Great Lakes Wiki [GreatLakesEcho.org]

Project Updates

• Echo turnover builds a network of Great Lakes savvy journalists (July, 2012) - By Dave Poulson, Founder Turnover is frustrating at university-based news organizations. Just as a reporter hits her or his stride, they graduate and move on to another venue. Of course fostering the growth that allows that to happen is fulfilling for an educator. But I’d also argue that in the long-run, it’s also good for the […]
• Developing a ‘Newsshed’ for Community Reporting (October, 2011) - Great Lakes Echo recently received a Great Laker Award from the Healing Our Waters Coalition for their coverage of environmental issues around the region. A special post by David Poulson outlines his idea to create a ‘newsshed’ as a social construct, opposed to the more traditional notion of a watershed in the environment. Both, he […]
• Outside the Box Community Engagement (October, 2011) - By David Poulson, Founder Engaging readers is why your online news community exists. You can’t use the wisdom of the crowds if the crowd isn’t talking. Without fast and substantive engagement, you might as well publish a newspaper. So when you build it and they don’t come, what do you do, short of waiting? Try poking […]
• Outside-the-Box Community Engagement (June, 2010) - A new module by Dave Poulson, editor of GreatLakesEcho.org. Engaging readers is why your online news community exists. You can't use the wisdom of the crowds if the crowd isn't talking. Without fast and substantive engagement, you might as well publish a newspaper. So when you build it and they don't come, what do you do, short of waiting?
• Greet the Great Lakes Echo (May, 2009) - Great Lakes Wiki has spun off a new project, Great Lakes Echo. The website, launched in March 2009, features the reporting of paid students and graduate assistants at the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University. MSU students at the university’s Capital News Bureau in Lansing, Mich., contribute other stories. Some of the […]
• Congratulations! (October, 2008) - Kudos to two 2006 New Voices grantees who have won prestigious journalism awards!
• Great Lakes Wiki: A New Generation of Environmental Reporters (October, 2008) - Statistics Between August, 2007 and June 6, 2008, GreatLakesWiki.org had: 31,122 unique visitors 36,622 visits 103,963 page views 1,500 registered users 140 unique visitors per day 2.84 average pages per visit Average time on the site:  1:57 minutes There is a fishing derby in Michigan’s central Lower Peninsula unlike any other. Competitors can’t eat what […]
• A Great Wiki for the Great Lakes (November, 2007) - Since its launch in January 2007, the Great Lakes Wiki continues to thrive and grow in cyberspace. The wiki was initially conceived as a repository for environmental information about the Great Lakes Areas of Concern, the official name given to 43 geographic and aquatic locations, which the U.S. and Canada agreed are threatened by industrial […]
• Great Lakes Wiki Edited 500 Times in First Month (April, 2007) - GreatLakesWiki.org launched on Jan. 31, 2007 with a number of news and blog outlets picking up the announcement — and a few critics worried that Michigan State’s “Journalism College has put its reputation at stake” by inviting ordinary citizens to contribute news and information. The wiki seeks to collect “the experience and knowledge of a […]
• Great Lakes Wiki Gearing Up for Hard Launch (November, 2006) - Dave Poulson recently wrote a column, “Wising Up About Wiki,” describing his transition from wiki naysayer to director of the ambitious wiki project covering environmental issues in the Great Lakes region. The piece appeared in the spring 2007 issue of EJ Magazine, which is run out of Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism […]

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