How to Hack the Media

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How would you like to break a national news story while sitting on a beach, drinking a cold one, your toes buried in the sand? That's exactly what I did a month ago, while on a trip to Nicaragua. The story scored a direct hit on the national media, with TV, Internet and newspaper coverage; I don't know if it ever made it to radio.

You can do the same thing, right here on NowPublic and I'll show you how. But first, a little reality check.

Why are you here? I don't mean that in some metaphysical way, or even in the Bill Cosby, "why is there air?" way. I mean what's the point, natch, what's your point in being here, in this "cyber space" we call NowPublic? I'd throw cash at a bet that says if I asked 20 different people that question, I'd get 17 different answers.

Whatever your particular reason or reasons are for being here, there is one underlying truth that binds us all: when we contribute to NowPublic we are "committing journalism." And in doing so we side-stepped a multi-billion dollar, multi-platform, global enterprise fondly known as the "main stream media," or MSM for short. The big dawgs in the journalism game still mutter under their collective breath about "citizen journalism" or "crowd sourced" news, or whatever moniker you want to pin on what we do here.

You see, the journalistic juggernauts have been here before, when they scoffed at the value of the Internet for breaking news, and they got their clock cleaned in the process. Lesson learned. Whatever else the big names in MSM think about crowd-sourced journalism, they know this: it works.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges
This process of side-stepping MSM I like to call "hacking the media." It is surprising easy and you have all the tools right at your fingertips. You don't need a journalism degree; you don't need a press pass; you don't need to have the power of a big news organization behind you. You need a curious mind, the desire to get answers and the simple ability to open your mouth and ask a question.

How do you recognize a story? It's anything that makes you double-clutch during your day; something that causes you to mentally backspace. If that happens, it's probably a story. So, instead of just shrugging off your curiosity, breathe life into it, and go find an answer that satisfies it.

"What if it's all a waste of time?" you're asking, yeah, I know you are. My response: "Define 'waste of time'?" In the worst case scenario, you find out the answer to a question that piqued your curiosity. Not a waste of time in my book.

And so it was that the needle on my own curiosity meter spiked into the red zone while I was perusing photos on Flickr, while logged on from the sleepy little fishing village of San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua. I was looking through the Flickr stream of one of my favorite photographers, Troy Paiva, when I noticed a new set of photos he'd just posted from a trip to the Mojave desert. What I saw floored me; made me double-clutch and I found myself mentally backspacing. Troy had picture after picture of rotting food, abandoned pallets of bottled water, cases of canned whipped cream (which had exploded in the extreme desert heat), and more. It seemed endless; it looked like a hunger relief operation gone horribly wrong. And in fact, that's exactly what it was.

Low Hanging Fruit
Though the rotting food was amazing enough, it was the prominent "Second Harvest" logos slapped on barrels and cases of food that really caught my eye. Second Harvest, by their figures, secures and distributes more than two billion pounds of donated food and grocery products each year.

"What the f**k??" was my first reaction. Then it was, "hey, I give money to Second Harvest!" The third was, "those bastards are dumping food in the desert? Damn, this is GOOD story!"

So, there I was, in Nicaragua, on a tenuous Internet connection, with what I believed was a great story; it was a gift, like a hanging curve ball on a full count and men on base. I could have chased down this story myself; my first call of course would have been to Second Harvest to ask, "why are you guys dumping food out in the desert and leaving it to rot when you're supposed to be using it to feed the hungry?"

No rocket science there, right? That's a question you'd have asked, too, if you ran into this story. Plus you'd have a bonus: a journalistic secret weapon right there on your jump drive, otherwise known as the "smoking gun," otherwise known as photographic proof of what's happened.

Now I was in a quandary, do I: (A) chase this story down myself or, (B) order another cold one, dig my toes deeper into the sand, and fire off an e-mail to my former colleagues at MSNBC and tell them I know where to find buried treasure? Yeah, it's a no-brainer, I fired off the e-mail just about the time a cold cerveza was being delivered to me.

Within 24 hours, MSNBC broke the news as their lead cover story. And once MSNBC broke the story, others jumped it like hungry trout, here, and here and a short mention here. Add to these stories the mentions on broadcast news, as well.

Bonus: because the story shoved Second Harvest into an embarrassing public relations situation, they acted quickly to clean up the mess, which again made news and "gave the story legs," as journalists say when a story lives on past its initial news cycle.

"It's VERY important to also understand that I did not contact MSNBC, who broke this story," Troy writes in the comments section for these pictures. "All I did was put the pics online here and they found them. The rest just kinda happened, most of it was completely out of my control (I've learned that the news is just like that: a juggernaut, like trying to steer a train). If you knew my personality, it'd be pretty obvious that I'm no whistle blower. The whole thing has been as big a surprise to me as anyone, believe me!"

And it's as easy as that. You can do the same right here. You have all the tools; the world around you supplies stories--free of charge--all you gotta do is get curious.

PHOTO: © 2006 Troy Pavia, All Rights Reserved.