1. Who is our target audience (hint: Don't try to be all things to all people)
Our audience would be people who read the metro section of newspapers. We want to launch limited to a small geographic area. Our audience would also be people of voting age, reporters and people who work at local nonprofits.
2. What is the competitive landscape? (hint: Sites that do it well)
Who Represents me? http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/
opensecrets.org
3. How do we differentiate ourselves? (hint: Secret sauce)
Forum for users. Also, editorial input would be limited to posting legislation and straight-talk translation.
4. How do we create our site? (hint: Staff and schedule)
Site Manager, IT, undergrad/grad interns to do research, editors, forum moderator,
We would need at least 6 months out past hiring staff to launch the site in order to establish a backlog of information.
Once launched, new legislation, ordinances and zoning will be posted within 24 hours of being posted by governmental body.
5. How do we get our content? (hint: Pre-built, manual, automatic, updated)
We will cull legislation from online postings via Sunshine laws and open meetings acts rules, we will establish relationships with legislators and local government members and also find places where the info is posted on the web already so that we can become a one-stop-shop.
We will scan in legislation/type it up and then the straight-talk translation will be done with intern research and editorial write ups. Forums will be created by IT and maintained by the forum moderator.
Design will be very simple, almost Drudge-esque, but with better fonts.
6. How do we market our site? (hint: Spread the word)
Since we plan on embedding the technology into established sites, most of the marketing is done for us.
7. How do we sustain the site? (hint: Show me the $$$)
The start up will be through venture capital and investors. Lots of interns.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Elevator Pitch
Many times citizens don't know about important local legislation that will affect their lives until it's too late to act. This happens because newspapers often don't have space to follow every local ordinance and zoning variance. This searchable feature will allow people to enter their address and search for upcoming laws, ordinances and legislation that will affect them. The technology would be a perfect addition to a newspaper's website.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Building a community
I think two really great examples of communities being formed on the web are the examples of Andrew Sullivan and Nico Pitney. Pitney has been quite a hot topic recently since President Barack Obama called on him at the press conference yesterday. I think Obama probably called on him because of the amount of information that Pitney has come across from the thriving community that comments on his blog, sends him tips and other material. Andrew Sullivan sometimes writes posts that either repost a comment from the blog or responds to it. I think both of these men do a great job of engaging with their audience.
Another method I've seen in community building is meet-ups. Jezebel, a popular blog that covers news and pop culture with the focus on women and women's issues, has meet-ups for readers and commenters in cities all over the world. Sometimes commenters for a specific blogger become close and throw meet-ups that even the bloggers attend.
Speaking of the Gawker Media site, I think that Gawker Media has had a lot of luck with the approved commenter system. There is a pecking order among commenters and the most consistently funny commenters get stars next to their name. Terms violators and commenters that otherwise perterb the moderators are blacklisted and no longer allowed to comment.
Ultimately, it's about making sure that the people that contribute to the community of your blog or website see dividends. They can benefit from engaging debate, recognition or the promise of happy hours with new, snarky friends, but there's gotta be something in it for them.
Another method I've seen in community building is meet-ups. Jezebel, a popular blog that covers news and pop culture with the focus on women and women's issues, has meet-ups for readers and commenters in cities all over the world. Sometimes commenters for a specific blogger become close and throw meet-ups that even the bloggers attend.
Speaking of the Gawker Media site, I think that Gawker Media has had a lot of luck with the approved commenter system. There is a pecking order among commenters and the most consistently funny commenters get stars next to their name. Terms violators and commenters that otherwise perterb the moderators are blacklisted and no longer allowed to comment.
Ultimately, it's about making sure that the people that contribute to the community of your blog or website see dividends. They can benefit from engaging debate, recognition or the promise of happy hours with new, snarky friends, but there's gotta be something in it for them.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Project Pitch
Local government tends to have a much bigger impact on the individual than the federal government. Zoning, ordinances, liquor laws, smoking bans and other local governmental decisions tend to only make newspapers and other news outlets when it's too late for an average citizen to get up to date and have a chance to affect change in their communities.
