first "Citizen Journalists Chronicle"

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:31:00 -0400

by Denise

We’re not certain whether this is the beginning of a new tradition in Grand Rapids’ daily paper, but three of our contributors’ pieces were reprinted in Wednesday’s edition of The Grand Rapids Press.

ArtPrize: Social networking that bleeds – ArtPrize voting relies heavily on Internet technology, and phone apps and texting make it easy for viewers to record their votes. Chris Smit plans on taking advantage of this but exhorts ArtPrize goers to interact with the artists.
“We should know that our ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ were not the kind of interactions these talented artists were looking for while creating their work,” Smit reminds us. “Instead, they were looking for conversations about human conditions, artistic values, politics, genders, sexualities, powers, and other real-life elements in need of prolonged speculation, contemplation, and conversation.”
ArtPrize: Whose vote counts most? – Art historian and professor Elizabeth VanArragon has had a year to chew on last year’s ArtPrize happenings. She shares her observations on the public’s unspoken criteria for judging art and encourages viewers to take advantage of the plethora of art education opportunities available during ArtPrize.
ArtPrize 2010: Essays and Critiques - George Wietor’s staff editorial explores what we hope in year two as The Rapidian matures. In year one, we saw sweeping pieces and recaps of under-covered events. As an arts community organizer, George hopes that since there’s an open platform for the arts community to take advantage of, we’ll collectively take it to the next level by helping one another critically consume issues and events.

The teaser with our logo on the front page led readers to A17, brimming with Rapidian content and not an advert in sight. The Press had been in open communication with us about collaborating prior to this printing.

Since one of The Rapidian’s goal is to increase the flow of news and dialogue in our community, we see this as a positive. The Press has a different audience from The Rapidian, and its print audience is likely a different crowd from even their online audience (The Press does regularly push their readers to us in link aggregations and regular blog posts like this one from Troy Reimink). Over 50% of traffic coming to The Rapidian is via social media, and recent findings by Facebook’s media team supports that this sort of lifting exposes new audiences to The Rapidian.

The natural question that comes up would probably be along the lines of how do we feel about The Press lifting content? How does this affect professional journalism? The short of it, I don’t expect the Citizen Journalists Chronicle to be a regular thing if it does become a tradition. For one thing, however much staff may try to seed stories, citizen reporting is not predictable, as story ideas bubble up from community members. You can figure out from there why it wouldn’t have a big impact on job security for professional journalists.

This shouldn’t in any way be read as a blanket statement for free content, but in general, I’m a big proponent of the concept of a local media ecosystem. Every media outlet has things they do well, and when we supplement, are in open communication with one another and try to reduce redundancy, we serve our public better.

Observations from Block by Block, a community news summit

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 12:42:00 -0400

by Denise
Crossposted from The Rapidian

Last Thursday, I pinwheeled through the freeways separating our city from that tall bold slugger known as Chicago. It was the first Block by Block summit (BxB), a conference organized by Michele McClellan of the Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellows Program. Michele had gathered about 100 participants, mostly locally focused, digital journalism projects similar to The Rapidian.

The various media outfits took it as a chance to feel out the terrain and establish some sort of standard to measure ourselves against. There were several community foundations, universities and tech organizations interested in supporting the swell of hyperlocal coverage, and projects in attendance fell into three broad categories with hybrids in between:

Content producers - Projects that are [volunteer] staffed by those who create content. Usually, they are former journalists who either saw a gap in coverage or wanted to cover issues without editorial restrictions. Some of these projects were local bloggers who organized into one main platform (Chattarati of Chattanooga, Tenn., Gapers Block of Chicago, Ill.) and evolved from that stage. This is where many of the one-person outfits fall, and they are often both the engine and steering wheel for the project.
Community managers - These are projects, like The Rapidian, whose staff focus mainly on managing a community in addition to contributing content. Some are collectives (Oakland Local in California, Twin Cities Daily Planet in Minnesota) while others are backed by nonprofits and universities as one of many projects, not the only project (The Rapidian is part of the CMC’s consortium of WYCE, GRTV, Wealthy Theatre and a couple other media; besides editorials, content from staff is produced during our own time).
Replicable projects focused on crowdsourcing from a local level or specific community - Two prominent attendees were Spot.Us, which asks interested audience to fund journalism projects, from specific stories to organizations; and SeeClickFix, which maps out citizens’ submissions of neighborhood problems (i.e.: potholes) for city governments to address.

