Yo, Geneva,

What a remarkable Manifesto. Hurrah.

A couple of thoughts occasioned by the document:

In the section about speaking out for journalism, I like the Big Town
idea, but with a twist. I’ve been hoping someone, such as Poynter, will  
create a daily digest of the best journalism on the Internet –
capsule summaries, similar to Romenesko’s, that guide the user to
things like an ongoing series in a regional newspaper or a brilliant
piece of correspondence in a magazine or an investigative piece of
substance on a broadcast website or an evocative photoessay from
Darfur. The digest (call it WOW, for What’s On the Web) would be
available to newspapers to run on, say, page A2 or B2 where they
increasingly are focusing on late-breaking personalities, and to all
media to use on websites. If Poynter created it, I’d hope they would
earn income to support training. If Poynter does not, I’d love to
persuade the Knight Foundation or someone to fund it. The idea stems from the belief
that newspapers withstood any real threat from radio in part by
becoming the source of reliable information about what’s on the
radio. Then they did the same with television, and again with cable. But newspapers and
other mainstream news organizations have not yet mastered the ability
to help people navigate to what’s worthwhile on the Web, not on a
consistent and timely basis.

A variant comes to mind while reading your section on new forms of
media. Call it FeetToTheFire.net – a compendium of substantial,
verified reports on the web from whatever source that hold
governments, businesses and institutions to account.

And, finally, as a way to combine the resource of citizen insight
with the verification of mainline journalism, create a test website
called Tip.net, through which citizens can email information,
documents or suspicions to a news organization, can ask journalists
to check them out, and can share, if they wish, in the eventual
credit when a verified story ensues.

Thanks for inspiring and leading this difficult work. Congratulations.

Cheers, Jim

Jim

Thanks for these rich ideas, which ring so many bells. I have heard countless times people suggest something like your WOW idea. I'm going to invite some of them here into the discussion. I appreciate your kicking this off. More to come.

Geneva

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Geneva Overholser
Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting
Missouri School of Journalism, Washington bureau
2921 Tilden St., NW
Washington, DC 20008

Work phone: 202-237-5939
Fax: 202-237-7595