I got the idea for this website awhile ago when I was checking to make sure a particular part of my beat was represented by the same Texas State Senator as the rest of the area. It's possible to search by address to see exactly which State Representative, State Senator, US Senators, US Representative, city council member etc... represents persons registered to vote at that specific address. Why not make it easy for people to search for what ordinances and laws are being discussed that will affect them based on their address?
The site would allow visitors to pull up both the official version of the legislation when available and a plainly worded summary that would simply explain the impact of the bill, ordinance, variance etc...We would not include federal legislation, but eventually we would also be able to pull up earmarks that would bring money into our communities, though that may not be possible at first. This type of service is not currently available in a searchable database that users can search by address.
To start, we'd start with a small geographic area to test the site and get feedback before a larger launch. We'd have a team that consisted of web designers, engineers, researchers, writers, multimedia specialists and editors.
Depending on feedback from engineers and the like, I'd hope to get the site up and running right after a local election like a city council election. I'd also like to allow visitors to sign up for email updates. We'd have multimedia reporters at planning and zoning to create videos for the site and also to create podcasts as advocates for and against more controversial laws and ordinances.
When I was reporting on local politics and government I got tons of requests for these types of articles, but my papers simply did not have enough room. I do think there is a demand out there, but, like I said before, it would be important to test in a small area before any large launch to determine the real demand.
The ultimate goal would be to sell the technology to a larger site so that they would have to maintain and moderate the site. It would take a large backer to keep the site running up to its full potential
I got the idea for this website awhile ago when I was checking to make sure a particular part of my beat was represented by the same Texas State Senator as the rest of the area. It's possible to search by address to see exactly which State Representative, State Senator, US Senators, US Representative, city council member etc... represents persons registered to vote at that specific address. Why not make it easy for people to search for what ordinances and laws are being discussed that will affect them based on their address?
The site would allow visitors to pull up both the official version of the legislation when available and a plainly worded summary that would simply explain the impact of the bill, ordinance, variance etc...We would not include federal legislation, but eventually we would also be able to pull up earmarks that would bring money into our communities, though that may not be possible at first. This type of service is not currently available in a searchable database that users can search by address.
To start, we'd start with a small geographic area to test the site and get feedback before a larger launch. We'd have a team that consisted of web designers, engineers, researchers, writers, multimedia specialists and editors.
Depending on feedback from engineers and the like, I'd hope to get the site up and running right after a local election like a city council election. I'd also like to allow visitors to sign up for email updates. We'd have multimedia reporters at planning and zoning to create videos for the site and also to create podcasts as advocates for and against more controversial laws and ordinances.
When I was reporting on local politics and government I got tons of requests for these types of articles, but my papers simply did not have enough room. I do think there is a demand out there, but, like I said before, it would be important to test in a small area before any large launch to determine the real demand.
The ultimate goal would be to sell the technology to a larger site so that they would have to maintain and moderate the site. It would take a large backer to keep the site running up to its full potential
Thursday, June 11, 2009
The internet: Killing and Sustaining Books at the Same Time
Technophobes love to point their fingers at the internet and accuse the internet of killing tons of stuff. The internet is a mass murderer and has killed everything from interpersonal interaction to music to books. The strange thing though, is that the internet has done a lot for those same things it supposedly killed. Let's look at books, for example.
Here's some ways that the internet has helped books.
1. Book trailers- YouTube has a ton of these. Smaller publishing houses and the biguns have both found these videos to be a great way to drum up hype for new releases. Here's an example:
2. Chronological reading through blogs- I've seen a couple of examples of this and I bet it's going to get more popular once more people see how fun this can be. For instance, Dracula is an epistolary novel. It's written as a series of dated diary entries written by the protagonist, Jonathan Harker. The novel starts on May 3, so on May 3 of this year the first blog entry was put up. It's an incredible way to read a novel because you're truly able to experience the pace of events!
