My newest journalism adventure…
I’ve spent the last two years producing journalism in a myriad of formats and the last year arguing for ways to modernize and make relevant journalism in the 21st century.
I’ve argued for reinventing journalism. I’ve argued for journalists to let go of everything they’ve ever known.
Ultimately, informing people is my passion. I care deeply about journalism. I hope that’s what you’ve taken home from my blog over the past year.
I don’t care so much what medium or what form it takes. I just care about giving people information. I just want to make journalism better than it is.
I’ve been presented with a great opportunity to do just that, which is why I’m joining the Beat Blogging project with NYU’s PressThinker, Jay Rosen. Together we’re trying to discover how beat reporters are pushing the practice of journalism using Web tools like blogging and social networking.
Jay is one of those professors who gets it. He understands that journalism needs to change, and he has actively been pursuing ways to modernize journalism with projects like NewAssignment.Net, AssignmentZero.com, OffTheBus.Net and, of course, BeatBlogging.Org. It’s an honor to get to work with someone who has dedicated his career to improving journalism.
This project gives me the opportunity to do just that: improve the practice by adapting it better to the Web. It’s something I really believe in. And when I believe in something, I give it my all.
David Cohn did a fantastic job of getting this project rolling. But now it’s his time to push the practice of journalism further with his start-up Spot.Us. David is the kind of person journalism needs more of — smart, dedicated, innovative and, most of all, entrepreneurial. He got the Knight Foundation to give him $340,000 for his innovative idea.
David knows the future of journalism will look nothing like the past. He is actively working to make journalism better. We all need to be.
I’ve been out of college for two years, working to produce content that people care about. But now I can finally say my career has begun, because I’ll get to spend everyday working on the next phase of journalism, adapting the core practice of journalism — reporting — to the web.
That’s what Beat Blogging is all about. Right now, there are beat reporters rethinking what it means to be a journalist. They are using new tools to do their jobs quicker and more effectively, while also engaging their communities better. Those are the journalists we want to highlight.
Join me as I scour the World Wide Web for the people who are pushing the practice of beat reporting. It promises to be an informational and wild ride.
P.S. Check out Jay’s post about Beat Blogging, where he looks back at the project six months in. Jay lays out how the project has gone and what the future will hold.
June 19th, 2008 at 12:22 am
Great news, Pat!
You’ll do great with beatblogging.org.
June 19th, 2008 at 12:22 am
Congratulations! You guys will be a killer team. I’m sure you’ll be uncovering some answers to our problems in no time!
June 19th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Congrats, man. Looking forward to seeing what you do with it.
June 19th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Congrats on your new job!
June 19th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Congratulations on joining Beat Blogging. It’s an exciting idea. I can’t wait to see how you engage with beat reporters who are connecting with their sources and the community in new ways. Kudos!
June 19th, 2008 at 12:25 am
Said it before and I’ll say it again: Congrats.
June 19th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Your enthusiasm for the project is noticed and appreciated. I’m looking forward to seeing where we can go with this.
June 19th, 2008 at 12:32 am
Congrats and best of luck on your new venture.
June 19th, 2008 at 12:34 am
wow congratulations! that really is great news
June 19th, 2008 at 1:45 am
Big ups, P-Ditty!
From your previous pant-less post, I thought you were going to become an underwear model, but I guess working for Beat Blogging is just as glamorous.
Keep up the good fight.
Will
June 19th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Congrats on the new position! It sounds very innovative and forward-thinking.
June 19th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Pat:
As you start on your new job, I thought you might like to see this example that’s trying to combine crowdsourcing and new media techniques with angry, old school journalists.
http://www.tellzell.com is written by an anonymous LA staffer. It got some buzz by posting all names of recently axed LAT employees. Now, the site is doing an investigative reporting project, done by volunteer ex LAT staffers, posting on the blog. It’s kind of an interesting experiment between new and old media, old fashioned reporting married to blogging technology.
cheers,
the Retch.
June 19th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I’m freak’n excited to see where Pat takes beat blogging. It’s been a great project to work on and I don’t intend to disappear. But it’s an exciting time in general for journalism and there are lots of experiments to try and I’ve been offered the chance to lead an experiment of my own.
Still: The reason Pat is perfect for this job are many and varied. It will be a blast to see it evolve.
June 19th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
[...] blog, along with a call to action to let Pat Thornton know if you’re an unsung beatblogger. Pat’s the new editor at BeatBlogging, taking over for David Cohn, who moves on to doing something else impressive with his Knight News [...]
June 20th, 2008 at 6:28 am
So many beat reporters are held back and not allowed to be innovative due to the lack of skills and lack of understanding of their superiors. If upper management does not embrace, or see value in allowing the reporters to broaden their horizons and report in a new way that embraces social media and other forms of interactivity, the organization will continue to crumble. The newspaper mentality boggled my mind when I was multimedia editor at a major paper in South Florida. They have to let go of the antiquated ideas of ruling by committee, strategic sessions and 14-month plans to move into Web 2.0. When they finally get there, the rest of the world will be Web 4.0. It’s a vicious cycle. I hope this project will encourage executives to give reporters some breathing room and ultimately trust them. I can’t wait to monitor the progress.
June 20th, 2008 at 10:49 am
[...] Pat Thorton is taking BeatBlogging editorial reins from David Cohn, who has started working on his News Challenge project, Spot.us; find out how Cohn addresses his early Spot.us critics in this IdeaLab blog post. [...]
June 20th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
“The reason Pat is perfect for this job are many and varied. It will be a blast to see it evolve.”
I couldn’t agree more. Congrats!
June 24th, 2008 at 6:09 am
[...] I stumbled across a guy called Patrick Thornton last night who - from a distance - appears to be one of Jay Rosen’s ‘posse’ out in the States. In that he’s just taken over from Knight News Challenge winner David Cohn in working on http://www.beatblogging.org - http://patthorntonfiles.com/blog/2008/06/19/my-newest-journalism-adventure/ [...]
June 24th, 2008 at 10:29 am
OK this is all well and good, several other projects exist, I blogged about one of them here http://tinyurl.com/68×9v6
I love the idea of beat blogging, but is that journalism or observing event(s) and providing a conduit for comment. Not that this isn’t valuable I just ask the question of whether this is what journalism will become? If so, how do we uncover corruption, crime, and manipulation?
One can say, hey, journalism is just to report the facts and you, the consumer of information figure out the rest. OK I’m cool with that.
However, remind me of the following:
Who checks facts in new journalism?
Who pays for new journalism?
all the best, nice work I’ll keep a twitter eye out
June 25th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Belated congratulations and good luck!
@Albert If used correctly, modern journalism provides more time and routes for uncovering corruption and manipulation, and less time spent doing the more labour-intensive work.
It can also provide pointers for where this corruption is occurring in a far more effective way than the desk life many reporters have, being fed by PR people.
July 21st, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I was just wondering what you all think of a journalism concept that features live news from around the country and world all one one web site. It’s called livenewscameras.com and it runs 24 hours a day. A live anchor or moderator appears in a window and guides viewers toward live breaking news happening on any of the 200 stations on the site. Viewers get to see the action as it unfolds thanks to the many live helicopter feeds from different stations on the site. If you guys have any thoughts you’d like to share, you can reach me at info@livenewscameras.com.