I'm probably ruffling some feathers here and there with my citizen's media project at one of my blogs. Setting the subject matter aside, what's important here is the way I'm doing it. The idea could probably be put to use by any non-profit or activist group, which is why I bring it up.
I have several news alerts set up from Google, Yahoo, Bloglines, PubSub, and Bloglines. When these come in, links to the stories go on the blog, and they're rated as to whether they reflect, in my opinion, disinformation or progress in the field. Whenever contact information is available, I e-mail the paper or reporter direct and either thank them for their balanced coverage or simply inform them of my project, with a diplomatic explanation on the whys and wherefores.
I'm encouraging my readers to contact their local media when they see them pop up at the blog, and express their own opinions. So this is different than the traditional "write to your paper" campaign in that all (a lot of, anyway) of the papers are in full view, and anybody can see how various media are reporting on our chosen subject.
I'm also linking back to other blogs, both pro and con on our issue, same as Big3 stories and have both sets of viewpoints linked in the gutters.
It's too early to tell what impact this is or will be having. I expect to run the project through the month of October, to give it a reasonable chance to work. I do know I've had almost 8000 direct visits to the site in the past ten days or so, and of course who knows how many reading in aggregators! This is really not too bad for a new project. As far as I know, nobody else has done this before. I think it's a pretty efficient way to run an activist project, especially from the standpoint of someone who doesn't have legions of volunteers or lots of funding.
One day I'll probably come across somebody that wants to automate the process more, but in the meantime I think I'm onto something here!
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