Nyouse: Your News, Direct to Journalists (via Twitter)
UPDATE: Nyouse is taking a break. Due to a lack of time to spend on Nyouse, we’ve taken it down.
Short version
Myself and Jonathan Markwell – the industrious and philanthropic mastermind behind Inuda, the Skiff and SocialPlume – have created Nyouse (pronounced “news”).
Nyouse is a system that allows ordinary people to alert the press to news stories. Nyouse is designed to bring attention to unreported stories, by creating a quick and easy system for people to announce their news – a system that is easily scannable by journalists.
Nyouse is a SocialPlume application that sucks up messages from Twitter. So if you want to alert the media to something important, just compose a tweet and include: #nyouse. Your message will appear on Nyouse.com, where journalists will see it.
Long version
If you’ve visited Words By Me before, you might have noticed that while I’m supposed to be sharing short stories, I often end up writing about politics or current events. That’s because I’m a news junkie. I often think about the news, and the way stories find their way onto our front pages.
Anyway, Nyouse started because I was interested in creating a citizen journalism blog. So I created a website called Nyouse (it’s YOU in the NEWS, yeah?). Then Prem told me about Now Public, so I destroyed Nyouse. Then I forgot about it and got busy writing copy for the web. Then I remembered Nyouse and wondered what to do with it.
Then, I realised Nyouse might have a purpose, one that was linked to Twitter.
One problem with citizen journalism is that not everyone enjoys writing. Some people have a story to tell, but they don’t want to write it. If people could use Twitter to highlight their story, professional journalists could pick up their story and do the writing. This would combine the best of both worlds: the ideas and stories of ordinary people, crafted into professional articles by trained journalists.
So, here you have Nyouse. For Nyouse to succeed, we need two parties to take action.
A Polite Request to Everybody
If you have a story to tell, a whistle to blow or breaking news to share with the world, write a message on Twitter and include: #nyouse.
By adding #nyouse you give your message legs – it will instantly leap beyond the confines of your Twitter stream and the limited eyes of your followers. Including #nyouse means going public, finding an audience, exceeding your potential and changing the way news circulates. So give it a try!
Nyouse.com – authentic press releases, from the people to the journalists, on Twitter
