In this second part of our conversation with Craig Silverman, journalist, author and Digital Journalism Director at OpenFile, we continue talking about their approach to a pressing news question:
How to create a real opportunity for ‘journalists looking to thrive in a digital media world’?
Dan: How does the process of pairing the right freelancer and story work in the context of collaboration?
Craig: So basically right now if you are a freelancer in Toronto and you have a story idea you can go to [the Openfile site], open a file, which is kind of the same as doing a story pitch, you fill out the information, insert text, add photos or video if their relevant and that goes to an editor and they review it. And if they think it’s a good story then you’ll be assigned to it.
If they think that it might benefit from some more discussion, if they’re not sure if it’s a good story, they’ll put that pitch online and allow other people, the audience for the site, to come in with comments, to add their own thoughts, comments, videos etc, and see if from there it’ll turn into a story.
So there are a lot of opportunities for freelancers in that respect, and hopefully there are going to be more since the plan is for OpenFile to go into other cities.
D: So these are not just opportunities for budding Journalists to cut their teeth but for the established freelancer as well?
C: Absolutely. We only work with professional journalists right now [See the Openfile definition of Professional journalists here] the idea is that people in the community could go and open a file about something that they think is an important issue, or on a question that they have, and we would assign a freelancer to be the reporter on that file.
So while we absolutely are dedicated to community collaboration and enabling people to suggest and direct our reporting and then participate in it while the reporting is ongoing, ultimately the reporting is all done buy professional journalists.
And while we certainly are open to working with people who are perhaps in journalism school or haven’t been working in the industry for years, the reality is that a lot of the people that we are working with are very well established as freelancers and have been doing journalism for a while.
D: And you’re including things more than writing – there are opportunities for videographers and photographers as well?
C: Certainly we value freelancers who can deliver storytelling in a variety of mediums. We had three reporters who were out on the scene during the G20 in Toronto and each of them of course were taking notes, but they also had a camera so they were shooting stills and they were shooting video and they were also reporting.
So we definitely value people who have multi-media discipline, and there’s also certainly an opening, if somebody thinks that a story could be told more effectively using a map, or a timeline or a chart or graphics or data visualisation, if there are people that understand those areas of story telling, we’re also very interested in that as well.
D: Are there opportunities for freelancers not based in Toronto?
C: Right now, not really, because what we are really focussed on is community level, local news. So while we’re in Toronto right now, which means that we’re writing stories that are only relevant to people Toronto.
But the idea is that, certainly by the fall, we are looking to expand into another city, perhaps more than one city, more than one community. And so the goal is really to be in the major Canadian cities and in other Canadian communities relatively quickly.
So for folks who are not in Toronto and are interested in this model they should keep an eye on the site and see where we’re going next. Because I think rather than just suddenly one day opening up in other cities, we will make it known in advance because we’re going to have to go out and find freelancers and in the larger cities find an editor to run the site as well.
For more information on the OpenFile project, check out the site, and there’s more in this excellent interview with Craig Silverman by Ian Capstick at MediaStyle.
Thanks to Craig for taking the time to talk with Mediaville, and fingers crossed that OpenFile will extend coverage to a city near us sometime very soon!
