citizen journalism

Use phrases like "networked journalism" or "citizen journalism" in the presence of conservatives and you're likely to see a lot of blank stares. The few conservatives who are familiar with the terms are just as likely to scoff or shake their heads in disgust.

That's too bad because networked journalism presents a great opportunity for the right to counteract liberal media bias. In the past, readers and sources could only sit on the sidelines and gripe when the "professionals" shirked great stories or produced unbalanced pieces. Now we can do the work they won't -- or can't.

We don't need the liberal media because we have the Internet. If you can't beat 'em, then I say bypass 'em.

As the executive producer of Eyeblast.tv, a video-sharing site designed to promote conservative values and principles, this is an issue I've discussed in theory several times in recent months. Now it's time to test the theory in practice.

Today, Eyeblast joined forces with the Porkbusters coalition to launch a networked journalism project dubbed "Porkbusters On Patrol." The gist of it is to recruit stringers to produce on-site video reports about the most egregious pork-barrel projects funded by the federal government.

This is a chance for The Next Right community to produce the kind of quality journalism we long to see in the mainstream media -- and to have fun doing it.

If you don't have a digital videocamera to shoot footage for a story in your area, you can apply to get one for free and keep it as payment for your contribution to this project. People who already have cameras will be paid for assigned stories. Eyeblast also will cover the mileage costs of citizen video reporters on assignment.

If I've piqued your interest, click on over to the new blog at Eyeblast for the details, and spread the word to anyone who might be interested. And share your thoughts on the project in the comments here and at Eyeblast.

[Promoted - In BlogNetNews Elections, David Mastio has built a very interesting, useful tool for tracking online conversations about specific races around the country.  I can see this being valuable not just to the campaign watchers, but also to the people actively involved in campaigns.   Please check it out - and make sure you submit additional races you want them to follow.  The "counsel" that Mastio kindly attributes to me was merely a couple thoughts about the user experience; the credit goes entirely to him and his team.

David Mastio has been a leader on the Right in developing good online products and services.  We need more people doing this. - Jon Henke]

Following local and state elections through the eyes of local bloggers is about to get a lot easier. For the last two years, my partner and I have been been building BlogNetNews.com to be the first bipartisan aggregator of public affairs and news blogs that covers all 50 states.  A typical page  gives readers links to the latest posts, the most popular posts , a local blog search engine and a bunch of other features.

But now that we have all 50 states built and the matchups for the Fall elections are starting to firm up, we've launched something I think is even more powerful. BlogNetNews.com/Elections

Click on the map and go to the state you want, then click on the race you want to read about. Two clicks simple.

Instead of relying on the MSM to be the filter of election news, BNN/Elections lets readers and bloggers use the blogosphere as a filter, gathering links and excerpts of all the latest posts in one place and constantly updating them.

All we need now is for the experts on the ground to help us find the most important elections to cover. We've already loaded in the governors races, the U.S. Senate races and many of the most competitive U.S. House races. At the bottom of each state page is a link to a form where you can suggest races for us to cover. We'll try to be updating every day this week within hours of your suggestions.

Thanks to Jon Henke's counsel, we've already started to add features that should make BNN/Elections more useful. Every state now has a permalink so you can skip the map once you know where you want to go and there is an RSS feed from the left and right for each race so you can subscribe to the posts you want to follow.

We're looking for your ideas on how to improve the site too, so send any ideas to me at editor@blognetnews.com or if you want to submit your blog to become part of BNN, all you have to do is shoot me your URL with the state you are in and if your blog is focused on state and local issues we'll add it to BlogNetNews.com and if you focus on national issues, we'll add you to RightyBlogs.com .