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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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[UPDATE: Please note that when posting a story you should leave source links in your description text if you intend to include them or pull media from those links for your story. It does not matter where in the description they appear, just note that the link closest to the top of the description text will be your primary source, and you can pull media from up to five other sources. Thanks!]

While news of our new Fall episodes has been at the forefront these days, that doesn’t mean that our dev team has been twiddling their thumbs. To the contrary, we’re happy to announce that there is a new release hitting Current.com today, and we can’t wait to hear what you think of it.

Let’s face it, contributing to Current.com has never been the easiest thing to do — a refresh of this workflow has been long overdue. With this new release, clicking the “Post a Story” button (located in the green navigation bar) will now produce a submission tool overlaid on whichever page you’re on.

We’ve streamlined the process, here’s a walkthrough:

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