This post originally appeared at currybet.net

“What are the best ways that we can get people to help us in our investigative endeavours through the internet?” – Paul Lewis

Last week I attended an event at the Royal Statistical Society looking at data and news sourcing, and one of the panel sessions was about crowd-sourcing using the internet. My Guardian colleague and 2010 Reporter of the year Paul Lewis was one of those appearing, and he has been at the centre of a couple of investigations that have used Twitter extensively as a component of the research and reporting.

Talking about investigating the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests in London, Paul found Twitter to be “just the most remarkable tool in which to share an investigation”. He believes that whether he existed or not there would have been a motivated group of people on the platform who wanted to find out what had happened. It contained a crucial factor that makes crowd-sourcing a success – there was a reason for people to help, in this case a perceived sense of injustice and that the official version of events did not tally with the truth. Six days after Tomlinson’s death, Paul had twenty reliable witnesses who could be placed on a map at the time of the incident – and only one of them had come from the traditional journalistic tool of a contact number in his notebook.

Paul Lewis also used Twitter to aid investigating the death of Angolan refugee Jimmy Mubenga on British Airways flight 77. There, he said, the key skill had been in listening. There were a finite number of witnesses – the people who had been on the flight and who were close enough to see something. Following some questions on Twitter he received a phone call from a man in an oil field in Angola who said he knew something. From then on, traditional journalism took over, with Paul, for example, getting verification that the man was who he said he was, and had actually been on the flight.

Crowd-sourcing doesn’t always work, Paul said. The most common thing is that you try, and you don’t find the information you want. He thinks the pattern of movement of information on the internet is something journalists need to get their heads around. Individuals on the web in a crowd seem to behave like a flock of starlings – and you can’t control their direction.

Paul Lewis opened and finished with a note of caution. “The pitfalls of crowd-sourcing keep me awake at night sometimes” he said. He worries that journalists and news organisations are now more vulnerable to deliberately placed misinformation and propaganda than ever before. Verification is hard across the web, and the eagerness to break news leads to events like misreporting the death of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. As an industry, Paul felt, we don’t have the right safeguards in pace yet.

What fascinated me about Paul’s talk, as ever, was the way that technology has been co-opted into the journalistic process. There are still people who are all too ready to dismiss Twitter as a place where celebrities discuss what they had for lunch, yet it has become a valuable tool. As web services ebb and flow, the current usage levels of Twitter may eventually go the way of MySpace and LiveJournal, but the principle of using mass peer-to-peer public short messaging as a way of tracking public sentiment and digging up information seems to have been comprehensively established.

Next…

As I said in my previous post about this panel session, my brain was left positively fizzing after attending both the Media Standards Trust/BBC College of Journalism “Data and news sourcing” and Paul Bradshaw’s inaugural lecture at City University in the same day. I’m sure there will be more blog posts to follow…

This is one of a series of blog posts written about the Media Standards Trust & BBC College of Journalism “Data and news sourcing” and Paul Bradshaw’s inaugural lecture at City University:

Abort? Retry? Fail? – Judging the success of the Guardian’s MP’s expenses app

The Guardian’s Paul Lewis on crowd-sourcing investigative journalism with Twitter

Paul Bradshaw and Turi Munthe discuss crowd-sourcing journalism

Here are some other blog posts from around the web about the events:

Crowdsourcing, verification and ‘alpha users’ and Science journalism and showing your working by Gavin Freeguard

Data and News Sourcing Workshop by Silver Oliver.

Buy Monday’s Washington Post. Today’s and tomorrow’s, too. Read all 5,400 words of Top Secret America by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin.

Go to Top Secret America. Watch the video, view interactive connections and maps, search the data, weigh in on Twitter, contribute to the project.

Now imagine if newspapers everywhere did this all the time.

Lucas Sommer is founder of Audimated, a new music service and one of the 2010 winners of the We Media PitchIt investment challenge. We help the winners turn their ideas for new ventures into something real – and they help other founders who follow in their footsteps by sharing their experiences, insights and lessons learned.

Processing payments or moving money online via e-commerce solutions can be more complicated than many entrepreneurs expect.

Don’t assume that Paypal or Google Checkout will be your payment processor. Each of these merchant service providers, which handle credit card processing, have their own terms of service and caveats. Paypal for example, requires that each of your customers create a Paypal account. Google Checkout and the other processors all have their own varying fee structures.

