How do social networks fit into news gathering?

As Martin Langeveld reported on Nieman Lab, "the traditional social network just doesn't work when it comes to news" as Luke Stangel said.

Luke Stangel is the coufounder and chief marketing officer at Tackable, a Palo Alto-based startup tackling this problem by building a standalone social network that "organizes media on a map."

Tackable is an iPhone app-based social network focused on geotagged news photos and captions.

"The Tackable vision is that when breaking news happens, you'll be able to use the app to zero in on the location on the map, and see whether network members have posted photo, video and comments, without needing to have a previous relationship with those people", the article reported.

Tackable has two iPhone prototype apps live in the App Store at moment: The Spartan Daily (designed for the student journalists at San Jose State's daily newspaper) and a general Tackable app. It's doing alpha/beta testing on both.

The Kansas City Star teamed up with location-based mobile app Foursquare so readers can "check in" every time they buy a print copy of the newspaper in vending machines and newsstands spread through the city, Editor and Publisher reported yesterday.

User who check in will receive subscription offers, mediabistro.com revealed. Currently, the newspaper is offering "26 weeks of Friday through Monday home delivery for $1.75 a week, which is more than 50 percent off our normal four-day rate," said the Vice President of Audience Chris Christian.

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