As the first digital journalism conference convening such a diverse crowd, it was fascinating to see how our various understandings lined up. Each definition had many striations.

Hyperlocal - At The Rapidian, simply put, we define hyperlocal as within the city boundaries. For others, that was too broad and they zeroed in on a neighborhood. Some neighborhoods were as big as small towns. Others focused on the metro area, which was undercovered by their local media.
User-generated content - There were many publications that relied on volunteers to generate content. We all used different terms, from “volunteer staff” to “contributors” to “reporters.” While all of these fall under the umbrella of user-generated content, it does not necessarily mean that it’s a come-one-come-all citizen journalism platform. Some focused active recruitment on former journalists or polished writers. Others assigned journalists to make sure under-represented voices had a place on their platform.
Community information - The moot definition of journalism did buck slightly. The term “journalism” tends to be a stumbling block when trying to get at a bigger conversation, and questions of ethical standards and conflicts of interest come up. “Community information” seems to be a more encompassing term.

It was fascinating to see how The Rapidian fit into this landscape. So many projects are a response to community needs that we sometimes forget that each place is different. Grand Rapids is community-oriented and abounds in philanthropy and willing volunteers, not something every big city can brag about. If I wanted to explain a certain initiative, I had to first make clear where we were coming from.

This first BxB was a good starting point for community information providers to see and paint out the digital media spectrum. I’m certain that by the second BxB, we’ll all be ready to take it several steps further.

Working with volunteer contributors

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 13:54:00 -0400

by Denise
Crossposted from the Block by Block 2010 blog

Truth: I’m an impassioned participant on this subject. Andrew Huff and Mary Turck presented on working with volunteer contributors, and it’s the bread and butter of The Rapidian, a civic media site that relies entirely on user-generated content. You might as well have called me Hermione. “Oh, oh!” “Yes, Ms. Granger?” I’ll keep it to a minimum, but here are the takeaways, peppered with my observations.

As user-generated content sites, Andrew and Mary’s publications have really been around the block. Since 2003, about 300 volunteer staffers have walked through Gapers Block‘s doors, and the publication now hovers around 100 volunteer staffers with eight editors at the helm.

Twin Cities Daily Planet is just two years GB’s minor. Its reporter base comprises interns, volunteers, freelancers and professionals, but ultimately, Mary doesn’t grant special privileges based on these distinctions.

Together, Mary and Andrew focused on working with volunteer reporters and untrained writers. The key takeaways from the breakout session can be charted into four broad points.

Read the rest at the Block by Block blog

Photo

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 16:45:00 -0400

Recap: Rapidian ice cream social

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:44:00 -0400

by Denise

Photo by George Wietor
@mixedfeelings on Twitter: “Big group here @ Grand Central Market for the #Rapidian ice cream social. Not a lot of ice cream, though.”

Today, we had our first open gathering of the summer at the Grand Central Market. We called it an ice cream social, taking it at face value that if you’re sitting in GCM where munchies abound, you’ll naturally want to indulge in ice cream, gelato, sorbet or a good sammich.

Attendance was at a solid 15, and as the discussion continued, it became more intimate. We had framed the social as a discussion with guest facilitator Ian Storey, a Ph. D. candidate at Colorado State University who looks at citizen journalism and political economy.

The goal was to show our reporters the other side of the citizen journalism coin: The observers and academics. However, due to faulty directions on my part, Ian didn’t make it.

We switched gears. Topics ranged from The Rapidian under review by the Knight Foundation to perceptions of the term “citizen journalist” to The Rapidian’s currency when reporters try to land interviews.

Several things that came out of this:

In professional journalism, there’s been some struggle coming to terms with “citizen journalists.” At our social, nobody seemed to have an issue calling themselves citizen journalists. One photographer felt it was moot, paralleling it to the advent of digital photography; anybody with a digital camera can say they’re a photographer, but does that make him less of a professional photographer? He doesn’t think so.
- We asked how reporters present reporting for The Rapidian to sources. The Rapidian is still growing and not everyone has heard of it (yet), so the sure-fire way of presenting it—no questions asked—is as a local publication.