Depending on your business model and what types of payments you will be handling these fees can become quite costly. There is also a technology called SSL which encrypts credit card data over the internet. This technology is a must so plan on making an annual purchase of SSL technology with any e-commerce site.

There are also regulatory agencies that you must be in compliance with in order to process payments. In order to process credit cards for example you need to be PCI compliant. If you plan on storing credit card data, or financial data (like banking and check information) you will need to be SAS70 compliant and possibly Sarbanes-Oxley compliant as well.

You may need to be compliant with several of these classifications, so it’s a good idea to get your potential merchant processor on the phone to discuss your business model prior to assuming you will be using their service. You don’t want to hear after the fact that Paypal cannot support your operation because you are not PCI or SAS70 compliant.

Audimated has been through several payment processors and merchant banks in the past few months. We tried Paypal, Authorize.net, Costco Merchant Services and using our local bank (Chase). After reviewing all of these services and being turned down by some, we settled on a smaller company called e-onlinedata.com. We didn’t have a recommendation from any past customers, but rather did price quotes across the industry and settled on one that could work for us. We decided to go with e-online because they were able to provide us an affordable rate and were able to work with our business model.

We have finally settled on a solution that works for us, but wasted significant time learning about compliance after the fact. It is important to research and understand your needs prior to signing up with a merchant provider. Many providers charge an application fee as well so before you spend time, energy and money trying to fix your solution after the fact, spend some effort on research and talk to your provider before applying to make sure it is a good fit.

[Creative Commons Photo by The Consumerist]

We all have moments of inspiration. Tabula Rasa DC is one of them — a few hours of inspired thinking about moving through a creative moment. Now there’s an app for that.

Oh!magination, a new app from our friends at KvJ & Company, let’s people capture, share, discover and delight in ideas. You can get a free download by attending TRDC at Gannett-USA TODAY headquarters from 1 to 4:30 pm on Monday, June 14.

Oh!magination joins us as the official app for ideation at TRDC. A playful, interactive application for ideas, you’ll get a chance to use it as you’re inspired. Rich Brandisi, the COO of KvJ & Company will be on hand to talk about opportunities for innovation in mobile-social computing, as well as show off Oh! during the app throwdown at TRDC.

Check out the program, watch the video, and by all means register today.

At Tabula Rasa NYC we asked a stunning group of innovators, developers and visionaries to consider five questions at a pivotal moment for media and the people who create it:
How does moment of opportunity look?
What has been created in just a few weeks?
What should be created?
What are the challenges?
What problems can we solve?

We saw awe-inspiring work, a renewal of the creative passion that helped launch the Internet and its period of technical, entrepreneurial and societal achievement. Old-school publishers such as Popular Science, Zagat and Thomson Reuters rediscovered their game with sharp-shooting apps aimed at connected audiences. NPR and ESPN enhanced experiences that were already compelling online. There were untethered virtuosos, too, such as Electric Literature, the Ghost in the Machine (under development) collaboration, and soloist Rob Kelley’s BeatPad. We’ll revisit and follow the development of their apps in subsequent posts, examining the qualities that make them successful.

More critically, we saw, heard and felt a renewal of the creative passion that helped launch the Internet, the Web and its culture-bending technical, entrepreneurial and societal achievements. In just four weeks since the launch of Apple’s iPad, a flurry of applications has been released to expand engagement, enhance understanding and extend meaning and utility.

Design-driven innovation from a fresh, creative class of developers has delivered a whole new mind for experiencing a world gone digital — high concept, high touch connections that enable us to cope with our unrelenting craving for transcendence.

Finally, we have devices and a number of very good starts that deliver abundance with an aesthetic imperative, as well as a new and better way of organizing things: the new order or order.

Yet, initial responses to our questions were cautious and meek: It is early. We don’t really know. Where’s the money?

Where’s the money?
As a way out of ingenuity, the last response is the first one cited. “Where’s the money?” is the mantra of the unimaginative. A circular question, it is an excuse for inertia, a business plan for standing still. Again. The question is almost as pathetic as its cousin — the position that we won’t invest in an online or mobile strategy until we are certain it works. Good luck with that one.

