Using Meetup to Report

Steve Buttry shared the Journal Register Co.’s plans to open up its newsrooms to the community.
JRC newspapers will “invite bloggers and other community members into the buildings and to reach out into the community digitally and in person.” And the Register Citizen in Torrington, CT, unveiled “Newsroom Cafe, an area with computers and a microfilm machine for public access (with free printouts), a classroom and a lounge where community art could be displayed.” A fantastic idea.

When I was a reporter at The Ocean County Observer, in Toms River, N.J. our newsroom was downtown and readers, sources, fans and haters would often stop by to chat. To our own shame, we often considered it a bit of a nuisance, but good stories came out of it and kept us connected to the readers. The same will come of JRC’s open newsrooms.

It got me thinking about an idea I hadn’t considered in more than a year — Story Meetups.

At a Hacks/Hackers event last in 2010, Meetup invited journalists into its offices for a demo of the product and to brainstorm ideas on how to use the platform. The obvious idea, shared by many was Story Meetups — After publishing a story, reporters would host a Meetup on the topic of the story to discuss their reporting, hear criticism and complaints and gather the leads for the next story on the topic.

There isn’t a Meet Me, button to add to your page, but maybe some enterprising soul or Meetup itself, could craft one that would let reporters designate something akin to office hours that would let readers elect to attend.