Another example of this was when George Orwell's journal was blogged chronologically according to the date of the entries.
If you subscribe to these on an RSS feed it's easy to keep up.
Here's Dracula and here's Orwell.
3. eBooks- More and more people are reading books online. Now, I don't read books online, so I'm not sure where the best places are to get eBooks, but here's a place to start.
So, the internet, while it can be quite the unpredictable force, isn't out there to steal your beloved tomes and eat your babies.
Here's some ways that the internet has helped books.
1. Book trailers- YouTube has a ton of these. Smaller publishing houses and the biguns have both found these videos to be a great way to drum up hype for new releases. Here's an example:
2. Chronological reading through blogs- I've seen a couple of examples of this and I bet it's going to get more popular once more people see how fun this can be. For instance, Dracula is an epistolary novel. It's written as a series of dated diary entries written by the protagonist, Jonathan Harker. The novel starts on May 3, so on May 3 of this year the first blog entry was put up. It's an incredible way to read a novel because you're truly able to experience the pace of events!
Another example of this was when George Orwell's journal was blogged chronologically according to the date of the entries.
If you subscribe to these on an RSS feed it's easy to keep up.
Here's Dracula and here's Orwell.
3. eBooks- More and more people are reading books online. Now, I don't read books online, so I'm not sure where the best places are to get eBooks, but here's a place to start.
So, the internet, while it can be quite the unpredictable force, isn't out there to steal your beloved tomes and eat your babies.
Politico 44
Politico 44 is a site that can stand by itself, but it's run by Politico. I think that the site probably is deceptively simple to run because so much of the content is supplied by other people and organizations. The blow by blow schedule is supplied to the press by the White House, so that bright shiny feature is spoonfed to them I bet.
The White Board is essentially a liveblog of whatever's happening live. Politico must have a correspondent that follows the president around to document the minutia. Then you see the speed read, which is basically a glorified RSS feed that links to content from other sites.
Next to that is a story written by Politico staff that could have been written from a wire or just from cursory info sent from a correspondent on the scene. I'm not going to break down every facet of the page, because there's so many. But, I think the content on this page is a genius mix of scene reports, hard news, scheduling news, video and links to other content.
There's gotta be a large amount of Politico staff that make it there business to being around. Parts of Politico 44 even remind me a bit of Gawker Stalker. They just need eyes and ears on the Hill and at The White House, some reporters that are used to writing stories on the fly, the information customarily available to the press, some researchers that sort through other media outlets and multimedia experts. They also must have some talented web designers because I usually hate pages that have this much content, but I actually think the page is inviting and clean.
I just wonder how long people will care about this kind of detail. America and the world are fascinated with 44 now, but when the sheen wears off will people still spend their times on sites like this? I'm not sure.
The White Board is essentially a liveblog of whatever's happening live. Politico must have a correspondent that follows the president around to document the minutia. Then you see the speed read, which is basically a glorified RSS feed that links to content from other sites.
Next to that is a story written by Politico staff that could have been written from a wire or just from cursory info sent from a correspondent on the scene. I'm not going to break down every facet of the page, because there's so many. But, I think the content on this page is a genius mix of scene reports, hard news, scheduling news, video and links to other content.
There's gotta be a large amount of Politico staff that make it there business to being around. Parts of Politico 44 even remind me a bit of Gawker Stalker. They just need eyes and ears on the Hill and at The White House, some reporters that are used to writing stories on the fly, the information customarily available to the press, some researchers that sort through other media outlets and multimedia experts. They also must have some talented web designers because I usually hate pages that have this much content, but I actually think the page is inviting and clean.
I just wonder how long people will care about this kind of detail. America and the world are fascinated with 44 now, but when the sheen wears off will people still spend their times on sites like this? I'm not sure.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Political Sites Worth Visiting
I like to read sites from all over the political spectrum. I believe that avoiding the rhetoric of people and publications that I disagree with would be counterproductive. People tend to get all riled up when they are exposed to views they disagree with, but what better way to continue to hone your own argument? Plus, you might actually learn something and possibly even change your mind every once in awhile. I know I have.
