Google’s killer crowdsourcing tool
I just created a questionnaire asking what you would kill in a newspaper’s budget if you had to cut costs. Please do go fill it out now.
This is made possible by the new Google Forms, which enables you to create web or email forms people can fill out, with the results pouring into a spreadsheet. This is incredible for surveys and other projects in which you want to gather a lot of data — like WNYC’s Are You Being Gouged project. It’s so simple but so powerful.
(Inspired by Steve Rubel)
Tags: Book, google, networkedjournalism, newspapers, wwgd
February 10th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Interesting. Missing one big feature, though.
No comments.
February 10th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Dwight,
My fault.
I also should have set it up with radio buttons so I could compile the data. I was just doing a two-minute demo.
February 10th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Haha, those who are advocating the elimination of copy editors probably haven’t spent much time in a newsroom. Or read raw copy.
Interesting responses, though.
February 10th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Critics are in trouble. Makes sense.
February 10th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
[...] 11, 2008 · No Comments Jeff Jarvis has a little test drive of Google’s new forms app. This could get interesting and is a no-brainer for media outlets [...]
February 10th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
It’s hard to divorce one’s personal responses (essentially “what I read”) from the sections I know attract advertisers.
For example, I couldn’t care less about the lifestyle section, but I really like the fact that advertisements in those sections fund investigative, national or political journalism.
February 10th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
There are other free or cheap questionnaire sites out there, like surveymonkey.com, which has more features. I have no affiliation; I just like to support the little guys.
February 11th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
You have it all wrong. I would keep all those sections and drop all those sections. I would drop the national and international parts and keep the local parts. I want local reporting in my local paper, local sports, local business, local entertainment, editorials and opinion pieces about local issues. The national and international stuff should go, it’s done better online.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
I think the forms app is a great idea, but it doesn’t yet work as well as advertised. The form within an e-mail doesn’t always work, and it’s inconsistent with some browsers and operating systems. I can’t wait to use it, though.
February 12th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
I just wrote up a screed about opinion columnists being a now-unnecessary vestige of historical circumstance. No opinion columnist is doing anything the blogosphere isn’t doing better. See http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vvvv/2008/02/12/revision-bad-blogging-is-undermining-the-ny-times-credibility/
One of the sections that annoys me the most in the Boston Globe is the car reviews. Not only does the reviewer say very little of local relevance, but he comes off as kind of a smug, I-have-the-best-job-in-the-world attitude that reflects the reality that all he’s doing is promoting the dealer advertisements.
February 16th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
[...] laundry so I thought it would be interesting to do some analysis of the online survey Jeff Jarvis posted using Google [...]
February 17th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
[...] enough — and skilled at Excel enough — to compile results from my little survey that asked you what you’d kill from a newspaper’s budget. Keep in mind that it’s [...]