CitJ in Kansas City: A dream explained

Geoff Dougherty, editor the Chi-Town Daily News, wrote a column at Poynter discussing his management of several dozen citizen journalists in Chicago. His use of software to organize his team is pretty interesting, I think.

I'm beginning to plan my thesis project to (finally) graduate from KU. I'm rolling around two ideas in my head: One is a multimedia project about homelessness in Lawrence or a citizen journalism venture in Kansas City. There are a lot of blogs that muse on life and politics in KC, but I think there's a way to bring them all together.

My thoughts are this: Using a model of the Daily News and the Voice of San Diego, a citizen journalism venture would work best by combining user-generated content with the work of professional journalists. You create editorial standards and ensure your writers adhere to them. You use your in-house reporters to cover beats (Geoff had a good list on one of his blog posts, but I can't find it), some breaking news and some features, while relying on citizen journalists -- including high school journalists -- to beef up your coverage.

Then use your site as an aggregator local blogs (the Daily News does this, but I think there are a lot of local bloggers that could be represented. Kansas City has a solid group of city bloggers who are smarter about a lot of things than a lot of people) and media, maybe even using AP stories. Invite local bloggers to participate in online chats or as guest columnists. Heck, see if they'll be regular contributors. Using Yahoo Pipes to automatically expand the scope of stories. Use a front page Twitter-like function so readers and reporters can give updates on stories or traffic jams or the Royals' World Series victory (or not).

It needs to feed the sense of community that lives online and not appear as a monolith, as so many news organizations do. It should encourage community leaders or government officials to participate in op/eds.

Advertising? Um, I don't know much about it. But there's got to be some solution. One could be similar to the Journal-World's Marketplace, which allows businesses to upload info about their business, while paying for some premium features, like photos. The World Company is branching out of Larry to sell the service nationally.

My vision for Kansas City site would be heavy on multimedia: Maps, Google StreetView, lots of video for feature stories, and more.

Of course, I could be totally mistaken about all this. And I'm sure there's a whole helluva a lot more I haven't even thought of. I am not, how you say, a thought leader. That's what you get for musing on late-night visions.

This just in: The Bean is sweet.









Reporting from outside Union Station...










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Obama zings Cheney

I covered two Obama rallies on Jan. 28, in El Dorado, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo. The KCMO rally was much more laid back, and my camera work was pretty bad, as I was distracted by CNN's Suzanne Malveaux, who was standing next to me. She's not ugly.

Anyway, Sen. Obama rallied the crowd, saying how there would be no Bush or Cheney on the next ballot. He drew lots of laughs with reference to how and he and Cheney are distant relations. Say hey, Obama.