This list is pretty limited, but I figure not everybody wants to spend the amount of time I do in front of a computer screen. That plus genetics is the reason I am so pasty white. I don't care though. My tattoo artist says my translucent ivory skin is an excellent receptical for ink. Even yellow shows up on me. But, I'm getting off topic. Here's some of the political sites I enjoy exploring day after day.
538-Nate Silver is a statistical prodigy who rose all the way to the top of the ranks of pollsters and political insiders last year after being largely known in sports circles for some time.
It's hard to say which is more impressive, Silver's prediction of the Tampa Bay Rays' unexpected playoff bid or his crazy accurate forecast of the popular vote in the 2008 presidential election. I would LOVE to take him with me to Vegas or Pimlico.
Politico- I really enjoy reading Politico, but the tone occasionally bothers me. The site has an engaging, gossipy feel that sometimes makes it hard to take seriously. Either way, Politico has made its way onto my daily read list because it's entertaining and it excels at showing the more human side of the hill.
Weekly Standard- Features well known conservative writers like William Kristol, Fred Barnes and the Weekly Standard Blog. The blog is a good read and the website has content from the magazine as well.
The New Republic- The website of the liberal magazine is a mix of free and paid content and several prolific blogs. Their reviews and arts coverage are also excellent.
Huffington Post- Huffington Post has been described as the future of journalism. While that remains to be seen, the site has writers from all over the political spectrum and has fostered a great community dialogue.
Congressional Quarterly- Congressional Quarterly could be a one stop shop for political coverage and I especially like the transcripts they post. Other fantastic features include bill and vote trackers. I recommend taking some time to explore the site to find all the goodies because the layout isn't the most friend. Still exceptionally useful though.
League of Ordinary Gentlemen- This site chock full of excellent writing and thoughtful analysis. I have been quite impressed with the site's commitment to tackling the most controversial topics without resorting to name calling, accusations and the other nasty habits of political pundits.
This list is pretty limited, but I figure not everybody wants to spend the amount of time I do in front of a computer screen. That plus genetics is the reason I am so pasty white. I don't care though. My tattoo artist says my translucent ivory skin is an excellent receptical for ink. Even yellow shows up on me. But, I'm getting off topic. Here's some of the political sites I enjoy exploring day after day.
538-Nate Silver is a statistical prodigy who rose all the way to the top of the ranks of pollsters and political insiders last year after being largely known in sports circles for some time.
It's hard to say which is more impressive, Silver's prediction of the Tampa Bay Rays' unexpected playoff bid or his crazy accurate forecast of the popular vote in the 2008 presidential election. I would LOVE to take him with me to Vegas or Pimlico.
Politico- I really enjoy reading Politico, but the tone occasionally bothers me. The site has an engaging, gossipy feel that sometimes makes it hard to take seriously. Either way, Politico has made its way onto my daily read list because it's entertaining and it excels at showing the more human side of the hill.
Weekly Standard- Features well known conservative writers like William Kristol, Fred Barnes and the Weekly Standard Blog. The blog is a good read and the website has content from the magazine as well.
The New Republic- The website of the liberal magazine is a mix of free and paid content and several prolific blogs. Their reviews and arts coverage are also excellent.
Huffington Post- Huffington Post has been described as the future of journalism. While that remains to be seen, the site has writers from all over the political spectrum and has fostered a great community dialogue.
Congressional Quarterly- Congressional Quarterly could be a one stop shop for political coverage and I especially like the transcripts they post. Other fantastic features include bill and vote trackers. I recommend taking some time to explore the site to find all the goodies because the layout isn't the most friend. Still exceptionally useful though.
League of Ordinary Gentlemen- This site chock full of excellent writing and thoughtful analysis. I have been quite impressed with the site's commitment to tackling the most controversial topics without resorting to name calling, accusations and the other nasty habits of political pundits.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
