New Media Research Studio

*Jess Roy and I are working on this one together. Her post about the specifics of the coverage is here.

Morning one of the TBNYU! Kimmel occupation, I woke up to 230 emails. From requests to moderate comments from new NYU Local readers to statements from TBNYU! and the NYU administration alike, it was a response the likes of which I’d never seen before. Single posts were receiving more than 100 comments and the question of what to do with the massive reader and participant response became pretty all encompassing. Yes, some of the responses were absolutely stupid, but others were editorial-length and high quality, certainly too good to be left to fade into the endless comment stream.

So great reader comments became posts in and of themselves. Debates going on within the comments turned into polls on the main page of the site. Emails from students inside Kimmel and administrators outside the barricaded doors were posted (along with some NYU Local commentary) for readers to analyze. At 1am on the second night of the occupation, I was running through the crowd gathered outside of Kimmel asking anyone with a nice camera to send me their pictures. And every one of them did. Jess had a similar experience the next day as she reported from the street while the remaining four students shouted from the balcony. It was a type of coverage with a level of reader engagement that would be completely impossible at a traditional paper. It was even, admittedly, new for us.

We posted an interview with embroiled CAS Senator and TBNYU! member Caitlin Boehne, a reader put up a response post, debate ensued in the comments section, the Student Senate submitted their statement and specific senators spoke out against Caitlin, all within a few hours of the original post. As it turned out, people not directly connected to the site wanted to contribute to the news, they just needed a forum to do so.

Possibly Relevant Posts:

• NYULocal, Liveblogging and 13 Palestinians (3) | Lily Q
• Using New Media to Cover Journalistic Events (1) | Jessica
• Bathroom Wall Gossip Goes Digital (3) | JessRoss