March 18, 2011

SXSW: 5 Great Sites for Progressive Media Types

Yes, I got my photo taken with the penguin.

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I took the nerd bird out of Austin with my fellow SXSW Interactive geeks this week just as a clutch of tattooed, guitar-toting rock stars swaggered into town for the Music portion of South by Southwest. The Texas tri-part festival (Film, Interactive, and Music) overlaps slightly in schedule and demographics, but frankly the attendees aren’t hard to tell apart in an elevator. Real rock stars, it turns out, are generally better dressed than Internet rock stars; their pallor looks more midnight partyin’ than Minecraft in the den. (I’m still not sure about that 6th Street evening parade of cheering men wearing wedding dresses, though. Start-up guerrilla marketers? Typical Austin Saturday night? The SXSW trade show featured a giant penguin, a Michael Jackson impersonator, cotton candy, and QR codes on anything not nailed down—so really, who can tell?)

Anyway, Monika Bauerlein and I did a SXSWi panel this year on how Mother Jones uses Twitter in reporting (thank you to everyone who made it such a fun panel). Also fun: Hanging out with other SXSWi media folk and hearing what sites caught their fancy lately. Below, 5 digital bon bons and what makes them so sweet:

1. Storify.

Tagline: “Storify is a way to tell stories using social media such as Tweets, photos and videos. You search multiple social networks from one place, and then drag individual elements into your story. You can re-order the elements and also add text to give context to your readers.”

Sweet spot: Via Nieman Storyboard, this example of how local DC news site TBD used Storify to unspool a real life murder mystery.

2. Tumblr.

Tagline: “Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be.”

Sweet spot: Mother Jones‘ Tumblr, natch.

3. Readability.

Tagline: “Readability is a web & mobile app that zaps online clutter and saves web articles in a comfortable reading view…Readability offers a new way to compensate writers and publishers without punishing readers. 70% of all membership fees go directly to the people who make the content.”

Sweet spot: The New York Review of Books online. A Readability button on each article gives the option to read it now or read it later.

4. DocumentCloud.

Tagline: “DocumentCloud runs every document you upload through OpenCalais, giving you access to extensive information about the people, places and organizations mentioned in each. Once you decide to publish, your documents join thousands of other primary source documents in our public catalog. Use our document viewer to embed documents on your own website and introduce your audience to the larger paper trail behind your story.”

Sweet spot: The world’s largest searchable reporters’ notebook, uploaded to the cloud.

5. MuckRock.

Tagline: “MuckRock is an open governent tool powered by state and federal Freedom of Information laws…You are free to embed, share and write about any of the verified government documents hosted here.”

Sweet spot: Got a FOIA request? Want someone to submit it and follow up? There’s an app for that.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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