Digital Journal launches Global Editorial Meetings, story meetings opened up to public

Our sister site, Digital Journal, made a big editorial announcement today. To keep you up-to-date, we’ve included a press release below:

Digital Journal today announced a new community newsroom initiative aimed at widening the scope of news covered globally, and involving the public in the news creation process.

Dubbed “Global Editorial Meetings,” these online chat story meetings are open to the public and hosted on Digital Journal.

“Every news organization has story meetings,” said Chris Hogg, CEO of Digital Journal. “But traditionally they happen behind closed doors, with a selected group of individuals deciding what everyone should be reading. We want to change that to see how editorial direction will shift by opening up these meetings to the public. Starting this month, our Global Editorial Meetings will allow everyone to share details on what kind of stories we should be covering, and what stories are going unnoticed in the press.”

As a hybrid news network that combines professional journalists with citizen journalists and bloggers, Digital Journal has always taken a forward-thinking approach to journalism. The company has successfully crowdsourced thousands of story ideas from a large and growing contributor base and held liveblog workshops on journalistic practices. With Global Editorial Meetings, Digital Journal is going one step further to open up these meetings to give an editorial voice to literally everyone.

In the Global Editorial Meetings, Digital Journal staff members and editors will chat live with readers, journalists, bloggers, photographers and passionate news junkies about important stories and topics from their city, province/state or country.

Conversation will focus on multiple geographies and news verticals, and particular attention will be focused on stories the public believes are being under-reported.

After these Global Editorial Meetings are complete, Digital Journal will use feedback and input to assign stories to thousands of Digital Journalists around the world. The company will use its Assignments technology to create, track and organize a massive editorial project to provide the public with content it wants.

The first Global Editorial Meeting will take place on July 11 at 9 a.m. (Eastern time), and the second will happen July 21 at 2 p.m. (Eastern time). A third Global Editorial Meeting will take place on July 28 at 8 p.m. (Eastern time). The live chat conversations will use Cover It Live and anyone can participate.

To participate in a chat, visit the Digital Journal Global Editorial Meetings group and click on the blog post for the day(s) you wish to attend. You can set a reminder for yourself on the embedded chat widget inside each post.

“Our goal is to get our finger on the pulse of the world,” said David Silverberg, Managing Editor of Digital Journal. “Combining the public’s voice with the Digital Journal platform to create, assign and publish content is a really powerful marriage. We hope to be able to get a much better sense of what people find important, and then deliver that information to Digital Journalists who can make sure those voices are being heard by providing coverage of all those topics.”

“Digital Journal is recognized as a pioneer in the news industry for bringing in everyday people as reporters,” said Hogg. “We want to continue to lead by example, and so we’re opening up our newsrooms and giving the public a forum in which they can be heard.”