Trinity Mirror is to pilot a ‘crowd-sourcing’ news and information initiative entitled “Make The News” at the company’s Post and Echo titles in Liverpool.
The news was announced at UCLan’s latest Journalism Leaders Forum in Preston.
Crowd-sourcing is essentially co-opting the public and specialist commentators into helping create and populate stories and content. Benson said the initiative was partially inspired by Assignment Zero in the US whose founder and executive editor Jay Rosen participated in the UCLan forum by telephone.
“Basically we’re looking to work with Post and Echo readers” said Benson. “Initially we’ll be focusing on some specific sub groups, particularly professional groups.”
Some of the initiatives will be launched in-paper but others will start in other Echo/Post spin-off products and build up from there.
Benson
Benson added” One of the things we’re keen on is to get journalists to act more like radio producers, sourcing information and views in addition to generating copy themselves from their desks."
Referring to the BBC’s ‘ultra local’ pilot project in the West Midlands – which is currently under review – Benson said: “One of the things we’re definitely not trying to do is be like the BBC. We want our material to be fresh. If our material is sometimes rough at the edges that’s ok as that will give it personality. In my view, the BBC’s project was personified by typical BBC pomposity.
“From our own experience, we’re making really good progress but we’re still at a stage of experimentation and we’ve got to be careful not to be complacent.
“We’ve won awards for our growing digital output – check out our Teesside successes - but in terms of the web overall, UK newspapers are from innovative.
“We’ve got much further to go in breaking down journalists’ resistance to readers’ contributions.”
Benson didn’t disclose when the campaign would launch but confirmed the project was well underway.
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