We weren’t surprised that some who participated in Tabula Rasa, and some who covered it, could not or would not get their minds around the theme of the event: innovation in the emerging Conceptual Age. Mea culpa, we invited discussion at a where’s-the-money session called Good Apple, Bad Apple / Good Business, Bad Business. Given both the dissension over “paid models” and the noisy discourse surrounding it, the topic is a requirement on the conference circuit. Not even a fresh take could take us out of the weeds.

We thought our friend Merrill Brown, the former Editor-In-Chief of MSNBC who’s been dealing with the issue for a coupla decades and currently promotes a freemium model for publishers (some content free, some paid), summed it up rather well: “Putting up a pay wall does not solve your business problem,” said Brown. “Publishers who think they can put their magazine on an iPad and make a lot of money are making a significant mistake.”

We love surprises … almost as much as provocation. Jeff Jarvis didn’t disappoint. We showed the stunning TIME magazine app — high concept, high touch, and only $4.99 issue. The Buzzmachine turned buzz killer:

“I think the TIME Magazine app is the most sinful piece of shit ever,” said a skeptical Jarvis., “The ego of it was unabashedly awful.” On his blog he writes: “It’s worse than the web: we can’t comment; we can’t remix; we can’t click out; we can’t link in, and they think this is worth $4.99 a week. But the pictures are pretty.”

Josh Quittner, TIME’s editor-at-large and one of the creative forces behind its iPad app, gave it back to Jarvis in a blog post called “And the horse you rode in on.”

“Jarvis, a former Time Inc.-er, can be forgiven for the disgruntled, I-hate-my-ex-wife tone that creeps into his rhetoric, whenever he discusses his former employer. It’s tiresome, dude, and intellectually dishonest given that you’re still stumping for your Google book.” 

Turns out the dispute was not about the money, but a little about the distribution of media bundles, a little about concerns that Apple and its partners are attempting to control the “open” web and kill the link econony (Google), and more than a little about Jarvis and Quittner.

Can we turn the page, please?

The Meaning Model
Enough cautious and meek. We need some bold. Why not look at economic issues with the same creativity and integrity as we do conceptual ones? The current “where’s the money” debate is framed by rules developed for the economies and societies, factories and mass production, of the Industrial Age. Forward-thinking enterprises adapted to the atomization and proliferation of content in the Information Age. Now we enter the Conceptual Age with a universe of creators. The new currency is meaning. Off the top, how many business plans can you conceive for a meaning model? Maybe a hundred for, say, anyone?

From Tabula Rasa, we put that first word on the blank slate: meaning. As we reconsider what it means to be human, we’re discovering new metaphors for storytelling, creating new ways to engage, connecting with a world of friends and information, and designing innovations that will guide our lives and shape our universe on almost any device.

Where’s the money?

We’ll answer the question with a better one: Where’s the love, y’all? We put that one to music (Black-Eyed Peas with Justin Timberlake) and video when we started we this crusade back in ought-three. If you don’t know the answer to “Where’s the Love?” by now, you’ll never get the one that asks “where’s the money.”

This is one of those moments – an important shift in digital culture that will be old news, obvious to everyone, a few years from now. There’s an electrifying crackle in the air as digital creatives, businesses, investors and visionaries collide in a mad dash to define the future around the next big thing. Not even the old masters of the universe can stop it. Their hands are slipping off the controls.

There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I may lead them.

Sorry. Your people are leading the way in this universe.

Journey to the Conceptual Age
It’s not just the iPad, it’s the promise of a more personal, more creative, more fulfilling, more inspiring and more beautiful digital experience. It’s the promise of something more human, more wonderful. It’s bigger than Facebook or Twitter or Apple. It’s the next PC, the next smartphone, the next printing press. It’s all of that – in a simple, mobile shiny-new-thing powered by something entirely new to media: human touch. Gigs and hard drives fade into the cloud, replaced by pictures and words and shapes and sounds we can mold like clay. That’s magic. The result isn’t merely something hard and shiny that resembles a notepad. It’s something old, deep and rare: pure joy.

Over the next weeks we’ll continue our journey to the Conceptual Age. We’ll stop at the guideposts along the way, showcasing innovative examples of work defining the creative moment. We’ll conduct activities that show where the moment is leading. And we’ll identify the qualities of design-driven innovation that will determine who flourishes and who flounders.

To get started, we have five questions ….

Charlton Heston channels Moses. Steve Jobs assumes a higher authority. Crazy guys throw down an iPad at batting practice. All this and more in The Throwdown Video, a preview of Tabula Rasa. Check it out on the program page and on YouTube.

