Thursday, November 22, 2007

On Nov. 2 I wrote about how the crowdsourcing news initiative NewAssignment.net was looking to recruit beat reporters whose employers would support them in an experiment to directly involve a social network in beat reporting. On Nov. 14, the BeatBlogging project officially launched. Here are the 13 participating reporters, from a range of media -- newspapers, magazines, Web sites, cable TV, and more.

It'll be a little while before the results of this effort are evident in those journalists' published work, but I'll be intrigued to watch this develop.

One of the projects I think will be particularly interesting involves Keith Reed, who's just moved from the Boston Globe to Cincinnati.com where he will cover consumer products giant Procter & Gamble -- a notoriously image-sensitive company. Rosen wrote about this project, "He's going to build the social network approach in from the start of his beat, and also use the network to introduce himself to Cincinnati. 'P & G's reach in this region is broad and deep,' writes business editor Carolyn Pione. "Their business hits our economy on many levels, from vendor relationships to shareholders, former employees who are now entrepreneurs, retirees volunteering in the community, spin-off industries and community development organizations.'"

Given that companies are comprised of people, and P&G employs so many people in the Cincinnati region, I'll be curious to see whether and how P&G employees and their families will engage in Reed's beat -- as well as whether any astroturfing will be attempted there. Stay tuned!




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