User:TiBUchon/sandbox



= The NewsTalkers -  Speak Your Mind =

The NewsTalkers is a non-partisan online collaborative journalism and discussion forum that draws its members and content from news sources across the web. Members can write original articles, ‘seed’ links to external content (articles, videos, tweets, etc.), and/or discuss news items. That is, the content presented in the forum comes from both members and professional journalists.

The NewsTalkers is not a news bureau and exercises no editorial voice, but rather provides a community-driven online forum (a social news platform) for its members. Members (as a community) decide with their actions what news articles stay on the site and what news is removed.

The NewsTalkers was named one of the best nonpartisan discussion sites by Jack Hicks, on "Ten Minute Morning Show."

History
New York based, The NewsTalkers was founded in October of 2010 by Perrie Berlin-Halpern and Dana Kaczmarek, with Perrie Halpern being the head of development and Dana Kaczmarek head of operations. The  NewsTalkers was an offshoot of Newsvine, Inc. The separation was based on a difference in moderation style, banning policy and Newsvine not accepting input from the community. The NewsTalkers site went live on October 31, 2010 on Grouply. The first year of operation saw many changes with Dana Kaczmarek’s departure in January, being replaced by Art Gurmankin who stepped in as head of operations. In 2012, as the site grew, The Newstalkers moved to Ning. With further growth of membership, The Newstalkers moved again in March 2015, this time to Jamroom. This move provided more advanced technical development from the Jamroom staff to advance the site’s functionality. On October 1, 2017, The NewsTalkers outlived their root company Newsvine when NBC News closed Newsvine. With the influx of Newsviners and a history of continuous improvement in its ‘user experience’, the NewsTalkers platform is unique among discussion sites. The NewsTalkers remains one of the few independent bi-partisan, community-centric discussion groups on the internet.

Seeding
Members can “seed" news stories from qualified news sources for others members to debate.  Seeds often contain the source article or a direct quotation from the linked article. Seeds offer the same functionality as articles, including the ability to insert commentary from the seeder, photographs and/or polls.

Articles
A key feature of The Newstalkers is the ability for members to write their own articles. Commonly known as citizen journalism, this allows members to express their opinions for public discussion or even report on events in a journalistic manner. The most recent  articles are found in the "Columnists" section, giving member authors extra publicity. Authors can add their own photos or graphics to fit the subject matter. All articles that are posted are available to all members to discuss.

Voting
The Newstalkers offers the ability to up-vote content. Members who enjoy reading an article/seed or agree with its content are encouraged to vote for the content. Articles and seeds with the most votes move the article to the top of the “Recent Articles” section. The Newstalkers also enables members to up-vote member comments.

Commenting / Discussion
The ability to comment on seeds and articles allows for extra discussions regarding the content. The Newstalkers comment system provides a unique three-tier threaded comment structure, for intuitive, organized comment flow while also allowing natural subthreads to develop. Members can edit and delete their own comments within a given period. Member authors are allowed to delete comments about their own content.

The Conversation Tracker and The Navigator
The Conversation Tracker (the Tracker) allows members to track comment activities on the articles in which they participate. The Tracker automatically follows new comments and replies (unique for each member) and will alert members to new comments made on an article in which they have expressed interest to ensure they do not miss anything.

The Navigator is a special tool that operates when reviewing the comments in an article. It scrolls the member to each newly tracked comment so that the member can catch up and decide if they have something more they want to add to the discussion.

Member Homepage
The Newstalkers also has a social networking aspect, as each member has their own page. Member pages can be used to manage and share articles, seeds, online friends, recommendations, and other personal information. Every member page is given its own url (thenewstalkers.com/ ) enabling convenient access and linking.

Member pages are customizable: aspects of the layouts can be moved or hidden, a photo and biography can be added, a header (such as a welcome message) can be added, recommendations (such as favorite books, bands, blogs, etc.) can be shown, and comments and feedback from other members can be shared and managed.

Finally, member pages include the member’s history of comments, articles and their personal blogs.

Blogs
The Newstalkers offers a very unique feature - the NewsTalkers blogs, where members can have both their blog entry featured on their homepage, and also have it syndicated to their homepage, giving them an instant full blog. This is available to every member of The NewsTalkers.

Friends
The Friends functionality gives members the ability to share their homepage. Once a member adds a friend, the added friend receives a notification and is given the ability to accept or decline the ‘friendship’ offer.

Groups
The Newstalkers offers groups for member use. There are two kinds of groups: those that are private and cannot be seen by the rest of the membership (permission to the group must be granted) and public groups where anyone can join. Of the public groups, there are two subtypes: those that are open to the main forum and those that are not. Groups opened to the main forum are largely self-moderated, but must still follow the Code of Conduct.

Code of Conduct
One of the more unique aspects of the NewsTalkers is that the community is directly involved in setting the standards for the group, known as The Code of Conduct. Periodically, the group will go over issues in behavior and activity on the site and discuss options to solve these issues. The options are then brought to a site-wide vote and the outcome becomes part of the new Code of Conduct.

Moderation
Moderation is performed by the membership and led by the Resident Advisor. Being apart of the moderation team is based on past performance on the site, and the willingness to work together as a team.

Moderators come from across the political spectrum in order to give balance.

Site-wide Communication
The Newstalkers offers various ways for the membership to communicate with each other, offering “Private Notes” for interpersonal messages and “Chat” for both private and group instant messaging.