Journalism Hope Blog

I've been super busy of late, but I wanted to mention the success my friend Al Jordan is having over at ElwoodIndiana.org. He recently asked for help and had a couple trustworthy and hardworking citizens step forward to moderate anonymous comments. His site's really taken off since earlier this year.

Wow. What a day. I went out a little before noon to cover the 10th annuel Character Counts celebration in downtown, Anderson. About three or four hours after returning from the event (with photos, video and information...) here's look at The Herald Bulletin's homepage and the Anderson Free Press homepage. Keep in mind that I'm one person and they have a lot of resources at their disposal.

Well, another issue is out. At least some of the copies. Around 17,000 will be mailed October 8th. The rest I'll be handing out around town and at events. There's a thread at AFP - where we actually have quite an active close-knit community.

Al Jordan, who runs ElwoodIndiana.org, recently decided to turn off anonymous comments on his site. He approved each and every one before it went on the site. A few months ago, participation *really* took off on the site.

There's a thread at AFP I think I should highlight. Someone points out that a repaired railroad crossing wasn't done very well.

Others step up and offer who to contact. Then someone does the research to find out the number of the crossing. At least one person has reported it to the railroad company so far.

I interviewed Anderson Mayor Kris Ockomon again yesterday. Went really well. Questions came from readers of the website. Still haven't merged it with print, but think I will with this one. In the beginning I was able to present a gift from a reader in Oklahoma. It was a B&W photo of Chief Anderson. Gentleman who sent it called and thanked me. Felt good.

B-Roll:

I have to admit that I only just recently discovered this show. Thanks to the magic of Hulu.com I've been watching it. Pretty cool stuff. I wonder when the next newspaper/website/news television show will come out.

Here's a cool story for you. The local newspaper was ordered by a local judge recently to give up the name of one of their anonymous posters or at least the name of the company the plaintiff needs to go after for the information. The forums for the CNHI run newspaper are handled by a third party - Groupee's HeyMartha forums.

This is a few days old. I missed it for some reason and my buddy who runs the site (Al Jordan - the Computer Dude) didn't mention it. It's big news in my eyes, though. Another example of the people formerly known as the audience reporting news. Of course, a couple people said we'll have to wait on the paper to find out what happened, but still...