AUDIO: Crowdsourcing in Orange County: the the audience steps in

Glenn Hall, deputy editor of innovation at the Orange County Register, was surprised when the newspaper turned on comments at the bottom of news stories during a series of wildfires. Immediately, a reader thousands of miles from Southern California posted asking about the safety of her grandmother. The audience took it from there. In another incident, the paper's web editors posted a simple question: How is your service from Time-Warner Cable, which had recently taken over the region's cable TV franchise. Neither the website nor Time Warner were expecting the result. Hall discusses these two examples of the audience-as-contributor in a 4 minute podcast with Bill Densmore recorded May 22, 2007 at Stanford University's "Innovation Journalism" conference.  (CLICK ON CARET TO LEFT OF BAR BELOW TO LAUNCH AUDIO)

Comments

[Glenn Hall]

For those who would like to see the coverage and the comments, here are the links:

Anaheim Hills fire:

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1615816.php
Time Warner:

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1678836.php

Here's the original short solicit for comments on Time Warner's service that generated unexpected comments and prompted the company to call us before we had even started the story:

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/money/article_1627158.php