Unlike freelancing for other news outlets, if you decide to pursue a story for The Rapidian and it meets the hyperlocal news parameters, there’s a 100% chance that it will be published. You also set your own agenda—coverage to publishing—which is not always the case with freelancers. Rapidian contributors’ voices are less filtered, and this can be empowering.

Reporters do feel an obligation to see pieces through in a timely manner when they interview their sources and use The Rapidian name. However, stories don’t always pan out, or real life tears into the picture and ideas need to be shelved. Our reporters felt guilty but were unsure about how to wrap things up. In those situations, proper protocol would be to inform sources.

How do reporters deal with prior review? Contributors want to make a positive impact with their reporting, but they don’t want to be a mouthpiece for the businesses and individuals they interview. With as loose of a structure as The Rapidian, reporters can respond to requests for prior review by offering to share quotes, but not the entire story.

To get us thinking about sustainability, Rapidian Mom Laurie Cirivello has charged us with raising $10K this fiscal year. One idea staff had tossed around was putting a donate badge on all submissions, but we shied away on the assumption that it would be intrusive for the reporter. We were overwhelmingly assured that it was a fair trade-off.

What we learned from today is we need to create a resource page for reporter FAQs, from advice when stories are shelved to how to deal with prior review. This wouldn’t just be for the reporters. It would also give inquiring interview subjects an idea of reporter obligations (we say this loosely because ultimately, every contributor is a free agent, and The Rapidian is the platform).

Upon mentioning the $10K, our attendees immediately clobbered the issue. Gem of the day: We’re blessed with talented and willing volunteers.

SUPERLATIVES: An appreciation party

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:46:00 -0400

by Denise

Last night was our first appreciation party, *cleverly* named SUPER-lative! We’re pretty zeroed in on Grand Rapids, but from what staff has heard, it seems like The Rapidian is some sort of experimental journalism darling right now. Flattered, of course, but none of it is even remotely possible without the obvious: Our reporters.

We’re two months shy of our first birthday, and we couldn’t have done any of this without our volunteers on all different levels. Among the many unsung heroes of The Rapidian are those who email us feedback about the site, our devoted editors (Darin Estep, Mark Rumsey, Kolene Allen, Rickey Ainsworth, Jen Proctor, Linda Gellasch, Roberta King, Kevin DenDulk and Maryann Lesert), cheerleaders of the project and the most unsung of them all: Ron Woldyk, our Web developer.

Staff is putting together a video article of our recent appreciation party. Stay tuned to The Rapidian; it’ll be up early next week!

Variation on the NPO training session

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:53:00 -0400

by Denise

Yesterday, we had our first nonprofit training session this summer. The typical NPO training session runs 60-90 minutes and covers how The Rapidian works and tips for content submission. The last part of the training is devoted to a rundown of how to distribute content through social media.

So why was this training session different? I recently joined the board of the Midtown Neighborhood Association, and since June, I’ve been posting content as a nonprofit neighbor. Our constituency is geographic, and since there are such gaps between each distribution of the quarterly newsletter, our goal is to keep neighbors connected through timely news.

As the primary contact for MNA’s Rapidian account, I’ve registered with a NPO mindset. The observations our staff has garnered has prompted us to add two new fields to NPO profiles: A place to link to your organization’s Twitter and an area to add a condensed mission statement.

Perhaps more interesting is what I’ve found from adding content.

Various board members and MNA staff contribute to The Rapidian, but as the gatekeeper, I want to make sure that published articles have news value. We submit content at least once a week, and my contributions are written as news reports or local life features. I’m co-opting a comparison that Laurie Cirivello (The Rapidian’s mom) used: Taking advantage of an online platform doesn’t mean using it as a billboard.
While savvy NPOs use both our story bank and calendar, they should suggest coverage of their own events *if* it’s not something they could cover as well as a reporter.
Many times, we see NPOs publish pre-coverage of their event but rarely post-coverage of how their event went. We see groups market volunteer opportunities but few stories on who came to the volunteer event and lessons learned or profiles on consistent volunteers. Boys & Girls Clubs of Grand Rapids Youth Commonwealth has done an especially commendable job covering their own events and events outside of their organization that interest their constituency. They often conduct interviews with their youth and staff to incorporate into articles.
NPO representatives also have access to materials that reporters would have a harder time organizing.

