Getting a Nice Hit of Helium

By: Mark Fitzgerald In the two years since Helium formed what it calls the "world's largest writing community," it claims that more than 150,000 people have written about one million articles for its Web site, a kind of giant freelance marketplace shopped until now mostly by magazines and some Web sites. Now, Helium is taking its "social publishing platform" to the newspaper business, with the proposition that it can improve the standard of available "citizen journalism," the mixed-quality contributions from ordinary folks that are a bedrock strategy in many papers' efforts to become ever more hyperlocal.

"We've developed a harnessing engine for inviting the community in to do content, and now we've got a ratings engine so that every article that's written is sorted for quality, and the quality rises to the top," says Peter Newton, vice president of business development for Andover, Mass.-based Helium.

Articles are rated by buffs who get two articles at a time on the same general topic and are asked to rate which one is better. On average an article is rated 15 times, Newton says. "We do a few things to prevent gaming," he adds. "You can't select the articles you rate, for instance, and we take the author's name off it."

In the time since it's been open for business, "thousands of articles" from the million or so submitted to the site have sold, Newton says, most for about $20 to $50 apiece.

As Helium sees it, the system is a means for newspapers to get better-quality local articles at the low price they expect to pay for the work of community journalists. "We can put in a community stringer program where [a paper] is using freelancers, or where it has cut back on editorial staff," Newton says. "We can help you fill those gaps, and do it for a much lower cost." The content, of course, skews to softer features, and well away from investigative reporting or areas where professional journalism skills are critical, he notes.

A few newspapers are trying it out: The State Journal-Register in Springfield, Ill., is starting a feature that allows readers to post articles in a debate format on the opinion pages of its Web site. In the weeks after Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's arrest on federal charges that he sought to sell the seat vacated by Barack Obama, there's been no shortage of interest in the feature, says Executive Editor Jon Broadbooks.

"I think it's going to be something that's going to build over time," says Broadbooks, who noted the GateHouse Media-owned paper rolled out a soft launch of the feature over the summer. "I didn't expect it to get millions of page views out of the box. It's yet another way to further the conversation with the community."

In December, The Eagle-Tribune in North Andover, Mass., partnered with Helium to assemble a stable of community stringers to provide hyperlocal content. Publisher Al Getler says the Community Newspapers Holding Inc. daily looks at the program as a way to give "a greater voice" to local residents, who can provide stories that complement the work of the newsroom.