search

opencompany / www.opencompany.org

Website of the Open Company Initiative
https://www.opencompany.org
Other
61 stars 37 forks source link

partner with journalist(s) for blog #24

Closed chadwhitacre closed 10 years ago

chadwhitacre commented 10 years ago

We're launching a new thing called the Open Company Initiative, it's like the Open Source Initiative but for companies, not just software projects. First, go check out our site:

http://www.opencompany.org/

We need some story-telling component to make this more than just a static site, and fuel this as a movement. However, that's a lot of work to do properly. Perhaps this is a place for an experiment in journalism in a collaborative society? Is there a high-caliber journalist or two out there who would sign on to write content for a blog on www.opencompany.org? The idea would be for you to tell an unfolding story around our vision. You will be expected to write whatever particular stories you decide need to be told, highlighting both successes and failures of companies taking the Open Company Pledge (cf. #21):

We who belong to the Open Company Initiative pledge to maximize operational transparency and openness as a defining element in how we create value.

Your stories will be written in public, meaning anyone (including companies you're writing about) will have input into them. If a particular company is being obstructionist, we would expect that to become a story in itself.

The value for the member companies is that we'll have someone telling a story that we want to have told in a way that both praises and critiques us. Here's the crux: companies who are on board with the Open Company Pledge want to be critiqued.

We are looking for concrete examples of what operational transparency and openness look like, who is getting this right and who is having trouble. When a company comes to our website for the first time, wondering how this might apply to them, we want to give them abundant specific answers.

Funding

Member companies will pay into a Gittip Team, and you will take the bulk of the money each week (there will be devs involved too, though probably less heavily?).

What would the numbers need to look like for this to work? What if we had 100 companies paying an average of $10/wk? That'd be an annual budget of $52,000. If we had 1,000 companies paying an average of $20/wk, that'd be a $1,040,000 budget. That doesn't seem unrealistic to me in the medium term—with your help—and it seems like it could be the start of something really interesting.

The hypothesis is that we can maintain journalistic integrity and avoid becoming a house organ: because Gittip funding is spread out among many patrons, no one company would exert undue funding influence. If you piss off one member company, you'd risk at most a small portion of your overall funding.

Waddya think? Sound interesting? If you don't have a GitHub account to respond here, then please feel free to reach out on Twitter (@whit537) or email (chad@zetaweb.com). I'd be happy to do a Google Hangout to unpack the idea further.

P.S. We're working towards a launch event on March 22, 2014 (cf. #5).

ityonemo commented 10 years ago

this is a fantastic idea, but I have no idea how to help in finding such a journalist. I may have some interesting contacts, so let's see.

chadwhitacre commented 10 years ago

Thanks @ityonemo! I've rewritten this as a pitch to journalists, so feel free to use this as a link to pass around. I plan to do the same.

halfvector commented 10 years ago

Beautiful vision statement!

chadwhitacre commented 10 years ago

Thanks @halfvector! :-)

vielmetti commented 10 years ago

Sounds interesting, I'd like to learn more as the process unfolds.

Dispatches commented 10 years ago

I don't fit the high-caliber journo bill, but I'm definitely a disaffected writer and a rebel without a cause. Science background, humanities passion. Find me @DispatchesUSA

chadwhitacre commented 10 years ago

Thanks for stepping up, @Dispatches! @vielmetti and I are doing a Hangout on Air at 2pm US/Eastern to discuss. Wanna join us for that? Twitter

timothyfcook commented 10 years ago

Depending on how fast you think we can act on it, we might want to create another issue to get some examples up that discuss what this means. The OCI needs some teeth. Those teeth are stories. In the Directory the Balanced link points to their "open" page, we need more content like that. Gittip and Saxifrage could make "open" pages as well that stories some of our operational transparency.

