[ibimage==34293==Original==none==self==ibimage_align-center]
A lot of activity brews in Mike Cummings’s neighborhood. From civil improvements (street construction) to political activism (protests at the intersections of thoroughfares) to bougie leisure (farmer’s markets, pop-up gallery openings), there's a healthy social slurry of which to keep abreast. But, even after consulting news outlets and social media, he's found there's rarely an efficient way to stay locally informed.
Cummings, along with colleague Hugh Myers, has proposed a solution: Newsbloom, a platform that allows citizens to publish news updates about their local environments.
“Local news is an inherently dynamic and fast-moving endeavor,” Cummings said. “Local news is as important, if not more so, as it’s ever been.”
The premise is simple: users publish updates comprised of a photo, headline, and one- or two-sentence caption and select a topical category. “The content is meant to be short-form since it is optimized for a mobile experience,” Cummings said.
In the interests of timeliness and citizen autonomy, users publish at will and are free to moderate their own and others’ posts. They're also given access to updates across the platform, whether in their vicinity or elsewhere.
“We believe an open platform is critical for crowdsourcing, for if you require every story to be vetted you lose the power of user-generated content,” he said. “We also don’t attempt to define what news is and this is intentional. Local news is very personal and we want the local community to curate what is important; it is not our role to define what is newsworthy.”
[ibimage==34296==Original==none==self==ibimage_align-center]
A participant in the market of “citizen journalism,” Newsbloom exists alongside websites owned by major media companies, like MSNBC (Newsvine), CNN (iReport), and The Guardian (Witness). But, Cummings argues, smaller startups have the advantage.
“Newsbloom is locally-focused, and local content is an inherently bottoms-up endeavor. Being owned by a huge national or multinational news organization is not an advantage; it’s a liability. Local news businesses must be grown organically in their own environment,” he said. “Crowdsourcing on these sites is an afterthought for both their readers and the organization itself, and this is reflected in their products. Also, the requirement for content to be vetted severely mitigates the motivation for a user to contribute as they have no guarantee their story will ever be published.”
Though conceived as a service for consumers, Newsbloom also offers integration for publications and individual journalists.
“The B2B business evolved after we realized that existing local journalists and publications could use our platform to enhance their existing operations through a mobile app and by leveraging crowdsourced content,” Cummings explained. “In return, we get access to their content, which enriches our B2C offering and augments the publishers existing distribution.”
The app, which has been built without outside funding and is in private beta, will debut by spring of 2015 for iOS and Android as a service for the West Side of Los Angeles, notably Santa Monica and Venice, with intentions of regional expansion. Cummings said Newsbloom will also be accessible through a Web portal (though it will only allow users to read posts, rather than report).
Commenting on the company’s future, Cummings is optimistic, yet demure. “Our main focus right now is on completing the testing and development of our product, and releasing Newsbloom in select markets. As for the distant future, you’ll just have to wait and see.”
