Journalism 2.0 / Independent startups

Posted on March 4, 2009 by Peggy Holman

Submitted by montgomeryl on Wed, 03/04/2009 – 6:07amin

Session Convenor: Mark Briggs, Serra Media LLC

Session Reporter: Leigh Montgomery

Discussion Participants: Attendees: Barbara Iverson, Columbia College Chicago; Karen Duffy, the Daytona Beach News-Journal; Barbara Kantrowits, Hechinger Institute on Education & the Media, Columbia University; Tom Stites, Banyan project; Anne Anderson Freelance writer; John Hamer, WA News Council, Jeremy Iggers, TCDailyplant.com, Jay Young, Jenn Hemmigsen, Ronnie Lovler, Tracey Durkin, Sara Justicia, Leslie Fishburn Clark, Hannah Miller and Leigh Montgomery, The Christian Science Monitor

Independent startup journalism introduced by Mark Briggs, of Serra Media LLC that has a startup: Newsgarden, that has at a few newspaper clients.  The app allows mapping of news stories as well as microtargeted advertising:

http://www.serramedia.com

Mark spoke about examples of startups with VC funding

http://www.techcrunch.com

http://www.gigaom.com

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

http://www.politico.com

These have become national players due to the significant investment of funding, planning & staff.   Techcrunch has actually changed the way high tech sector is reported; MSM now liveblogging at industry events, where high tech leaders are speaking etc.

Others:

http://www.barista.net

http://www.pegasusnews.com – has been bought & sold

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org

Mark also gave examples of startups by former newspaper journalists, include

http://www.myballard.com/

Husband and wife reporting team that covers their Seattle neighborhood of Ballard

As well as another reporting team:

http://www.westseattle.com

Jeremy Iggers was attending this session, from http://www.tcdailyplanet.net.

This features original reporting by city journalists, others to feature what is happening, best of the neighborhoods, community press, ethnic press, workday Minneapolis.  They also train potential journalists.  This had startup funds of $12K.

There is another news site called Minnpost run by Joel Kramer.  This is staffed by former Minneapolis Star Tribune journalists.  Kramer does not believe in ‘citizen journalism’ and is doing  ‘old style journalism.’

http://www.minnpost.com

The group spoke about eventually syndicating this content, making it available to aggregators etc.

About Peggy Holman

Peggy Holman supports organizations and communities to uncover creative responses to complex challenges using innovative engagement processes. The Change Handbook, co-authored with Tom Devane and Steven Cady, documents many such processes. The book is the considered the definitive resource for leaders and consultants working to increase resilience, agility, and collaboration in organizations and other social systems. Peggy co-founded Journalism that Matters in 2001 with three journalists to support the pioneers who are shaping the emerging news and information ecology. Peggy’s latest book, Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity, supports people facing disruptions to invite others to join them in realizing new possibilities.
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One Response to Journalism 2.0 / Independent startups

  1. Brian says:
    December 24, 2010 at 9:42 pm

    MediaStorm
    Submitted by Brian (not verified) on Fri, 06/19/2009 – 12:23pm.
    Mr. Briggs should highlight MediaStorm, as it’s a now functioning start-up that has done some very innovative things in terms of creating a new organic distribution model for independent content of true value.

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