Jay Rosen's Beat Reporting/Social Networking Project Signs Up 13 Reporters

By: Joe Strupp At least 13 beat reporters have signed on to a new project by New York University professor and media blogger Jay Rosen that seeks to provide blogging space for beat writers and their sources.

Beatblogging.org, launched today via Rosen's newassignment.net site, reports that it has signed up reporters at news outlets ranging from the Houston Chronicle to MTV.

"My idea was to run parallel experiments to see whether 'beat reporting with a social network' is a viable pro-am method in journalism? or just an attractive concept," Rosen writes on his Pressthink blog. "I said I was trying to recruit at least 12 beat reporters and get their editors on board with a simple proposition?Maybe a beat reporter could do a way better job if there was a 'live' social network connected to the beat, made up of people who know the territory the beat covers, and want the reporting on that beat to be better."

The result so far is a commitment from 13 reporters to use the approach as part of their regular beat networking and story organization.

Those Rosen says have signed up include; Eric Berger, a science reporter at the Houston Chronicle; Ed Silverman, a pharmaceutical reporter at The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J; Eliot Van Buskirk of Wired.com, a digital music columnist; Education reporters Kent Fischer and Tawnell Hobbs of the Dallas Morning News; Keith Reed of the Cincinnati Enquirer, who covers Proctor & Gamble; Henry Abbot of ESPN, who reports on pro basketball; Michelle Davis of Education Week on technology; Matt Nauman, an energy reporter for the San Jose Mercury News; Daniel Victor of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., whose beat is the town of Hershey, Pa.; Stephen Totilo of MTV, a video games reporter; Brad Wolverton, who covers college sports business for the Chronicle of Higher Education; and Brier Dudley of The Seattle Times on Northwest technology companies.

The News-Press of Ft. Myers, Florida, also has signed on with a child welfare beat reporter yet to be named.

"The beats will operate independently: thirteen boats steered by reporters and editors in the participating newsrooms. They will decide what course to follow." Rosen writes.

Berger of the Seattle Times describes his approach in a posting: ?The primary platform will be a reengineered version of my SciGuy blog, but I can envision the scientists each having a blog or some Web space for their own area of expertise. All of this would be interconnected. The center of gravity of my beat coverage would shift to the Web, and we would develop creative formats for displaying this networked content in the newspaper.?

As Rosen explains it in another item, "To better understand the difference, take the Rolodex of a typical beat writer and imagine all the scattered but well connected people in it wired together. Pooling their knowledge for the good of the beat, they also get something from participating in its daily buzz; it?s river of news. We haven?t 'always' had a reporting system like that."