The Media Drop

Oregon Public Broadcasting is opening up its source code in a way by asking anyone within its community to become a source of the media outlet. They’re teaming up with American Public Media to launch what will be called the Public Insight Network®, and will handle things in a different manner than what we’ve traditionally (or recently, more properly) seen from media organizations where they ask for people to send in tips and information on the fly.

OPB will be organizing via www.opb.org/PublicInsight, which will go live as of September 5. Once signup commences, community members will be contacted no more than once per month, according to an OPB announcement, with the email they receive asking for “observations and experiences” surrounding an issue at hand, and these sources are asked to forward the request along to someone they know who might have information should they not have any themselves.

This effort has been put together not only to improve the value of the journalism put forth by the OPB, but to add diverse values and commentaries to the reporting and content development.