NowPublic makes it look easy, but it’s not
For my money, the best session at last week’s ONA conference had to be “Mobilize your Audience!” Poynter’s Ellyn Angelotti led NowPublic’s Len Brody through an insightful analysis of the startup’s “crowd powered media” site based in Vancouver, B.C.
Brody said lots of mainstream news organizations “think” they are doing this, but “it’s a façade.” Why? Because it’s a lot of work.
“Creating a dialogue and engaging them is very hard work,” Brody, who added that for NowPublic’s editors and news staff, the biggest part of the day is working with community; they slap hands, pat backs, and point people in right direction.
Angelotti referred to them as “community weavers.”
NowPublic raised $12.5 million a year ago and has seen traffic grow five-fold since. Brody broke down the different types user generators by their motivation and dispelled the myth that people want to get paid for their citizen reporting.
The top categories for user generators on NowPublic, which has 130,000 of them around the world:
1. Those motivated by money (smallest)
2. Those motivated by ego
3. Those motivated by issues
4. Accidental bystanders who didn’t set out to do any reporting (largest)
5. And the “plain old crazy” users that every web site seems to have
Brody said he doesn’t consider NowPublic’s content “journalism” as he deflected questions about verifying the accuracy of the content. He said if someone posts something questionable, the community will “smoke it out pretty fast.”
