Low-tech crowdsourcing

[Dave Brooks]

This may draw hoots of derision (derision only comes in hoots, I believe) from people with technical knowhow, but The Telegraph of Nashua, NH, has launched its first crowdsourcing-ish project, using cut-and-paste, rather than any specialized software-type stuff.

The background: Verizon recently sold all its phone lines in New Hampshire (and Maine and Vermont) to a small company, FairPoint. We covered the sale in the usual ways but we weren't sure how to keep an eye on the corporate handoff, since any problems would crop up here and there, rather than a central location. (Verizon sold its Hawaii lines a couple of years ago and the billing/customer service there was a disaster; the state consumer advocate finally had to step in.)

So we recruited a couple dozen readers to keep us posted on their experiences as Verizon customers, sending in their thoughts/experiences as weeks went by. Easy enough: But how were we going to put the comments on the Web site?

I didn't want to use a standard public forum, would would attract the usual chaff, but we have no system to create a password-protected discussion area for the public. We probably could have created it, but it would have taken weeks of IT/Web meetings and tryouts etc. etc. etc., and we started too late for that.

So I told the recuited readers to email me. I just cut/paste their comments into our existing Saxo news-blog software, which flows onto a specialized page that has a link from the home page. Related news stories also flow there. This is it: Nashua Telegraph FairPoint Watch Hey presto, new and old journalism join hands.

As a say, it's technically simplistic - and it's a pain for me (it wouldn't work if we had too many more recruits).

But it works, and on the plus side it lets me edit comments as necessary, and write a decent headline link.

Even better (said the old-school journalist who still secretly thinks it's only news when it has a byline on it), we've gotten a story out of it after a week - not a big story, it's only about certain automatic payments not working, but it's a story we wouldn't have had otherwise.

Dave Brooks

[Paul Balcerak]

How'd you go about "recruiting a couple dozen readers"? I feel like I might have some use for that kind of thing at some point and I'm curious.

[Dave Brooks]

I wrote a couple of paragraphs asking for help, had a small logo made by an editor (I have no design sense) and we ran it in as a standalone box in the paper a few times - once with a wire story about the sale, once with my technology column, and once on the local/region front. I thought it might be a struggle but we almost got more than I could handle.

[Brad King]

It's great that you've done that. Every good interaction online starts with a small step. What would be interesting is if you got their zip codes, then put them on a map -- and began to chart where and what kind of issue people are having. You may find that certain areas are more prone to issues than others (as infrastructure issues are -- like other things -- fixed in order of importance).

It's a simple mashup that could be done with a Google map and a database.

Then you'd have a list of man-on-the-street sources for any story in the future (reactions and such) or the beginnings of a community-journalism-esque database that you can send out -- looking for reactions and such.

[Dave Brooks]

Good idea, but unfortunately they're not really spread out that much - almost all of them are in the three Nashua zip codes that form the core of our readership, and which has a different wiring that the rest of our circulation area (it was once served by a different company that everybody else). So far at least I don't have enough detailed reponses for a chart, although I will for a narrative summary; if things start going to hell in a handbasket, then that might be possible.

One thing I've found in our tentative crowdsourcing efforts is that you need a *lot* of people involved, because each person contributes so little on average. I'm beginning to think it's something that is very, very hard for small news orgs, which operate on such a small audience base.