Post by nancy456 on Aug 22, 2017 7:17:45 GMT
Citizen journalism is broken and this startup has a plan to fix it
For billions of people around the world, having their voice heard on the global stage is hard. But that's starting to change. "We want to lower the barrier to entry," says Paul Myles, editorial manager of On Our Radar, a London-based nonprofit which aims to connect the world's more unconnected locations.
For billions of people around the world, having their voice heard on the global stage is hard. But that's starting to change. "We want to lower the barrier to entry," says Paul Myles, editorial manager of On Our Radar, a London-based nonprofit which aims to connect the world's more unconnected locations.
Co-founded by journalist Libby Powell in 2012, the firm has worked in Sierra Leone, Malaysia, India, Ghana and beyond to tell stories from countries that traditional journalism struggles to reach. "We're using design to try and bridge those gaps," Myles says.The six-person team, based above a coffee shop near Exmouth Market, comprises two journalists, a systems architect, designer and heads of operations and finance. All of On Our Radar's projects have a simple aim: to determine what barriers are preventing people from getting their voices heard - and then design around them.
Its first project was to create a reporting network to cover the 2012 general election in Sierra Leone. "These communities have little access to electricity, they aren't online and they prefer to use an old Nokia that they can charge once a week," Myles says. "They're not citizen journalists who are sharing their story on Twitter already."To address this, On Our Radar trained local residents in key reporting skills and then created an SMS and voice hub. This allowed anyone in Sierra Leone to tell their story for the same price as sending a local text message or making a phone call. All the reports were stored on an online content-management system monitored by the London team.