By Uri Blau and Nini Cabaero
Somewhere around the globe a major news story just broke. Your news crew is thousands of miles away. It will take ages to get them there and will cost a fortune.
What do you do?
News outlets need someone on the ground. Someone they can count on. Someone they can trust. Now we have a solution for them.
Dear Uri and Nini,
Can someone contribute any time by writing a piece or will they supply information when needed?
The news trustee can do both – write an article for a news organisation or provide information. Thanks for the comment, Mine.
Guys, I really appreciate the fact that you got together on this and worked together to strengthen the idea. I think there’s the beginnings of something very exciting here, thought I think there are a lot of conceptual questions that still need to be answered before this becomes something that’s workable and scaleable.
The focus on fixers is a good one, in my opinion. It recognizes the fact that fixers have become an indispensible part of international reporting in the current day and age, and raises the possibility that they could become better paid and more likely to find work. I think there are going to be problems with assuring reliability of fixers until there’s a strong rating/endorsement system in place, but it’s possible to imagine this project evolving like a LinkedIn for journalistic sources and fixers, with people indexing themselves and then gaining reputation over time.
I think there’s a tension to be resolved between listing fixers and “trustees”, who might be verified sources, but not folks who help report. I think there’s less incentive for trustees to join the system and wonder whether those folks are better served by something like Storyful.
I suspect the best way to get this off the ground is to pick a country where someone knows the journalism population well – like the Philippines – and start indexing folks from there. I also think there could be a real benefit in leaning on a network like Global Voices and starting to index folks who are already part of that community. Excited to see where this ends up.