E-Media Tidbits

ibrattleboro.com/braintrust The citizen journalism/community site iBrattleboro pools community expertise through its Community Brain Trust wiki. Could mainstream news orgs do likewise?

Lately I've been thinking and learning a lot about wikis -- sites comprised of pages that can be collaboratively edited either by anyone or a defined community or team. I've been wondering why more news organizations haven't been putting wikis to use for engaging and involving their communities.

When I mention this to my journalism colleagues, usually they cringe and raise the specter of the infamous 2005 Los Angeles Times wikitorial fiasco. Sadly, that one early disastrous experiment -- which appears poorly planned and fundamentally flawed -- has become something of a legend in the news business, and thus still carries far too much weight. Why should we give up so easily?

Personally, I think there are many ways that wikis could enhance journalism, and I'd like to see more experimentation on this front. Most notably, wikis can transcend the short attention span and fragmented view of issues and events inherent in traditional story-format reporting. With a wiki, no topic ever really "scrolls off the home page." Wiki pages are forever active -- even if they lie fallow for long stretches of time. And interested people can continue to watch and edit these pages indefinitely

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I'm looking for good current examples of wikis being used specifically by news organizations to augment their other traditional and online offerings. So far I'm not finding anything current -- but I'm sure someone must be doing this.

So I thought I'd toss this one out to the Tidbits community: If your news organization is using wikis as part of your online offerings, please comment below, explain what you're doing, and give us your wiki link(s). Also, if you've seen something like this, please speak up. I'd love to have some current examples to discuss.

And if your news org has considered but discarded the idea of wikis, why did you decide against this option?

In the meantime, here's some food for thought:

• Wikis can succeed on newspaper sites, claims Wikipedia founder: Journalism.co.uk, Jan. 19
• Wiki: Don't Lose That Number: American Journalism Review, August/September 2005. (Disclosure: I'm quoted in this)
• Online Journalism Review has published a collection of wikis about online journalism. These appear largely dormant at present (no recent updates) but probably could be revived.
• 12th graders at the Tully (N.Y.) Junior-Senior High School recently used a wiki to create a school newspaper, TBK Today. More about this project.
• iBrattleboro, a citizen journalism/community site from Vermont, is trying an innovative and constructive wiki experiment: its Community Brain Trust.

Are news orgs going to let high schoolers and citizen journalists have all the fun with wikis?