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Merc’s Green Tech writer joins Beat Blogging project

November 14, 2007 | Author: mattmansfield | Filed under: Community, Online, Social Networking, Milestones

Nauman beat blogging

We’ve been talking a good deal about helping facilitate conversation as we rethink the Mercury News. Well, now we’re ready to try a bold new experiment in partnership with NewAssignment.Net called Beat Blogging.

The New York think-tank partners with news organizations that are willing to pioneer in open platform journalism on the Web. That’s where we come in.

Our green technology writer, Matt Nauman, has signed on to give Beat Blogging a whirl. Matt will join professionals from a dozen other news organizations around the country to see what we can learn about connecting.

The idea NewAssignment.Net’s founder, Jay Rosen, and editor, David Cohn, are trying to test is simple: Maybe a beat reporter could do a way better job if there was a “live” social network connected to the beat, made up of people who know the territory the beat covers, and want the reporting on that beat to be better.

The Merc’s Katharine Fong, a deputy managing editor for online, believes Matt’s beat fits perfectly with the project’s objectives. “Silicon Valley is a hub of commercial and civic activity around “green” energy technology, from solar and wind power to bio-fuels and sustainable development, and the social networking movement has deep roots here,” she said.

Our writer can tap into this engaged, local base of knowledge and innovation as well as cultivate contacts and sources worldwide who can help shape the issues and discussion and inform our audience.

Matt is a veteran reporter and experienced blogger, but he is relatively new to the green tech beat, and has been busy ramping up.

Here’s how Matt describes it:

I’ve been at the Merc for 20 years, the last 15 or so as the auto editor. In that position, I had a blog, did video test drives, tried online reader chats for a few months and helped administer the Drive home page. (Oh, and I wrote a few thousands stories for print over the years, too.)

That all went away in September, as our continued cuts here moved the auto section to advertising. That’s when I started on this new beat, which includes covering our big utility, some regulatory agencies, a big energy company based here and the like.

Green Tech is the beat, and it touches the readers where they work, where they shop, where they have fun. It encompasses where Silicon Valley is moving, where its capital is being invested, where its engineers are being hired. It includes not only Pacific Gas & Electric and regulatory agencies, but start-ups that push solar cells, new battery companies and more.

Matt’s new start on this important coverage area makes it an ideal time to start beat-blogging with a social network, so we’d come out of the gate fast with a blog. We already have a Web page devoted to green energy, which we are likely to reconfigure for the Beat Blogging project.

The page already contains Matt’s stories and quite a bit of additional content and data, making it an automatic resource and clearinghouse for news and information about Green Tech. The blog, of course, is where Matt would talk about ideas and the people behind them, deconstruct issues, ask questions and get input from readers. The transparency in the thinking and discussion would extend to the stories, video, radio and other content generated by Matt and his network.

Matt would also broaden his base beyond the Mercury News’ site and print products by, for example, starting a network on Facebook or another social networking site. This would allow for a more developed forum and less hierarchy in format and presentation, which, we hope, encourages deeper connections between people.

Matt would host the network, recruit people into it, post news and other content, and facilitate discussion and contact. We would also seek out partners to distribute and syndicate any of the multimedia programming that we do.

The Mercury News is in the midst of revamping how we cover, serve and interact with our communities. Much of our strategy includes new ways to involve our audience in producing content that is useful and relevant, and connects them with what they want to know and do.

“Beat reporting, or beat blogging, with a social network is a natural extension of this endeavor, especially in the increasingly important and high-profile topic of Green Tech,” Katharine said.

The Mercury News Team working on this, in addition to Matt and Katharine, will be Rebecca Salner, our executive business editor, and Steve Trousdale, the deputy business editor. Plus there are many of us who are fascinated by the idea and have offered to help in any way we can.

Keep an eye on our Green Tech coverage. And be sure to let us know what you think now or along the way. You can drop a comment on this post, send Matt a note, or send us an email (rethinking@mercurynews.com).

We’re excited about this Beat Blogging adventure. We hope you will be, too.

~ By Katharine Fong + Matt Mansfield

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 and is filed under Community, Online, Social Networking, Milestones. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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7 people have left comments

And we are excited that you have come to join us for this ride. It should be exciting.

David Cohn wrote on November 14, 2007 - 2:52 am | Visit Link

I’m sorry, but this is confusing. What is beatblogging? Is your blog going to have actual news, or are you just going to blog about blogging? Or what? And where is this new blog?

Erik wrote on November 14, 2007 - 6:49 am | Visit Link

Today is the announcement that we’re signing on to help experiment and figure out what form “beatblogging” takes. There is no new blog at the moment. There likely will be very soon. The new blog will have “actual news” about the green energy movement and will try to connect newsmakers to the Merc and to each other. For now, you can visit our green energy page www.siliconvalley.com/greenenergy … and if you have ideas on how we can socially network the beat, drop us a line.

mattmansfield wrote on November 14, 2007 - 8:21 am | Visit Link

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