Social media news and TV – Current.com Blog – Your guide to Current

Last week I laid out details about our editorial team and guidelines when it comes to finding and featuring content on Current.com. Today we’re launching a brand new community-based experiment built on top of our editorial practices which, for lack of a better name, I’m calling “Developing Stories.”

What is a Developing Story?

This doesn’t always hold true, but quite frequently we notice that stories we feature on Current.com actually speak to a larger, ongoing story in play. Sometimes these stories are stretched out over longer periods of time (e.g. the ongoing discussions around public options in healthcare reform, or the debates surrounding gay marriage), and other times these stories are developing rapidly over the course of hours (e.g. Elections 2009, Afghan presidential elections, or Michael Jackson’s death).

Starting today, we’ll begin identifying certain featured stories that we think have the opportunity to be “developed” further. These stories will be added to our Developing Stories group, and we’ll clearly mark it as such on both the story page and whichever image is picked to accompany the story.

What does it mean to have a story picked as a Developing Story?

This is the cool part. Getting your story featured as a Developing Story is like having the stage handed over to you. We’re looking to take a closer look at the underpinnings of these stories, and we’re giving you the opportunity to take on the role of online investigative journalist in the process. As long as things continue to progress in a relevant way, your story will remain featured on Current.com.

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L'écrivain by gilles chiroleu on Flickr

Earlier today one of our community members raised a question that immediately reminded me of a drafted post sitting in my to-do pile. So I dusted this sucker off and refreshed it with some new information for all to read.

Over on the announcement of our new submission tool, 02 commented:

“You guys never put my submissions up at all. It would seem as though a plan were afoot to force only designated providers – while the promise is held as Bullshit.”

This isn’t a anything new; in general people get a little confused when it comes to what gets featured on Current.com. It’s not uncommon to find out that people either don’t understand, or worse, their misunderstanding leads them to believe that there is a secret agenda conspiring against them behind-the-scenes.

Trust me, this is just not the case.

Our editorial team is relatively small on Current.com, especially in comparison with some of the more editorially driven sites out there. We see Current.com as a joint partnership between our internal team, and the community that frequents the site. While we produce content for TV, the amount of content we produce for the web is fairly small in comparison with what our community produces on a daily basis.

Here’s how things shake out:

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