September 2010
2 posts
Some notes on setting up kigaliwire.com. Will add to these as the project evolves, this is just a wee peek at the mo’.
the idea
set up costs
equipment used
editorial process
publishing process
distribution process
the rwanda daily “paper”
library come research stash
Foreign correspondent… hmmm??
building community, finding new tools
newsgathering and leads using...
6 tags
the rwanda daily newspaper
Paper.li does one thing simply. It creates a “daily paper” by aggregating tweets around a topic tag or from the people you follow or from a Twitter list.
The Rwanda Daily is created from #rwanda links shared on Twitter. It’s not vetted, verified or edited in any way. It’s major faults are it relies solely on a) people sharing good, timely, newsworthy stuff and b) people...
Building community, finding new tools
The likelihood is that that the most interesting online discussions about Rwanda will take place away from kigaliwire.com. Hence, this outreach to try and find where these people are, if they are there.
While one of the biggest jobs after building the site is listening to what’s going on on these 50+ social media sites I’m distributing material to, there’s another equally...
Equipment used
Physical stuff that needs a carry and a plug:
Apple iPhone
Lumix DMC-FX333
Apple MacBook Pro
Sony Ericsson Cybershot K800i
GorillaPod
Ricoh GRDIII
Macbook Air 11”
Physical stuff that needs a brain and hands, but no plug:
Lots of pens and papers
Online stuff requiring little or no brain, nor hands, a stick will suffice:
hootsuite
audioboo
camerabag
tweetie
tweetie2
...
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Distribution process
I use publish2, (Stopped using in June, 2010 - see note below) delicious, diigo, pixelpipe and hellotxt to publish across 50+ sites. The real work comes in later when I try to cultivate communities of interested people across all these sites - seeing which ones work and which ones are maybe best ditched. This is slowly coming together on twitter with 226 297 367 484 768 996 1018...
Publishing process
Each piece of news or morsel of interesting information has to meet the “Hmmm… that’s interesting” standard. Then it’s a case of choosing where the information should be published.
Is it worth a tweet, but not adding to the Breaking News sidebar? Perhaps it needs expanding on with an original blog post with added context. Or maybe a phone call or an email needs to...
Editorial process
Don’t be in too much of a rush, check things and check them again. Don’t link to crap.
Photo taken from Kigali Wire Photobucket account
Set up cost
I’m using wordpress.org together with hosting by justhost and the wpnewspaper premium wordpress theme. Costs listed below:
Justhost hosting & domain name costs me $142 for three years
WPNewspaper theme $59
UPDATE May 2010: Started using $49 Graph Paper press F8 Child theme
Total: $201
Internet access is not cheap in Rwanda, although there is constant chatter that prices will come...
Newsgathering and leads using online tools
Most of the core newsgathering will initially be done using a bunch of custom RSS feeds.
I set up a bunch of keyword RSS feeds mostly coming out of Google News using keywords such as Kigali, Rwanda, “Paul Kagame” etc.
I set up more keyword RSS feeds drawing in information from photosharing sites like Flickr, video search engine Blinkx, a variety of blog search engines including...
The idea
To build a blog focused on news from Rwanda, using readily available, predominantly free, tools to draw in information from a wide range of sources in addition to original reporting and opinion pieces distributed across the web using 50 or more social media services.
If it’s acronymns you’re after to explain the editorial, publishing and distribution process, the closest I can come...
Foreign Correspondent... hmmm?
This article, by Michaela Wrong via Chris Blattman, deffo rings bells with how I feel about the possibility of reporting from Rwanda. How can you just dive in, 1 week in the country, a white Africa-newbie and expect to really know anything, to know what to report, what context to put it in? Forget the female angle in the piece, just focus on the logic (which I agree with),
My ambivalence peaked...