Filed under: Charlotte, community services, innovation trends, social media | Tags: charitable needs, Charlotte, Charlotte Observer, crowdsourcing, media alliances, Mission Possible, newspaper industry, social media
flickr photo credit: jeku arce
My original purpose for meeting up with Steve Gunn, the Charlotte Observer’s Innovation Editor, was to learn more about Mission Possible, the project that his paper spearheaded to find innovative ways to meet the city’s charitable needs through crowdsourcing. Instead, what I discovered is that this project is just one of many in his attempts to keep the Observer relevant in an era of dying newspapers.
Gunn mentioned that the paper’s readership is growing thanks to the web, but the whole industry is on the hunt for ways to convert new readers into loyal ones, particularly since content is now aggregated through or onto other sites. Mission Possible, aside from being a philanthropic effort, is also a living, breathing experiment on how this paper might collaborate with other outlets: TV, radio, papers, web, and across counties, languages, and service providers. They expect to learn and adapt throughout this process, and put the learnings into use for future programs.
It’s been a while since I’d been in a newsroom, and I had forgotten how “creative” these spaces have always been…Desks strewn with visual stimuli in a highly collaborative environment of ordered chaos. Gunn’s office was no exception, complete with well-traveled trinkets and a full case of Diet Pepsi. He reminded me that the staff is “very comfortable with messy” and previewed for me an innovative new service they’ll be piloting soon, so look for that on the Observer online in a few weeks!
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[...] In my original conversation with Steve Gunn, we talked about how framing a problem in a specific way makes it easier to solve. In this case, a smaller, yet very real problem in the area of charitable needs is not actually getting more volunteers, but rather, how might we get them to commit their time consistently? click for larger Leave a Comment No Comments Yet so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Click here to cancel reply. Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <pre> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> [...]
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