I read the article In Search of Best Practices for Journalistic Crowdsourcing and checked out Grasswire and Google News Lab. Overall, I found it very informative, especially since I wasn’t very advanced in my knowledge about Crowdsurfing.

Crowdsurfing is an act of using the crowd to help complete a task, demonstrate expertise, or share opinions — which has created a buzz in the media and technology world! Specifically for journalism, crowdsurfing is when you specifically invite a certain group of people to participate in a reporting task ( i.e. personal experience, documents, and data collection).

But, for the most part, people need (or rather want) some type of incentive so they can be motivated (for example, money, personal interest, demonstration of expertise).

Part of the crowdsurfing method is something called “the Callout Method”. Basically, it is somethings that is intended to engage a certain audience — such as a website, word of mouth, radio, and such forth.

Grasswire is a good new source and Google News Lab is similar, but they are both mainly connected to crowdsurfing. I look forward to learning more about crowdsurfing and incorporating it in my writing!