NowPublic Needs to Change - Let Us Be Heard!

One of the newest and best contributors is leaving NowPublic because, as many of us know, things aren't great here. Here's a comment I left for Zichi, the guy who's leaving, and one in which I describe some of our grievences. After this highlighted portion I will give a step by step roadmap for what I think should be changed at NowPublic. I ask all of you to share your ideas and maybe, through this post, we can change NowPublic for the better.

Before I start launching into what I think should happen I have to say that there are many on the staff, past and present, who do a great job. But I do believe that the NowPublic system is fundamentally flawed. This is supposed to be a "citizen journalist" community - so why don't we get more of a say? Now onto the changes I think need to be made here:

1. There needs to be more of an open discussion between us contributors and the staff. For example, when the site got its new look and feel the first time I heard of it was about a couple of days before it was actually launched. I don't think many of the other contributors got a heads up until it was basically finalized either. Therefore, I think there needs to be an open forum where the staff talks about what changes are going to happen to the site. After all, if you want us to like the site and continue posting our stories (for free) shouldn't we have a say in how the site functions and works? I think so. But I have to stress something, the staff needs to be more involved in the discussion. There's no way us members should outnumber staff comments 10 to 1 (I didn't actually count, but I think it's close to that). You guys, the staff, knows what is going on, pull back the veil and tell us what's going on!
   
2. Members need a say in the status of other members. Many of us do not like the fact that guest editors lose their crowns without any consultation with the community and they also get threats of banishment from our cyber meeting ground. There needs to be user input in these types of situations because, eventually, we are all going to say some stupid things but I do not think that hardly calls for immediate demotion with a threat of expulsion. And when we see some new, active members who should obviously be promoted and given more power, like Zichi, we should be able to push for that promotion. We are the community at NowPublic and we should get a say about what happens to us and our brothers and sisters.
3. The power structure at NowPublic is too far out of whack. Staff members can easily make or break a story. Right now, Zichi's story about his leaving has more than twice the number of views than the number two story but it isn't on the front page. It also has a number of "good stuff" flags on it as well. You can make an argument about the real newsworthiness of this story but I believe that to us in the NowPublic community, it is an extremely important story. Basically, the point I'm getting to here is that there needs to be a flattening of the power structure here at NowPublic. Maybe we'll all decide that staff members should get more of a say, maybe not. But I put more faith in a person who has worked at a newspaper for decades and has been on the site for a year then some staff member who came on in the last month and is obviously very green.
4. PEP and others have championed the idea of an ombudsman for NowPublic. This person (or persons) need to come from the community and they need to have a say as to what makes it to the front page and what doesn't based on its news content. Maybe there can be a committee that reviews the newsworthiness of stories that might make it to the front page that is made up of community members and staffers. We need to talk about this more, that's for sure.
   
5. Since NowPublic has been funded nicely by a couple of venture capitalists I think we all know that this experiment will someday try to make money. Include us in this conversation. And by include I don't mean a thread in the newsroom about ads (whatever happened to those, by the way?). It isn't too much to ask for someone on the staff to delve into your strategy discussions a little bit and tell us what some of your plans are. In the end I think this could be a great thing for NowPublic becaue there are some brilliant people on this site who's insight might bring forward a great idea or two. Revenue sharing must be a part of this as well.
   

It is obvious that the members of this community are passionate about NowPublic's core values. We think that a news agency that is driven by a community of citizen journalists is a worthwhile expirement. But the NowPublic expirement has gone awry. The community is controlled at the top by a cadre of people who dictate what goes on here. They decide what stories make it to the front page, which stories get panned, who gets promoted, who gets demoted, who gets banished, what changes are made to the site, what tools are added onto the site, and all the while we get unanswered threads from the newsroom.

This isn't a community. There is no back and forth between the members and the staff. We pour our guts out working to craft well written and thoughtful pieces that drives traffic to this site. We come up with ideas in the newsroom. When we have a specific technical problem the staff will take care of it. But that isn't enough. We need a say in the direction that NowPublic is going. Actually use us! Our combined brain power has to dwarf the combined brain power of everyone employed by Now Public - that's not a knock on you guys, it's just that there are a ton more members than there are staffers. You built this community - USE IT!

Concluding my thoughts I have to say that I do thoroughly enjoy a number of members on this staff that I have had contact with. The staff itself isn't the crux of the problem. The problem is the structure of NowPublic. We are working in a broken system and all we want to do is fix it. We want Now Public to succeed because we feel we are a part of it. Well, I've gone on long enough, tell me what you guys think.