Collaborating to Storify Japan
User 1rick has found several different ways to effectively use Storify to cover what's happening in Japan.
- On March 11, Japan was left reeling after an 8.9-magnitude earthquake set off a tsunami that devastated coastal cities. While recovery efforts were underway, there were explosions at several nuclear power plants, as well as some radiation contamination into Japan's food supply.Journalist @1Rick (aka Rick Martin) has been covering Japan, using Storify to curate resources and liveblog the situation, which he is constantly updating with help from The Japan Times.
- For starters, Martin used Storify to curate a list of resources, letting people know how they could help the recovery efforts in Japan. It's been embedded on well over 20 sites, and over 17,000 views.
Japan quake: "How can I help?"A list of donation methods and ways to pitch in. You can embed this list in your own website or blog using the < > button in the top right.- Martin said this list, "Came about by a need to bring all the different reputable ways to donate into a single link that could be easily dissemminated. Storify's embed function and share buttons made this perfect."
- This curation of ways to help Japan has gained traction on several sites. But lately, Martin's main efforts have gone into liveblogging the situation."Well, when I started my own live blog, it was partly because I saw there was a need for someone to sort through all the media out there, and put important updates in a single stream," he said. "I wanted to spotlight the people who knew what they were talking about, rather than many voices in mainstream media who were putting out slightly sensationalized headlines. I have a list of journalists on the ground, translators who watch Japanese news, and other valuable contributors here.""More than anything when the quake hit, I think most of us [felt] the need to just do something, just to help get rid of the feeling of helplessness."
Live blog: General updates about the situation in japanYou can embed this information on any webpage or blog using the <> button in the top right. For twitter updates we're watching, visit bit.ly/quaketweets.- Martin started asking for help with his liveblog, which is how Chris Amico (user eyeseast) came in to pitch in a link or two using the editors feature in Storify, which allows people to collaborate and edit each other's stories."I've worked with Chris back in China on a local city website, and he's been a pretty big influence ever since," 1rick said. "He's always pretty great with advice. I did ask a lot of people (ones I trusted) to help with my original stream, but Chris was one of the few who said he could help out."Despite his efforts, Martin's liveblog wasn't updating as quickly as he wanted. So he reached out to The Japan Times for another collaboration effort, as he is a tech columnist for the news organization.
Tohoku-Kanto earthquake news and resources: Quake coverage on the Web | The Japan Times OnlineA curated selection of news, features, images and videos related to the Tohoko-Kanto earthquake- For consistent updates on Japan, check back on the story above for curated news/social media reactions. At a time when there are thousands of news outlets and blogs to go to for information, curation can save readers from content redundancy.
- "Ideally, Storify makes an interesting sort of example for how I think things should work," Martin said. "There are multiple news orgs reporting on this crisis, all with their own reporters, all writing and interpreting independently. Some sensationalize, some are fair, but the end result is that nearly all readers are left with the task of sorting through the confusion.""I saw Jeff Jarvis mention recently in a TedX talk about redundancy in the media, and unnecessary wasted effort when one news org rewrites the same story. It would be great if they could all somehow pitch in on a single, unified stream where something more approaching a trusted truth could be found," he said.
