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"For years Reddit has been used by journalists as a source of stories and ideas - but most outlets have preferred to keep their addiction quiet. Now, thanks in large part to President Obama, it doesn't have to be their dirty little secret any more."

"Reddit landed a personal appearance by the President of the United States on Wednesday when Barack Obama stopped by for one of the site's "Ask Me Anything" interviews - an event that further adds to the web community's reputation as an alternative source of journalism."

"Reddit, the "front page of the Internet," looks like a bulletin board where users post content and vote whether it is worth reading or not. The range of topics on Reddit swings from cat memes to series news. Its use in covering recent shootings in Toronto, Canada and Aurora, Colorado, led GigaOm's Mathew Ingram to call Reddit a blend of "traditional reporting with crowdsourced reports." In the case of the Aurora movie theatre shooting, people involved in the attack started threads that snowballed into comprehensive accounts of what happened as commenters updated information and brought in new voices, according to Poynter."

"Benji Lanyado, the freelance journalist behind the Reddit Edit, is offering a service to create visual interactives for news outlets A freelance journalist has launched a service that will see him create photo-led ... Continue reading on: Journalism.co.uk"

"Minutes after the world first saw the suspects' photos, a user on Reddit, the online community that is also one of the largest Web sites in the world, posted side-by-side pictures comparing Sunil's facial features with the face that would later be identified as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The pictures were accompanied by speculation about the circumstances surrounding Sunil's disappearance and the F.B.I.'s involvement in his search. "

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This article provides examples of giving a voice to people that usually don't have one. It shows how people can give their input on a story.

A couple of outreach efforts by ProPublica this week caught my eye as examples of how the Web can make journalism more open and effective - and reminders that both journalists and the public need much more of this. The first was a post on the ProPublica website Monday offering a "step by step guide" and searchable database for anyone tracing the influence of a nonprofit organization called ALEC that has proven highly effective in developing "model bills" for state legislatures. The second was a conference call Tuesday that drew about 140 people to hear about using ProPublica-built data and a news application for reporting on education access issues in local schools and districts. ProPublica published a national story based on the data, examining the relationship of poverty to educational access, along with a Facebook-integrated app for looking up and comparing schools and districts.

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