I am excited to announce the launch of a new project that we are calling WeThink.

What is it? WeThink is a conversation about innovation and the future — an effort to explore new ideas and promote solutions to the challenges that our society is facing.

What’s the big deal? If you follow our work here at all, you’ll know that We Media is a movement – a concept – that helps explain how we know what we know, who we trust, and how we learn. It’s about power of the community. We Media is part of the infinite quest to harness the power of media, communication and human ingenuity for common good. And, well, We Media changes everything.  We Media changes the way we innovate.  We Media changes how we create, sustain, and grow successful ventures. We Media enhances the structures, models and economies that support human communication, interaction and achievement.  And through that, We Media challenges us to review our existing ways of operating, break apart our established structures, and re-build our approach to the future.  These changes impact all of us, and they are forcing each of us to find new ways of thinking about… well, everything.

What are you talking about? I have this crazy idea that we need to re-think the way we create, support, and sustain ventures.  We need to re-think how we innovate.  What we are doing isn’t working anymore – not as well as it should – and we need to try something different.  That means re-considering what kinds of companies and organizations are needed today, in response to the massive changes we are seeing in our society as a result of the influence that technology and the internet are having on our culture.  That means re-structuring how ventures, both for-profit and social in nature, are funded and managed.  That means re-assessing what success looks like for new companies and organizations, as well as re-considering how we measure progress of existing organizations against our needs in society.  And that means re-building the whole infrastructure of innovation… from how we teach it, promote it, cover it in the media, what skills we value, who gets to serve as gatekeepers, and more.

How will it work? Over the next year we will collect and share new ideas, highlight different approaches, ask tough questions, and propose solutions. We will lead a new and different kind of discussion about innovation. Everywhere we go we will be looking for new issues to discuss and new ideas to consider.  Everyone we talk to or encounter is invited to contribute their experience or perspective to help power this effort.  And all those ideas and suggestions, approaches and solutions will be shared.  They’ll be posted online.  They’ll be open to feedback.  They’ll be mashed up with other thoughts.  At the end of a year, our plan is to pull together a ‘solutions book’ that helps to support, and sustain, a vibrant and game-changing discussion going forward.  The rest we will figure out as we go.

The first few ideas and questions will be posted in the next several days.  So, stay tuned — the fun is just beginning.

We want to make the world a better place through media. Do you have an idea that can help make that happen? Need some help getting it launched? Our boot camp might be just what you need. Join us March 10-11, 2010 in conjunction with We Media Miami ’10 at the University of Miami.

If you’re ready to get started check out the boot camp details and get registered. Registration is open through March 3 but there are only 20 spots available so check it out today.

Hope to see you in Miami.

The next 20 people who register to attend We Media Miami will receive a copy of David Mathison’s book, Be The Media. It’s an encyclopedic collection of pointers, recommendations and insights on how anyone can produce and distribute media. David will be joining us at the conference March 9-11. He’ll also be leading one of our workshops, which we call Invention Sessions. Thanks David! Click here to register now.

By SUSAN MERNIT

Net-enabled social tools have enabled new models for grassroots activism and community building, and they have changed how we function in society — how we communicate globally and locally, how we form ties and how we organize and connect. What’s tricky about deploying social media today is not access to the technology, but the knowledge of how to deploy it across multiple platforms.

Meanwhile, social networking is getting down to business. Organizations across all sectors seek to harness Web 2.0’s intense consumer engagement and reach.

Download the report – Part 1 (PDF)

Download the report – Part 2 (PDF)

WeMedia is once again producing a regular podcast that features in-depth interviews with prominent media, technology, and social change figures, as well as distinguished experts on current affairs and news. Our goal is to help the WeMedia community understand the roots of the changes taking place in our society, hear from the thinkers and doers who are on the front lines, really understand the difficulties facing the media, consumers, and others — all while being somewhat entertaining.