Of course, if we can get 3rd parties to be telling these stories asap, all the better!

chadwhitacre commented 10 years ago

@timothyfcook We've got four people joining the call in three hours. Let's see what comes out of that and go from there.

timothyfcook commented 10 years ago

Sounds great. I'll be driving to Ohio. Will check in after. Hope things go well!

chadwhitacre commented 10 years ago

Just wrapped up the call. Phew!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P66c-pl9e2Q

That was a doozy. Will reticket ...

chadwhitacre commented 10 years ago

Okay, so there wasn't that much to actually reticket. :-)

What we decided is that:

@bronwen @Dispatches @vielmetti What did I miss?

chadwhitacre commented 10 years ago

I created a Google Drive folder to collect stories:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByDJ5uiG6Hp3eGEyYnNPWXo5MDg&usp=sharing

I set to public viewing, and gave edit permission to @bronwen @Dispatches @vielmetti and @heyrubino.

chadwhitacre commented 10 years ago

I added @vielmetti and @Dispatches as collaborators on this repo. Once @bronwen confirms her account and if we get @heyrubino on GitHub I'll add them as well.

ericmeltzer commented 10 years ago

This is fascinating. @whit537 any idea on how to maximize the chance that the stories written get syndicated into other mainstream publications? I think that would be a very good thing to have happen. Maybe CC license everything on the blog?

chadwhitacre commented 10 years ago

We are using CC0 for the site (#23). Not sure about syndication. Maybe @vielmetti @bronwenc @Dispatches can speak to that?

vielmetti commented 10 years ago

@whit537 - Chad, there are a variety of ways to get stories picked up by other publications. Generally you'd be looking to find some other media outlet that has overlapping interests and then identify how they handle things.

For instance, I see that Fast Company Labs has an "open company" section

http://www.fastcolabs.com/section/open-company

I can't tell for the life of me exactly what they mean by "open company", but this should be both a channel for story ideas as well as a way to suss out opportunities to be written about.

Dispatches commented 10 years ago

This will depend a lot on what kind of pieces you publish on the blog.

For instance HuffPo probably won't go for much over 1500 words; longform reads are intended for a different audience, and condensing a long read into a short news article often doesn't work.

ericmeltzer commented 10 years ago

Word. I imagine as the number of contributors increases the diversity in type of piece will too! Is there anything we can do to increase the number of "incoming" requests to syndicate pieces featured on the blog? If not, should we have a list of things to do after a story is published on the blog to get it syndicated elsewhere?

vielmetti commented 10 years ago

@whit537 - what kinds of publications would you like to be written up in, and why? Do you think you know that landscape and who that audience is, or is there still some discovery to be done?

Getting written up is more than putting things out there CC0 and hoping that someone else cuts and pastes them into their publication. You need to try to figure out what other people's calendars look like, whether they are writing about the latest hot thing on the spur of the moment or if there's some bigger plan, and if there is a bigger plan where you fit in.

There's also the task of once something is published getting it out to the net via social media channels, with the fond hopes that people will find it that way as well through the strength of or fit with personal networks.

Dispatches commented 10 years ago

I think you need to focus on getting the blog up and running first. Make it as clean and interesting as you can. Write your stories to link in with current topics, the grand ethical debate and so on. Choose your angles carefully, and tell your story with the reader in mind. Talk all of this over with your writers and make sure they understand the story before you ask them to write it. Don't go for clickbait - a great title has to have something of substance attached to it or people feel abused.

When you've got the groundwork under you then you can start thinking about what other publishers might have to gain by republishing for you.

chadwhitacre commented 10 years ago

Good questions and points all around. My strategy to date with Gittip has been to write for people whom I know to already be interested in Gittip, and not think at all about syndication. I've found social media to be powerful enough to spread the word quite fast enough when there's something interesting to share, and I value and trust the traffic I get from organic Twitter way more than any inorganic methods.

For the OCI I think that means telling our story to ourselves, to the companies that are members of (or at least sympathetic to) the Open Company Initiative vision. Our primary audience is the leadership of open companies.

chadwhitacre commented 10 years ago

I.e., +1 @Dispatches. :-)

ericmeltzer commented 10 years ago

+1 @Dispatches @whit537 Didn't mean to derail w/ the syndication idea, it's definitely a consideration for the future rather than now.

Dispatches commented 10 years ago

+1 @whit537 @ericmeltzer Sure! And it's good to look at it from a blog-surfer's perspective too.

Yes, your companies will want to hear about where they fit in first up. Context is the key.