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Reddit hopes you will live-blog

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From the "because dead blogging sucks" department:
Title: Reddit embraces its role as a journalistic entity with new live-reporting feature
Author: Mathew Ingram
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2014 13:31:31 -0500
Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/QopN4D0oYDU/
Podcast Download URL: http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/reddit-live-blog-twitchy.png

Some critics may see Reddit as a more restrained version of the online
community 4chan — a place for nerds to talk about Star Trek or whatever the
latest meme is — but the site has also become a place where new forms of
journalism occur, such as the reporting on breaking news events like a
shooting[1] or the war in Syria[2]. To help make that even easier, Reddit has
launched a “live blogging”-style feature that will eventually allow anyone to
function as a kind of Reddit-based news reporter.

The feature, which is still in beta, is currently being tested on two very
different Reddit threads or topics: one is a kind of stereotypical Reddit
discussion about a fascinating game-based sociological experiment[3] known as
“Twitch Plays Pokemon,” which involves tens of thousands of people
simultaneously playing an old-fashioned Pokemon game via real-time chat.

The second beta test involves something much more serious — namely, the
recent uprising in Ukraine, where dozens of people have been killed while
protesting the government of Viktor Yanukovich (who recently fled the
country). Using the new tool, real-time information about the demonstrations
in Independence Square has been flowing into Reddit[4] in much the same way
as it would with a live-blog like The Lede at the New York Times.

[image 6][5]

A rough approximation of something interesting

At the moment, the feature looks fairly rough around the edges (compelling
visual design is not exactly Reddit’s strong suit) and the site has
acknowledged that[7] there are a lot of elements that aren’t finished yet or
haven’t been added, including the ability to comment or vote on individual
entries in these live news blogs — which live apart from the rest of Reddit,
but can be linked to on any Reddit thread or “sub-Reddit” that is applicable
to the topic. As the site describes it:

“Liveupdate is a new type of post on reddit. The “reporters” for a stream
can post updates and anyone watching gets sent those updates in real time.
Unlike with self-post or comment based live updates, there’s no limit to
how many updates can be posted during the course of an event.”

At the same time, however, this unfinished and somewhat chaotic approach is
arguably a lot more true to the nature of online journalism now than many
other more polished approaches: no one really knows how[8] to effectively do
what Reddit wants to do, which is to give anyone the same tools that
journalists at mainstream media organizations have and let them dictate the
outcome.

On that note, one of the most impressive aspects of what Reddit is trying to
do is the back-and-forth you can see in the comments on the site’s blog post[7]
about its new feature, between one of the Reddit staffers involved in the
creation of the project and users who are beta-testing it. New elements are
requested and not only responded to but actually added as the discussion is
evolving — how many times has that happened at an existing media outlet?

[image 10][9]

As the Reddit blog post notes[7], the live-blogging or live-reporting feature
is currently only open to users who are selected by the site (who then get to
decide which reports they include in their stream about an event), but the
feature is expected to be rolled out to anyone, at which point the community
will get to decide which are the most reliable by voting them up or down as
they do with everything.

Journalism gets better when more people do it

When Reddit and journalism are mentioned in the same sentence, many people
probably think of the Boston bombing fiasco[11], in which members of a
specific sub-Reddit tried to identify the suspects in that explosion and got
it terribly wrong. But as I argued at the time[12] — despite being criticized
heavily for doing so — mistakes happen in all kinds of real-time journalism,
and in fact occurred at many much more traditional news outlets as well
during that incident.

For me, however, the potential benefits of what Reddit brings to journalism
outweigh any downside that might be illustrated by that kind of stumble. I
firmly believe in what journalism professor and First Look Media advisor Jay
Rosen has said, which is that “journalism gets better when more people are
doing it.”[13] Reddit has the potential to broaden that pool and bring a kind
of open-source approach to news reporting, just as other tools and services
like Storyful do[14].