Today’s podcast features a conversation with Chris McChesney, one of the lead researchers at the Franklin Covey company and the author of The 4 Disciplines of Execution: The Secret to Getting Things Done, On Time, With Excellence. Chris and I connected after I issued by ‘Business Book Challenge‘ — suggesting that I was having trouble finding business books that offered value, or insight, to really help people and organizations to succeed. Chris’ expertise is in helping organizations develop effective strategies and execute them properly — and his research, and now the book, are focused on teaching the principles that guide those successful efforts. He thinks his book passes the test — but I am not so sure that a book, no matter what it talks about, can fully change the way people think and act.  I put that question directly to Chris — you’ll be surprised by his answer (about 35 minutes into the podcast).  Beyond the book, we talked about some of the challenges that plague organizations today and what role technology and the internet are playing in making those easier, or more difficult, to handle.  We also discussed how people learn and how to measure success across organizations.  Really interesting stuff.

Click below to listen.

Please post your comments, suggestions, or ideas for future conversations and podcasts. We’re listening!

Over on my Fast Company Experts blog, I have issued a challenge.

Here is what I wrote:

I have come to the conclusion that most (maybe all) business and strategy books are useless. They over-generalize. They offer little value. I go in with such high expectations, based on reviews and descriptions, and am almost universally disappointed.

For a project that I am working on, I want to be find the business and strategy books that do help, that really deliver value.  I want to find the must reads.

I want books that offer guidance and support on how to start and run a effective businesses and organizations.  I’m looking for authors who really understand how to change people’s minds or understand their behavior.  I know there must be a book out there that can help me (and others) to be organized and efficient, creative, and successful. And of course, I want to find a book that offers really good advice on how to break through and make a difference/impact in today’s connected society.

I have been trying for years, with nothing to show for it.  So now, I am asking for help.

If you are an author, a publisher, or just a reader — you can help.  Read the full post and send me your suggestions.  C’mon WeMedia community, this seems right up your alley.

I will share everything that people send me and try, through my blogging and other outreach, to help others figure out what to read. So please, help me find the must reads.

The Swine Flu is big news… and for good reason.  This potentially deadly strain – a mix of pig, bird, and human viruses – is spreading across the globe.  More cases are being reported every hour it seems.  Health experts don’t seem to have much to offer in terms of definite information.  Fear and uncertainty are growing.  What happens next is anyone’s guess.

What do we know for sure?  The media is doing a terrible job telling the story.  All we see on television are pictures of people in masks and so called ‘experts’ talking about the potential for hundreds of millions of people to die if/when this explodes.  What little helpful information they do have, like suggestions to wash your hands or symptoms that you should look out for, are offered as secondary information — often pushed to the web (which doesn’t make sense since we are already watching TV at that point).  Note to media: there are better ways to cover this story and more valuable information you can provide.

How are people getting their information instead?  Mostly the same way we get the rest of our information today – from out social networks.  The Daily Show, not surprisingly, captured this well in a clip from last night’s show:

You see, we talk all the time about the benefits of ‘social filtering’ – the idea that people will get most/all of their information from their friends or people they are connected to in some way.  But the assumption is that the information being shared is good, or useful.  As the Daily Show clip demonstrates, the concept of hearing ‘stuff from some guy’ is powerful – and potentially very dangerous.  Bad information spreads just as quickly as good information, possibly faster.  Note to self: consider the source.

Who could be doing more?  Government has an opportunity to bypass the media and talk directly to the people — to push helpful information out that people can use, and share.  But even they don’t seem able to offer much in terms of detailed information, choosing instead to spend most of their time trying to re-assure and calm the public.  The White House provides access to a CDC widget on its blog (but the top story right now is Senator Specter changing parties — which is telling about what the President’s priorities are right now), the CDC has a page set up to provide updates, and other federal agencies are providing information.  But in reality, it takes far too many clicks and far too much reading to find out what I am supposed to do.  Note to government: The idea of transparency should be extended to everything, and as the head of our government, you should be using all your resources to make sure information about this health crisis is being received.

The Swing Flu is a real threat, not only from a health standpoint, but potentially in terms of global economics, politics, and foreign policy as well.  You might know that from the information that is available through the media, from the government, or that filtered down from friends.  But, its not clear you would know what – if anything – to do with that information.  With all the tools and connections we have today, and considering the gravity of the situation, I would like to think that our media and government could do a better job than they are doing.  I would like to think that we, in the audience, could be more careful than to listen to people without knowledge or pass along questionable information .  I guess I am not surprised that we aren’t doing better.

Yes, technology and the internet have truly changed our society.  Yes, we have wonderful technologies available, which allow us to do extraordinary things.  But as this potential pandemic demonstrates, we have a long way to go before we figure out how to use these tools to communicate better, learn differently, engage more fully, and activate more appropriate, especially around serious issues.

