As the redesign and revamp of the MediaShift site continues apace, I am looking for a few good folks to serve as correspondents for MediaShift, so I can get better insight into industries or worlds that I cover only occasionally. My hope is that with a group of 10 to 15 correspondents, I’ll be able to give my community of readers and contributors more food for thought and interaction.
One idea I am pursuing is having “embedded” bloggers who are in the midst of change at a media organization or institution. Rather than being embedded reporters in a war zone, they would be embedded bloggers in the swirl of change that is happening at a rapid pace in mainstream media outlets. Here’s what I would want:
> Honest accounts of what’s going on at that workplace — both the good and bad of technological change.
> A buy-in from the organization itself for the embedded blogger, allowing the person to be honest in their assessment. Or, if that’s not possible, then the correspondent would have to have a comfort level at writing reports anonymously.
> Correspondents who have been in the organization for some time, so they can compare how things are with how things were.
> Regular “change diaries” telling first-person accounts of life within a news organization as it’s changing. These can be in text, video or audio — or a combination of formats.
Ideally, I would like to find correspondents who are working at newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, magazines, book publishers, PR firms, Hollywood studios and music labels. I already have a journalism school student lined up to give “embedded” reports from that school.
I would expect the person to write about twice a month, at 800 to 1000 words per report. I am also looking for correspondents who can cover the following fields, but who don’t have to be “embedded” in the industries:
> Politics
> Online video
> Virtual worlds
> Mobile media
> Podcasting
> Photography
> Legal issues [thanks to Rich, in comments]
If you are interested in becoming a MediaShift embed or correspondent, please use the Feedback Form on the site, which goes directly to my email in-box. Tell me why you think you’d make a good correspondent, and include a link to your blog (if you have one).
Any ideas or critiques on how this new feature for MediaShift would work out (or not) are welcome in the comments below.
One thing that isn’t in your list is a legal reporter who is willing to do a roundup of litigation and lawmaking.
I am extremely interested in being a correspondent. I am the director of content at VoterWatch (www.voterwatch.org/blog).
Billy Hallowell
I am a Liberian journalist. I am interested in contributing stories from West Africa especially Liberia to your institution. How do we go about doing it?
Prince Collins
Phone: +2316-518-296