Example 1: The Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts puts out very compelling video interviews with artists from all over the country who stop by GR to install their exhibit. Although all exhibits are clearly at the UICA, the video interviews focus on artists’ motivations.
Example 2: I experienced my first Festival of the Arts earlier this summer. This annual event, known simply as “Festival” to GR natives, has taken place for 41 years. Had Festival signed up as a nonprofit neighbor on The Rapidian, an amazing story would have been a photo essay of 40 years worth of Festival advertisement posters.

So cin cin, fellow nonprofiteers! Here’s to bountiful content that asks the question, what is useful to our audience?

First in Rapidian history!

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:40:00 -0400

by Denise

Forgive the theatre in our title, but it’s true! On B3 of yesterday’s edition of The Grand Rapids Press was the first Rapidian article to make it to print. Midtown Neighborhood Association authored the piece about the Fulton Street Farmers Market. You can read the story here.

Catalyst Radio

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:33:00 -0400

by Denise

Catalyst Radio has been airing on 88.1 WYCE for five years. Last week was the first show since it made its new production home with The Rapidian.

Traditionally, the format for Catalyst Radio has been a laundry list of the latest media-related news, an interview segment with a nonprofit and an events calendar. Linda Gellasch and Tom Schwallie wore multiple hats as the producers, engineers and co-hosts for the show.

While the format under The Rapidian hasn’t changed too much, the first segment will now be a dialogue about recent media developments. Interview segments will now also feature Rapidian reporters and stories. Linda and Denise will host the weekly show.

You can catch the show at noon every Friday on WYCE 88.1 or streaming live.

Matching capacity and execution

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:36:00 -0400

by Denise

A couple of weeks ago, a student working with Chicago Now to implement outposts in the Gold Coast and Old Town contacted us. She wanted to conduct an interview via email. Her questions were heavy ones, and it took me two days to answer all eight. The last one, however, is a lesson I’ve been learning since we launched. It’s been hammered in with all the unforeseen hurdles that have come up in The Rapidian’s short life.

8. Any advice for those just starting a community news site?

Make sure to match your capacity with your execution. Most groups starting community news sites are limited in resources and have small staffs. It’s breathtaking to see excitement and ideas bubbling up around the concept of citizen reporting, and while you’ll get tons of feedback from every corner of your community, it’s important to be more than an inch deep. We all want to show people we’re being responsive to their feedback, but freeing capacity to pursue fresh ideas requires streamlining processes and hammering out patterns. Be patient, and you’ll create a deep foundation to go miles wide. After all, branches only grow as far as their roots.

I know: The answer was a bit flowery. But I stand by my point.

At last week’s staff meetings, we outlined our goals for summer and fall and then took a critical look at our inefficiencies as a staff. What took up most of our time? Was there any streamlining solution or way to distribute the work so we could free up more capacity?

By the end of summer, we hope to have accomplished the following:

Host at least two town halls
Build up to a baseline of at least three contributions from reporters per day (we currently receive between 0-6 contributions from reporters—excluding nonprofits—each day)
Set up a basic volunteering structure beyond fulfilling editorial needs
Launch our Miro Community site
Release the first iteration of The Rapidian’s friend feed so users can see who subscribes, comments and rates their content.

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:48:00 -0400

by Denise

We know, we know. Crickets. That’s how quiet, we’ve been. Since November, a lot of things have happened. We’ll try harder at posting regular dev updates. In the meantime, here’s a laundry list of most of what we’ve done (click on the links to skip ahead):

Content Facilitator
BETA II
Press pits
Instructors’ manual
SW bureau
SE bureau
February Flickr competition
Catalyst Radio
Twitter RSS feed: @VeryLocal
GRPress collaboration on town hall

CONTENT FACILITATOR

Matthew Russell joined our core staff in December as the content facilitator. Matt also works as a news/web editor for The Advance. He’s well-known in these here parts for his delicious vegan cookies, experiments with kombucha and rounds out our staff as a bike commuter.

BETA II

Our site took a day off on Dec. 14, 2009 and returned the next day decked out in beta II features. To find out about changes, improvements and additions, take a look at New Media Planner George Wietor’s staff editorial.