We Media’s Brian Reich and I were wondering, based on the Game Changer Award winners, what would be the attributes that would not only win today’s Pitch It! presenters some of the available funding, but also see them be the Game Changers a couple/few years from now.

A few things have marked the Game Changers, based both on our case studies and some observations at the conference Wednesday:

1. Ignite the Spark of Motivation. Inspire people. SocialVibe, a Game Changer, showed a video with excited participants from their community saying things like “I helped build a well in Kenya,” and constantly talked about how powerful they felt by being able to make contributions through charity just by writing content and posting SocialVibe’s advertising widget.
2. Crowd Forging. Not only asking questions, and suggesting people come, but actually bringing them together, getting them to give their greatest assets: Time, Money, Passion, Energy. Shape a crowd, as much as assemble it. Listen to what it wants, and give the people more of it. (Corollary: It’s not about the technology. It’s the people, stupid.)
3. The ability to do good while also making money. Holding both capitalist and social ideas in their heads (and their business models) at the same time.
4. Play. Or, in the words of We Media co-founder Dale Peskin, “Play will be to the 21st century what work was to the industrial age.”
5. It has to be more than “lipstick on a bulldog.” Don’t just repackage an old idea.
6. Get in the game. Just do it. Don’t argue about the rules, the procedures, all the points. Game Changer Ze Frank brought us that one: “Sometimes what we do with all the media at our disposal is argue about the rules of the game, rather than play it.”

Hope that helps. (And for your copy editory types: yes, I know the bullets aren’t in parallel construction. So be it.)

The future of newspapers is a hot topic — especially right now (with the economy tanking and announcements from newspapers about new and bigger financial troubles coming every day), and especially for newspapers.  Few would argue that without significant changes, the newspaper industry may cease to exist, as we know it, within a relatively short period of time.

Of course, while nobody has quite figured out a solution to the current woes of news companies – there are some experiments underway that suggest some balance of better or more localized content, different delivery mechanisms and new revenue opportunities (or all those and more) could be the key to success — the debate about what is needed to save the news, what will suffer if it goes away (or changes significantly), and why these problems exist, rages on.

There are too many articles to cite and conversations to analyze – this week alone I read more than a dozen myself.  The New York Times alone took up the discussion at three different times this past week.  But, rather than scold the news industry for talking more about how to solve its problems than actually doing the things they preach, I will just say that each is worth reading and considering, and I hope you will take the time to do so.

1) New York Times Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, pulls back the curtain a bit on the newsroom at ‘the most widely read newspaper Web site in the nation.’  He notes:

“..the Internet offers “a new kind of landscape of advantages and disadvantages.” They include immediacy but fewer layers of editing; the opportunity to develop a story in real time but demands to “feed the beast” that can prevent deeper reporting; keen competition but wasted time chasing false leads published by less reliable sources; the ability to fix mistakes quickly but no way to prevent them from ricocheting around the world first.”

You should read the first of his two columns on real-time reporting on the web, published in last week’s paper, as well.

2) Eduardo Porter offers an ‘editorial observer’ column about “What Newspapers Do, Have Done and Will Do.” He explains:

“From the poorest country to the richest, a welter of academic research since then points to the importance of an independent press — mostly newspapers — in disseminating hard-to-get information, mobilizing the public and putting pressure on government and businesses in favor of the public good.”

And, on the Room For Debate blog, the Times assembles an all-star cast of thinkers, writers, publishers and such to offer their own personal “Battle Plans for Newspapers.” The list of contributors includes:

* Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia Journalism School
* Joel Kramer, editor of MinnPost.com
* Steven Brill, founder of The American Lawyer magazine
* Geneva Overholser, Annenberg School of Journalism
* Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist.org
* Andrew Keen, author
* Edward M. Fouhy, founding editor of Stateline.org
* Rick Rodriguez, former editor of The Sacramento Bee

(SIDE NOTE: I think it would have been interesting for the New York Times team to ask a few newspapers readers, average subscribers and non-subscribers, to share their battle plans as well.  I have to think that the people who make up the NYT’s audience have some thoughts on how newspapers might better serve their interests.  I would be happy to share my thoughts.  Maybe that will happen next week).

That’s it, happy reading.