Will false news reports and other noise be contributed to and/or spread by
Reddit’s new approach to live news? Undoubtedly. As I’ve argued before, the
reality of news now is that all the messiness and chaos that used to take
place[15] primarily inside newsrooms is now happening out in the open. That
may not be as neat and tidy, but it is far more true to the way that news
actually occurs, and in true open-source style, the more eyes there are on
something, the more likely that errors will be noticed and corrected by those
who care.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user Jan-Arief Purwanto[16]
[image 17]

[image 19][18]

Related research and analysis from Gigaom Research:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial[20].

* Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1[21]
* Communications, Platforms, Privacy Ruled NewNet in Q4[22]
* Frenemy mine: The pros and cons of social partnerships for online media
companies[23]

[image 25][24][image 26]

Links:
[1]: http://gigaom.com/2012/07/17/twitter-reddit-and-the-newsroom-of-the-future/ (link)
[2]: http://gigaom.com/2013/12/17/lessons-in-the-crowdsourced-verification-of-news-from-storyful-and-reddits-syria-forum/ (link)
[3]: http://www.reddit.com/live/sw7bubeycai6hey4ciytwamw3a (link)
[4]: http://www.reddit.com/r/UkrainianConflict/comments/1yhklh/ukrainian_conflict_live_thread/ (link)
[5]: http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/reddit-live-blog-ukraine.png (link)
[6]: http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/reddit-live-blog-ukraine.png?w=708&h=506 (image)
[7]: http://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/1yki7m/reddit_change_some_information_about_live_update/ (link)
[8]: http://gigaom.com/2014/01/28/on-ezra-klein-and-project-x-sometimes-its-okay-to-not-know-exactly-what-you-are-doing/ (link)
[9]: http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/reddit-live-blog-twitchy.png (link)
[10]: http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/reddit-live-blog-twitchy.png?w=708&h=542 (image)
[11]: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/hey-reddit-enough-boston-bombing-vigilantism/275062/ (link)
[12]: http://paidcontent.org/2013/04/19/reddit-boston-journalism-gets-better-when-more-people-are-doing-it/ (link)
[13]: http://pressthink.org/2011/04/what-i-think-i-know-about-journalism/ (link)
[14]: http://gigaom.com/2013/09/01/storyful-and-the-open-newsroom-journalism-gets-better-when-more-people-do-it/ (link)
[15]: http://gigaom.com/2012/12/15/its-not-twitter-this-is-just-the-way-the-news-works-now/ (link)
[16]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yanrf/1408711192/ (link)
[17]: http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=gigaom.com&blog=14960843&post=820223&subd=gigaom2&ref=&feed=1 (image)
[18]: http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?iu=/1008864/Gigaom_RSS_300x250&sz=300x250&c=28561 (link)
[19]: http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ad?iu=/1008864/Gigaom_RSS_300x250&sz=300x250&c=28561 (image)
[20]: http://research.gigaom.com/?utm_source=videoutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=820223+reddit-embraces-its-role-as-a-journalistic-entity-with-new-live-reporting-feature&utm_content=mathewingram (link)
[21]: http://pro.gigaom.com/2012/04/connected-consumer-q1-controversy-courtrooms-and-the-cloud/?utm_source=videoutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=820223+reddit-embraces-its-role-as-a-journalistic-entity-with-new-live-reporting-feature&utm_content=mathewingram (link)
[22]: http://research.gigaom.com/report/communications-platforms-privacy-ruled-newnet-in-q4/?utm_source=videoutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=820223+reddit-embraces-its-role-as-a-journalistic-entity-with-new-live-reporting-feature&utm_content=mathewingram (link)
[23]: http://research.gigaom.com/report/frenemy-mine-the-pros-and-cons-of-social-partnerships-for-online-media-companies/?utm_source=videoutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=820223+reddit-embraces-its-role-as-a-journalistic-entity-with-new-live-reporting-feature&utm_content=mathewingram (link)
[24]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?a=QopN4D0oYDU:afgkYdDZQhE:yIl2AUoC8zA (link)
[25]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?d=yIl2AUoC8zA (image)
[26]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OmMalik/~4/QopN4D0oYDU (image)

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Reddit hopes you will live-blog RS Wood  <rswood@therandymon.com> - 2014-02-26 18:14 +0000

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