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The Sun Sentinel, Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post have announced a partnership with Florida International University's School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

The deal will allow students enrolled in journalism courses at FIU to work as reporters, photographers and videographers, providing content for the three papers' print and online editions as part of the South Florida News Service.  The service will launch in early January. 

McClatchy Co. and the Christian Science Monitor will start sharing stories by their foreign correspondents for a three-month trial period.  The agreement allows both parties to share for both print and online.

According to a statement released by McClatchy, "the agreement will run for three months, at which time both parties will evaluate it and decide whether to continue the sharing agreement, to terminate it or to expand it."

According to The New York Observer, Twitter has now emerged as a "legitimate news aggregator."  Twitter has been the topic of news and tech blogs since its launch, but its hypertrophy as an online source for news was during the attacks in Mumbai.

Twitterers were the first on the scene - long before TV and newspaper reporters. 

In a debate organized by representatives of the European Commission in Russia and national news agency RIA Novosti, media's role as promoter of cross-cultural dialogue seemed to be the main theme. Additional discussions include reporting of the financial crisis.

The series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Indian financial capital Mumbai have gained worldwide attention, and the speed with which Internet users were able to read first-hand reports within hours of the initial attacks is proof of a revolutionized way that information reaches an audience.

Although mainstream news coverage has dominated headlines thus far, social media has been a major outlet for news at the scene and around the world.  Internet users are sharing news and information for updates and reactions.

The Trinity Mirror's innovative workflow overhaul, moving three of its regional newspapers into a single newsroom, has been a "morale booster" for staff in a time when the industry has seen its share of downturns.

The new site at Fort Dunlop is the largest open plan office space outside of London, Journalism.co.uk reports.  As the Weblog has reported, Trinity Mirror completely revamped the approach to newsroom management with the transition.

The Kaiser Family Foundation is launching a news service to provide "in-depth coverage of the policy and politics of health care" both online and through collaboration with mainstream media.

The website will be independently run, with a budget expected to reach $4 million in two years, and is a part of the "wave of online ventures that have emerged as newspapers and magazines cut jobs and newsgathering budgets," the New York Times reports.

Spot.Us is an innovative new sight that recently won funding and support from the highly respected Knight Foundation. It is garnering much attention as the concept essentially transforms the idea of community reporting and reinvigorates investigative reporting on a local level. However, would it be attracting this much support and attention if the newspaper business model weren't struggling?

The concept

Spot.Us allows anyone to send in a story idea to the site as long as it is a local issue affecting the San Francisco Bay area. Spot.Us calculate how much it would cost to investigate said story and the ideas is then "pitched" on the site, if other users of the site support the story idea then they can donate money to pay for a freelance journalist to cover it. It is then published on the site and other news organisations can publish it as well. The point being, some stories that are interesting to the public are being ignored by news organisations, this is an opportunity for the public at large to read a story that they want written about. The public becomes the editor.

Spot.Us deserves credit for coming up with an innovative way of bringing journalism back to the community and reinvigorating local investigative reporting. Furthermore, it is an original concept that has won the support of not only the Knight Foundation, but also Jeff Jarvis and other significant names in the journalism community.

Will the public pay?

While Spot.Us is undoubtedly exciting, there does appear to be some issues with the concept. For example, the organisation is currently garnering a lot of press attention and is therefore very much in the public eye, but what happens after the media attention dies down? Will people continue to visit the site: how will they maintain public interest?
 
Furthermore, it will be very difficult for Spot.Us to maintain its integrity and not be manipulated by outside groups who want certain stories investigated for their own agenda. It may be difficult for it to stop itself becoming little more than part of a lobbying machine for various interest groups.

The Editors Weblog spoke to David Cohn - the CEO and sole employee of Spot.Us - about these issues and the thinking behind his project.

EW: If newspapers were not suffering financially in the US, do you think there would still be a place in the market for an organisation such as yours?
 
DC: I do think there would be a place for an organization such as mine - but I don't think it would be as urgent. Part of what Spot.Us does is democractize the media by allowing the audience to determine the news agenda. Traditionally .001 percent of the population determined the news agenda, we called them "editors." But with Spot.Us the public can set the news agenda because now they have a freelance budget as well.

EW: Do you have any guidelines on what you will or will not investigate or write about, eg, an oil company wants you to write a piece proving that oil drilling doesn't hurt the environment?

DC: Yes: They aren't guidelines but categories that all pitches have to fall in. This was to ensure that we don't get pitches that aren't civic journalism. The categories are education, environment, city government, public health - etc.

EW: How will you maintain Spot.Us's integrity, to stop it from being used as a tool for lobby groups or marketing?

DC: We have an algorithm that required a diverse group of people to support a story or it does not make it on to our homepage as a pitch. Right now my algorithm is very simple, firstly, the site is new and I have a small pool of people visiting the site in general. As the site becomes more popular it is just a matter of tweaking the algorithm to ensure that you always have a diverse group of people.

EW: Is this something that you are aware of?

DC: It is something that I am very aware of. I would say I am concerned about it. I understand the concern and the fear...

But I am more concerned that we are going to find out that the public are just not going to donate at all, that's the fear. People think that they're going to be clambering, we will have to build bridges so that we slow them down they are going to be donating so much money towards our work. I think it is actually going to be the opposite and that we are going to have to do a lot of outreach to try and find people who would benefit and see the public good of donating to journalism.

EW: There is a lot of media attention surrounding your organisation right now, but how you are going to maintain that when, say, the interest in your organisation has died down from the media perspective. How will you maintain interest with the community?

