" Bit by bit, the understanding was that theatrical values - by which I do not mean fiction - were incredibly important to holding attention, even to conveying information, to creating expectation and then to finally creating a memory. All of those scene-painting skills were the very heart of radio." And they still are. With so many storytelling shows on the air - The Moth, Radiolab, This American Life and, rising quickly, Snap Judgment - here's a question that programs have been dealing with lately in the new "golden age" of public radio: What happens when a story turns out not to be true? Or true-ish? What level of accountability do listeners expect? How is the storyteller's compact with the listener changing?"

"Editor's Note: This blog post is the third installment in a 3-part series intended to look at engaging citizen reporters beyond crisis events. Part 1 can be found here, and Part 2 here. I've previously written that traditional newsrooms could better foster participation from citizens outside of widespread crisis events. In my first post, I explained why I thought it was common for both newsrooms and citizens to change their behavior during a large scale emergency. In my second post, I listed factors newsrooms might consider if they wish to create a more participatory culture. In this post, I note external forces that might encourage or even force a more participatory model for newsgathering and distribution. The combination of three factors, outlined below, point to the scales tipping towards increased citizen engagement in creating and sharing news."

""News startup Circa is taking a programmatic approach to mobile news… abandoning the article format and organizing stories into atomic units like events, statistics, quotes, and images which can be resurfaced, reused, and refactored.""

"Despite all the debate about the future of journalism, not enough has been said about how we can better support freelance journalists and how best to adapt to a media landscape in which so many people are operating without the resources and backing of newsrooms. On Twitter, I asked freelancers to tell me what the future of journalism looks like to them. This is the first post in a series where I'll look at some of their responses. While people come to freelancing for a range of reasons, some by choice, some not, I found a few key themes in the responses I got."

"Traditional newsrooms rarely create an environment that fosters this level of interaction outside of major emergencies. In my last post, I outlined a few of the reasons I suspect this happens. Here, I'd like to focus on ways a newsroom might be able to cultivate more frequent interaction with citizens."

"After letting go of its entire photo staff Thursday, the Chicago Sun-Times plans to begin mandatory training on "iPhone photography basics." Media writer Robert Feder referred to the training in a Facebook post, and quotes a memo from Editor Craig Newman: "In the coming days and weeks, we'll be working with all editorial employees to train and outfit you as much as possible to produce the content we need.""

"Typically, web content flows from a website into social media and mobile apps. NowThis News, founded last September by veterans of Huffington Post, anchors its content in its mobile apps. Original videos, in digestible lengths and narrated by young voices, stem from iOS and Android apps and flow to a minimal website and the network's social media pages, and through its distribution partnerships. NowThis News has already formed partnerships with BuzzFeed, MSN, Forbes, The Atlantic, Mashable and the Columbia Journalism School. Ed O'Keefe spent 12 years moving up the ranks at ABC, going from desk assistant to executive producer of ABC News Digital, helping to integrate ABC with Yahoo News. He left to join the early version of NowThis News last year, known as Planet Daily, as editor in chief. In a Q&A conducted via phone and email, O'Keefe explained the forward-thinking news operation he's leading. The following is a lightly edited version of that conversation."

"Dan Fletcher, the recently departed managing editor at Facebook, seems to be always ahead of the curve. Now, at a time when journalists are headed to the Twitters and LinkedIns of the world to help shape editorial content, he's already completed his time at a tech giant and is looking for his next project. Below is an edited version of our Q&A."

"A study of the "geography of Twitter" compares, among many other data sets, what it calls "Twitter versus mainstream news media."

"We're getting the big stories wrong, over and over again," CBS Evening News anchor and Managing Editor Scott Pelley said at a Quinnipiac University lunch Friday. The first example he gave was one of his own mistakes: Reporting Nancy Lanza was a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School. After the Boston bombings last month, "amateur journalists became digital vigilantes," Pelley said."

"for major outlets, citizen reports tend to be siloed off in many instances, even on a stand-alone site such as CNN's iReport and Al Jazeera's Sharek. Other outlets have formed creative partnerships to create citizen-specific sites -- Reuters and Global Voices, for instance, or the combination of YouTube, WITNESS and Storyful that makes up the Human Rights Channel."

"Millennials expect a steady diet of quick-hit, social-media-mediated bits and bytes. What does that mean for journalism?"

"The Washington Post's Clinton Yates compiled Stanton's story about Raymond, a junkie who got hit by a car in the District's Shaw neighborhood, in a Storify document that also pulls in tweets from people who were following the story overnight."

"When big news breaks, we instinctively look to CNN. We want CNN to be good, to be worthy of its moment. That impulse took a beating last week. On Wednesday at 1:45 p.m., the correspondent John King reported that a suspect had been arrested. It was a big scoop that turned out to be false. Mr. King, a good reporter in possession of a bad set of facts, was joined by The Associated Press, Fox News, The Boston Globe and others, but the stumble could not have come at a worse time for CNN. When viewers arrived in droves - the audience tripled to 1.05 million, from 365,000 the week before, according to Nielsen ratings supplied by Horizon Media - CNN failed in its core mission. It was not the worst mistake of the week - The New York Post all but fingered two innocent men in a front-page picture - but it was a signature error for a live news channel."

Infographic of the high and lows from breaking news on the Boston Marathon attack.

"It was another sad case of jumping the gun. Two days after the bombings at the Boston Marathon, the AP reported that a suspect was in custody and would be brought to court. Sources at other news orgs including CNN confirmed that, leading hundreds of reporters to show up outside court. The problem? They were wrong. (Read an entire timeline of this on Buzzfeed here). So when news breaks, who do you trust now? Cable news? Broadcast news? Friends on social media? It seems harder and harder to decide these days, but pick your poison (or "none of the above") in our poll, or share your extended views in the comments."

"So what can we take away from events like today in Boston? We can think about how we read about it. And in the era of everyone having a voice and a blog and the power to create content, it might help to think a little bit like a journalist."

I work at the Poynter Institute, where I teach and advise all kinds of journalists, including professionals, activists, amateurs, the Fourth Estate and the Fifth Estate, to tell stories and provide information that supports democracy. Here's our website: www.poynter.org Here's my faculty page: http://about.poynter.org/about-us/our-people/kelly-mcbride Here's my personal website: www.kellymcbride.com

"Don't watch cable news. Shut off Twitter. You'd be better off cleaning your gutters."