Putting it all together

Your final project should be crafted to convince a publisher to execute the project or a potential investor to provide funding for your endeavor.

You should be thorough and organized, yet concise -- always respecting the time of your reader.

The following are 10 guideposts for the final project. In class, we'll discuss other opportunities to enhance your written project and oral presentation.

INTRODUCTION
Executive Summary

STRATEGIC VISION
Competition
Differentiation

RECOMMENDATIONS
Content
*Pre-built
*Manual
*Automated
*Updated
Design
Building Community

PRODUCTION
Staffing and technology
Production schedule

BUSINESS PLAN
Revenue
Marketing
*Traditional
*Social media

Seven questions for tonight

1. Who is our target audience? (hint: Don't try to be all things to all people)
2. What is the competitive landscape? (hint: Sites that do it well)
3. How do we differentiate ourselves? (hint: Secret sauce)
4. How do we create our site? (hint: Staff and schedule)
5. How do we get our content? (hint: Pre-built, manual, automatic, updated)
6. How do we market our site? (hint: Spread the word)
7. How do we sustain the site? (hint: Show me the $$$)

Tonight's guest speaker: Cynthia Farrar

Academic and entrepreneur Cynthia Farrar will join us in class tonight. She will discuss her work developing Purple States, a media company capturing and disseminating user-generated content.

Cynthia has a special interest in using media to engage ordinary citizens as full partners in American democracy. Since 2003, with MacNeil/Lehrer Productions and public television stations around the country, she has been orchestrating non-partisan conversations among randomly-invited citizens. Purple States launched in 2006.

In 2008, Purple States documentary video aired on NYTimes.com and WashingtonPost.com, local television, and Verizon's v-cast channel. Cynthia is now adapting the Purple States method for various platforms, and plans to cover a range of issues that divide people or where a bottom-up perspective is revealing.

Cynthia directs a program on deliberative democracy and local governance at Yale University’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies. She teaches the history of political thought and the theory and practice of democracy, ancient and modern, with a special focus on deliberative democracy. She holds a B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University.

Tonight's guest speaker: Patrick Cooper

We are fortunate to be joined tonight in class by Patrick Cooper. He will discuss his past and current work managing digital development projects at USA TODAY.

Patrick is part of USA TODAY's Product Innovation team. He was previously the newsroom's network editor, coordinating "network journalism" strategies for reader engagement and community building.

Since joining the organization in 2003, Patrick has served as an online breaking-news editor; co-founded the On Deadline news blog; and developed storytelling-friendly workflows, CMS design and newsroom training.

He has also been active in Gannett's innovation programs and USA TODAY's strategic development groups. Patrick is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and a native of Washington, D.C.

I've invited Patrick to share his thoughts on developing multimedia projects at a large organization, and how that process has changed between now and the launch of On Deadline in January 2006.

Please welcome Patrick to the gtownmmp community.

A tip of the hat

Katy R. and Nisha got the ball rolling today by submitting their blog URLs. (You can find them to the right of this post under the heading "Course blogs"). I'll update the list as new URLs come my way.

Katy coined hers dcnewsie; Nisha opted for News About the News and selected a retro header typeface that brings to mind old newspapers (such as The London Chronicle).

Be sure to check out Nisha's preliminary post. She keys off a Fortune article about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and poses an interesting question about what his goals could mean for the news industry.

UPDATE, Sunday, 9:09 pm: All blog URLs that have been submitted are now available in the "Course blogs" section to the right of this post.

Debating (or not) the "definition of journalism"

Adrian Holovaty, the developer and founder of EveryBlock, today wrote a short, sharp answer to the question Is data journalism?

As some -- such as the Philadelphia Inquirer's Chris Krewson -- quickly observed, this is not exactly a current debate.

But the conversation that followed allowed Holovaty to put a sharper point on his thoughts. He replied in the post's thread:

....I no longer see the point in debating the definition of journalism. I'm interested in building products that improve people's lives via information. Whether somebody calls that "journalism" is utterly uninteresting.

QUESTION: From your perspective, what are some current "products that improve people's lives via information"? Think broadly and don't be constrained by classic definitions of journalism.

Big ideas can start small

Sometimes a very simple concept -- in this case, massive photographs -- can really catch on. 

Boston.com's award-winning blog, The Big Picture, highlights photojournalism by elevating it above all else. The image is not a secondary element in a storytelling package. Instead, it captures our attention (as well as our screen real estate). It also encourages us to scroll down the page and consume more. 

The photographs come from wire services, as well as the public domain and individual photographers. The site's FAQ does a nice job of explaining its sources and methodology.

Remember that excellent ideas in digital journalism don't always need to be complex.

Update, 2:02 p.m.: I also like this sentiment of openness from the site's developer, Alan Taylor.

What about copycats/I saw another site that stole your idea?

If they are doing a good job, then that's excellent, we can always use more quality photojournalism on the web. If not, then that just make this site look that much better :) - I'm not too worried about others emulating the style of the blog, as long as they don't use my name, or my exact images, more power to them.