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Knight Center for Specialized Journalism
A member of the Knight Center for Specialized JournalismWiki-Community Network

Knight Center Wiki-Community Network

The Knight Center for Specialized Journalism has produced several beat guides for journalists on focused public policy topics like business, courts, energy, and the credit crisis.

GreenJobsGuide.org is our first next-generation beat guide, based on what we're calling a Wiki-Community model.  Our older guides were compiled by one experienced journalist, and have remained unchanged since they were written.  Our newest guide seeks to leverage the collective wisdom of an entire community of journalists covering a topic - both professional and amateur - to produce a more authoritative resource that remains fresh.  And it provides a forum for journalists interested in the green economy to connect with and learn from each other.

Our goal is to roll out several new Wiki-Communties over the next few months, and we're seeking great ideas and partners for future guides. If you have a great idea for a Wiki-Community, fill out the form below.  If we like the idea, we'll provide the funding, software and technical know-how to get it going.   

We seek to partner with journalists who adhere to standards of journalistic fairness, accuracy, balance and independence.  If you're a professional journalist, a freelancer, a blogger or a citizen journalist who abides by these standards, we want to work with you.      

Got an Idea for a Wiki-Community?

Topics should strike a careful balance - narrow enough to be specialized, but large enough to attract a community of reporters to keep the site active.  For example, "the economy" is too broad a topic to cover on a single site. And "the economics of weekly newspapers" is probably too narrow because few, if any, reporters cover the topic.  What might work: a Wiki-Community for journalists who cover the automobile industry.

We're looking to create Wiki-Communities around topics:

  • That are complex and difficult for journalists to cover thoughtfully.
  • That are not the subject of pre-existing, unbiased in-depth knowledge bases.
  • That are of interest to a broad group of professional and citizen journalists.  

Please explain how your idea fills these goals.   

About the Knight Center

The Knight Center for Specialized Journalism helps professional and citizen journalists develop a deeper understanding of complex topics -- and trains them to use digital tools to cover those issues more comprehensively.

 

Knight Center Supporters

Knight Center for Specialized Journalism Philip Merrill College of Journalism University of Maryland

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