Jake, as he does so often, finds a gem.
The BBC is experimenting with with Convening Space for Bloggers. Here is Jake's key summary of what the BBC are trying to do -
Robin Hamman, senior community producer for BBC English Regions New Media, explained the initiative in an interview with paidContent.org: “We aren’t sure if it’s aggregator, a citizen journalism project or a media literacy campaign - it probably cuts across all three.”
This is a three-month trial launched last week by BBC New Media Central and BBC Manchester:
- Between 10 and 20 volunteers are being recruited across the city.
- Through workshops, participants will be guided through the BBC’s editorial guidelines and production values and then referred to commercial blogging platforms to start their own sites.
- The BBC will monitor RSS feeds from these blogs and highlight the best content.
- Pre-existing local bloggers/Flickr contributors are also invited to submit work or tag content “bbcmanchesterblog” so it can be picked up.…As for the workload, Hamman optimistically envisages this as a one or two hour job each day for BBC staff — skimming the RSS feeds and wrapping editorial around the best. The rest of the task is to promote the blog to BBC journalists as an efficient source of content about Manchester.
Is this not an important and easy way of expanding the space that Public Radio holds in America and maybe even in the world?
Ellen and the Gang are doing this already at NCPR. The rest of you have no excuse! Here are some pictures of their site
Note my friends on PEI that Alan McLeod in Kingston is a featured blogger showing how NCPR can start to move across the border into a community of 400,000 people that have poor coverage from the CBC. The CBC has no effective Kingston coverage and instead broadcasts from Montreal or Ottawa.
Imagine what could be done to build a great Canadian community of support in this way. Hello Vermont, WNED and Maine.....
Imagine if NPR had a National Blogging Forum that hosted some of the best bloggers and thinkers in America? What would this cost? What might be the effect? What would it be like to expand beyond the Beltway and tap into the goldmine that is thought and opinion in America and in the wider world.?
Imagine if NPR offered such a space to the African American Community or the Hispanic community? What could happen? What space would open up? What talent would be empowered?
What about Kids - Could a good set of hosts tap into MY Space? Hey what about getting behind the Ethiopian community in DC at WETA - every cab driver I know listens to WETA anyway. What about the Indian Diaspora?
Am I stupid or is this not easy and is it not inexpensive?
