ListeningPost - actionable intel from social media & citizen reporters

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1. What do you propose to do? [20 words]

Create Africa’s first social-media driven newsroom, including a Storyful listening post and a ScoopShot-type citizen reporter app calibrated for the slums.

2. Is anyone doing something like this now and how is your project different? [30 words]

Not in Africa. Our technology partners, Storyful, currently run the world’s leading social media verification service for global media such as NewYorkTimes and the Economist. We’ll bring this scientific approach to African citizen journalism.

3. Describe the real world challenge that you are trying to solve for African media [50 words]

Newsrooms are overwhelmed by the noise of the realtime web. They struggle to distinguish authentic voices or actionable intelligence from the ‘firehose’ of social media. African newsrooms also struggle to find commercially viable models for building citizen reporting networks. ListeningPost will tackle both problems, by creating a toolkit and replicable methodologies.

4. How and why will your solution work? [100 words]

ListeningPost will use proven technologies and business models, to create a social media analysis and verification team that will watch for early warnings of big news stories. The team of trained analysts will use specialist technology and good journalism to identify new, credible sources (ranging from citizen reporters to eyewitnesses) close to developing stories and will connect them with local journalists for professional reportage. ListeningPost will also build an open source version of ScoopShot, in partnership with Africa’s largest indigenous social network, MXit, to create a revenue generating channel for citizen reporters who file reports with our newsroom

5. Who is working on it? [100 words]

South Africa’s West Cape News wire service will transform part of its existing Cape Town newsroom into an dedicated ListeningPost for the Ireland-based Storyful, by proactively monitoring and verifying regional social media content for journalistic follow-up. The resulting content will be syndicated through Storyful’s global client network. ListeningPost will simultaneously partner with mobile community-building platform, Motribe, to build a ScoopShot-type citizen reporter app / feature phone service targeting slums and other under-covered communities across South Africa. The app will ultimately be deployed across MXit’s social network of almost 50 million people in 120 countries. Veteran editor and newsroom startup consultant, Ray Joseph, will advise on project implementation.

6. What part of the project have you already built? [100 words]

WCN the Western Cape’s largest independent news service, while Storyful is the world’s largest social media verification service for mainstream media networks. Motribe is a journalist-led African mobile pioneer, that partnered with MXit to build a social photo app, MxPix, that clocked an astounding 1,5 million page views in the first three days. The lessons learned from MxPix will be used to help build southern Africa’s first truly mass market citizen reporter app. Motribe is already the largest mobile social network in Nigeria and Indonesia . Together, the partnership is therefore well placed to replicate the ListeningPost model across Africa.

7. How would you sustain the project after the funding expires? [50 words]

The grant is required for the upfront technology development phase. The actual operations will, from day one, be run on a breakeven commercial basis with editorial leads, crowdsourced content, and “frontline” citizen reportage sold to mainstream global media through WCN’s southernAfrican client base and Storyful’s global network. We will also investigate a South African YouTubechannel.

Requested amount from ANIC: $50,000
Expected amount of time required to complete project: 12 months
Total Project Cost: %70,000

Name: Steven Kretzmann + Raymond Joseph
Twitter: @kretz + @rayjoe
Organization: West Cape News
Country: South Africa