DC: We are going to be doing some community organising. This is where it gets interesting right? So, like the San Francisco Commutative campaign that we did over the summer and we raised $2,500 from 74 different people who gave $34 each. If we were to do that again next year, the first thing I would do is go to the League of Women Voters. It's an organisation with a branch in San Francisco and say they have - I am just guessing here - 1,000 members in the bay area, they have a large group of people who would be interested in fact checking for the political adverts and I can go to the League of Women Voters and say, "Hey, can you help go and spread the word about this to." Then they spread the word to their members, and say even 30 of them thought it were a good idea and donated $25 each. That is a decent amount of money right there. That and also social networking and things like that.

EW: Are you going to try and build a relationship with the local media?

DC: Yes, definatly. If there is a pitch that a local newspaper would be interested in running, they have a vested interest in seeing community members donating towards it so they could help spread the word about the pitch.

EW: Can you explain how you monetise Spot.Us?
 
DC: The same way that Kiva.org monetizes their site. If somebody is donating $25 then all of their money goes to where they want it to go, but before they are done with the transaction we also ask that they donate 10% or $2.50 to the nonprofit organization that is Spot.Us. This extra 10% is optional. Kiva.org does the same thing and they found that something close to 90% of people will go ahead and give the extra 10% to the organization.

EW: What inspired you to set up Spot.Us?

DC: A few things. First - I was a freelance journalist for a long time and I know how hard it can be to make it as such. I wanted to create tools that enabled freelancers to do their job easier.

I was also the research assistant for a guy named Jeff Howe who was writing a book on "Crowd sourcing." I was researching for the chapter on Crowd funding and I began to learn about sites like Kiva.org and DonorsChoose.org. These are micro-finance sites for teachers or for people in third world countries. They are hugely successful. I wondered if it would be possible for journalist to also tap into the gift economy, which in America was $300,000 billion last year.

I have worked in citizen journalism in the past. I love it and strongly believe in it - but I also know the limitations of citizen journalism. I wanted to find a way that journalism could be participatory but also stretch to do some of the harder journalism that requires professionals to stick to a story for a longer period of time.

EW: Can you talk me though how you organise your staffers?
 
Spot.Us is not a newsroom. It is a platform or Internet tool. All pitches on Spot.Us are from freelance journalists in the Bay Area. They are not staff reporters for Spot.Us.

EW: How big is your team and how do you contact the editors

DC: I am the only staff person on Spot.Us. The developers and designers are contractors. All the pitches you see on Spot.Us are from independent freelance journalists - and are contractors. We assign an editor to each story - but the editor is just another journalist within our system. Again, Spot.Us is NOT a newsroom or news organization as traditionally understood. We are a platform. Just as YouTube is not a film production company, but they host video, Spot.Us is not a content producing organization, but we host the production of content.

EW: What technology is powering the platform you are using?
 
DC: The site is built with Ruby on Rails. I was thinking about using Drupal but in the end used Ruby on Rails and so far I am very happy with that decision.

The development firm is called Hashrocket. My hosting service is Engine Yard.
 

Neil Benson, Editorial Director of Regionals, at Trinity Mirror, and the three Editors of the Birmingham titles that have merged, have completely changed the approach to newsroom management by combining workforces to cut costs.

To follow up on last month's Weblog story on the Trinity Mirror's complete overhaul of its workflow, which anticipated the transition, a series of photos have been published which demonstrate the restructured newsroom, combining "all-in-one" news conferences to share ideas and stories, and to maximize output. 

According to the Associated Press, Russian prosecutors will "aggressively monitor" how the media covers and reports on the ongoing financial crisis.

The Prosecutor General's office ordered news organizations to be responsible and not to spread panic, the AP reported.  The Russian media has been lacking in financial crisis coverage, this is due to the fact that most media outlets are government controlled or loyal to the Kremlin.

The Associated Press is overhauling its regional coverage from Washington to include 28 states that are currently without representation, according to a press release.

The AP's "corps of regional reporters" will be restructured into teams in four regions by the start of the new Congressional year.

The teams of 12 will be responsible for news from their designated Congressional delegations and "broader Washington issues affecting their region."

"Where once we had no 'local' coverage, now we will," said Michael Oreskes, AP managing editor for US news.

This new structure is in an effort to bring localized coverage of Washington to "every state," and will "allow the regional teams to prioritize needs for all the papers in their area and increase coverage of the most relevant and important news in their region."

Specifics will be hammered out in coming weeks, according to the press release.

Source:  AP Press release

In an effort to try and find sources of information about Cindy McCain during the US presidential campaign Jodi Kantor, a New York Times reporter used Facebook to contact 16 and 17-year-olds.

According to the message Kantor sent out, she was "just seeking some fellow parents who can talk about what Mrs. McCain is like."  However, immediately after the incident, there was outrage.  Gwilym McGrew of Woodland Hills, California called it "disgusting" and questioned whether Kantor would be "contacting my 12-year-old soon, too?"

Upon receiving plans outlining coping with fewer staff, a union meeting of subeditors at Express Newspapers convenened to discuss their future.

The new system by Express titles, designed to "increase effectiveness and contribute to the required cost savings," would have reporters writing copy "to fit" before being checked by "rewriters."

Daniil Kupsin, owner of Russian business radio station Business FM, has announced that he will launch an online business news site, RIA Novosti reported on Thursday. Bfm.ru will be run by Russian Internet journalist Anton Nosik and will have a team of nearly 30 reporters.

UK blogger and journalist Paul Bradshaw discusses his Birmingham-based HelpMeInvestigate.com project, which will draw on the public as well as journalists to pursue investigative reporting. The platform, an entry for the Knight News Challenge this year, will help back reporters who wish to investigate on a local level, Bradshaw says.