March 05, 2009

A Well Deserved Congrats Too....

My friend Amanda Michel.

1. She had an excellent piece out today in Columbia Journalism Review (my old stomping ground) on her experience with Off The Bus. 

"Get Off The Bus - the future of Pro-Am Journalism"

I helped in only the most modest of ways at Off The Bus. Amanda Michel is, without a doubt, the unsung hero of the project. Without her - it would have been toast.

2. It's official - she is working at ProPublica.
Michelle McLellan breaks it down for us.

I think this is a brilliant move. At ProPublica Amanda can do some real damage (in a good way). The organization is ready to try something new and daring, she will have the editorial support and most importantly: ProPublica has a community of readers that are just itching (I suspect) to get their hands dirty with Amanda and practice distributed reporting.

I've worked with Amanda on past NewAssignment.Net projects and I know she will rock this position. Keep your eye on ProPublica to do some interesting pro-am work.

Mar 5, 2009 11:34:05 PM | Links and People

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
Community Funded Reporting in South Carolina! At Spot.Us we are trying to pioneer "community funded reporting." But the concept is owned by nobody. Anyone can do it, as my last post "community funded reporting in Arizona" pointed out. Spot.Us is a platform that is trying to build out the tools so that independent reporters can easily crowdfund. But there are some tools already out there. And using those tools Daniel Doyle has almost raised $580 to continue coverage of a criminal justice case in South Carolina. Nick Martin is doing it in Arizona. Bonnie is doing it in North Field. Can the SF Chronicle work this route with a freelancer? What about Mother Jones with a Washington Correspondent? We haven't even started to scratch the surface.
PREVIOUS POST
The Great Restructing - For the Information Age For all things Spot.Us - I will quickly remind folks that the project has its own blog where we are updating regularly. I will update here on occasion but will still keep this as my personal blog. This post will be a little on the academic side - but it's something that has been formulating in my head for some time and was recently inspired to spit out. In fact, I can point to the post when this started bubbling in the dome above my shoulders. "Editors and Publishes in a Battle Against Inertia" - which I wrote in January. I avoid the "old media vs. new media" debate. But I do have some constructive criticism for both sides ;) - And here's that criticism for old media.... Newspapers are industrial age institutions. We are leaving the industrial age and entering the information age. Organizations that don't radically restructure will always be two steps behind. For many this is nothing earth-shattering. What I'd like to add to this, however, is the simple idea that newspapers have been the canary in the coal mine. While newspapers are hitting the free fall, the rest of the world is only just catching up with us. Since journalism is the exchange of information it makes sense that this industry would start to feel the shift first and perhaps hardest. But information has been a vital part of any industry - and therefore none are safe. Put this concept (industrial age institutions in an information...

David Cohn

I blog at: http://www.digidave.org I work at: http://spot.us

The Typepad Team

Search

Recent Comments