PRESS PITS

We held our first press pit in November and have continued at a rate of one per month. An active reporter presents at each press pit about his or her process and tips. Afterward, we break out into smaller groups. Originally, press pits were intended to bring contributors and interested participants together to ask questions, brainstorm, share and mingle. Talking with our reporters, we realized that while there were many audience members who would love to contribute, they were intimidated by the idea of long, in-depth pieces and weren’t sure whether their story ideas would even garner an audience.

We had a great turnout in November, and that number started to dwindle to a core group with each subsequent gathering. We decided to try something different for March: A targeted press pit. It seemed that the more press pits we held, the less people needed a great deal of time to brainstorm, so for March, we asked two of our active reporters to present on their collaboration about development in the Heartside neighborhood. It was still the core group, but with much more participation and something for everyone, from registered users to seasoned contributors.

INSTRUCTORS’ MANUAL

Based on instructor feedback from the first half of the 2009-2010 academic year, we’ve created an instructors manual to answer common questions and help walk our instructor-editors through the editorial and publishing process. We have yet to create a section on the site for instructor resources and are planning on brainstorming with instructors at the end of the school year so we can ramp up for the 2010-2011 academic year.

SW BUREAU

SW had its first “friendraiser” on March 10 at the Cook Library Center to increase The Rapidian’s exposure in SW and the Hispanic community. We’re still working at community building and awareness about The Rapidian.

SE BUREAU

We are partnering with Lighthouse Communities for the SE quadrant. With this quadrant, we feel it’s important to establish a SE presence on The Rapidian before heavily recruiting volunteer contributors. We will be meeting with various nonprofits, neighborhood associations and community-based organizations to encourage them to utilize The Rapidian to the fullest. Once we have formed strong neighborhood partnerships, we’ll begin identifying potential reporters together.

FEBRUARY FLICKR COMPETITION

We held a low-key competition in February to increase and diversify contributions to our Flickr photo bank. Winners will receive a Rapidian t-shirt with a QR code that, when scanned, will take smart phone users straight to The Rapidian’s front page.

CATALYST RADIO

Catalyst Radio is a long-running program on WYCE Radio (one of the Community Media Center’s other branches). It has traditionally showcased nonprofits and community goings-on, starting with an overview of media developments, interview segment and closed out with an events calendar. The Rapidian will now play a part in the production. The first leg of the show will still be about media development and literacy but in dialogue form. The middle section will alternate between interviews, reporter showcases and audio stories. The events calendar will remain the same. First show to air in a couple of weeks.

TWITTER RSS FEED: @VeryLocal

After several tweeters asked us to set up a twitter feed for our content, we took the plunge and created @VeryLocal. You can read more about it in George’s staff editorial.

GRPRESS COLLABORATION ON A TOWN HALL

We facilitate a good many meetings: The local Drupal meetup, nonprofit Rapidian sessions and most recently, an indie PR session. They’ve all been sort of similar, but we’re partnering with The Grand Rapids Press to put on our first town hall. In journalism, town halls really sprouted out of the public journalism movement of the 1980s, early ’90s. The point was to translate awareness into meaning by physically bringing an audience together to discuss what a hyperlocal issue meant to them and whether there was any action that should come out of it.

We’re currently working on the details and are aiming for late April, early May, but both The Rapidian and The Grand Rapids Press are very excited about this.

There are a lot of other additions we’ve made, such as a weekly digest and weekly updates to all users and a weekly email of story pitches and goings-on (complete with potential questions) to reporters and editors on The Rapidian (we crosspost them on Facebook notes). We’re gearing up for spring and summer to increase our audience base and number of active contributors. We’ve created a user bar for the site since beta two launched. Most of all, we’re trying to hammer out routines so we can increase our capacity to tackle all the inspiring ideas we’ve received via feedback.

Surfing the Wave

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:15:00 -0500

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?

Playing in the "everybody sandbox"

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:47:00 -0500

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

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:34:49 -0400

Veer | Ideas: Pumpkin orange by Joe Buckland

"I am a husband, father of two and journalist who would rather be a proponent of free speech than..."

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:15:48 -0400

“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.”

- Drew Storey, The Rapidian’s first content facilitator