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GroundReport.com is a global news website that
democratizes the media by helping everyone tell their
story. I started it after witnessing diplomatic apathy in the
face of the Darfur crisis as a reporter on the Security
Council for the US Mission to the United Nations.
GroundReport informs and empowers the public to
participate in the news conversation, and change the
world.
When I speak to investors or journalists about
GroundReport, I often describe the technology behind
the platform, 'scalability,' and our mass payment system.
But when I write to the GroundReport community, I
always reinforce that they "have made GroundReport
what it is today." Without their participation,
GroundReport would be nothing.
So is it the tools or the people using them that help
GroundReport to succeed?
Both are crucial. They are the components of a healthy,
growing network. GroundReport's value is in its web of
trusted relationships. When I described GroundReport to
a Reuters executive, he was skeptical of the concept of
citizen journalism, which is the idea that any individual
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can act as reporter with the increasingly ubiquitous
connectivity and devices we all have. But when I
described the nature of the stories, the exceedingly
sophisticated reporting that our community produces, a
light went off. "It's an outsourced stringer network," he
said, "and that's how Reuters built its name." The value
of a trusted network of individuals- online, offline, or
somewhere in between - cannot be underestimated.
Indeed, it is at the core of businesses and entire
industries.
We trust GroundReport contributors to publish factual,
original news reports. They trust us to keep our website
running, to save and protect their content, and to pay
them fairly and punctually. It has not been an easy path
to find this balance, and our network has taken on
different incarnations throughout GroundReport's lifetime.
Our network started small. After completing a prototype
of GroundReport, I needed a global community of
reporters, but didn't know where to begin. So I asked a
few friends for help. Or, more specifically, I made a list of
all the friends I knew living around the world, and gave
each one a topic or region to direct. The topic or region
with the most stories at the end of the month would land
its owner $100.
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