Everybody who creates an education site wants super active readers and commenters, but not everybody knows how to get and keep them (or how to get them to do anything more than comment randomly). One of the most interesting things that SchoolBook is going to do to address this challenge is make use of a database of commenter/experts created by Minnesota Public Radio / American Public Media. Another strategy they're planning on using is to get folks involved via text and cell phone voicemail messages, not just smartphone and Internet-based interactivity, since many folks (esp. low-income and immigrant) rely on regular cell phones. Read below for some more details based on a phone conversation with WNYC's John Keefe.
WNYC has been working with APM's 100,000-member
Public Insight service for about a year, and aims to make it a big part of its new education site, SchoolBook. Put simply, Public Insight is an effort to create relationships with regular people -- not necessarily listeners/readers -- beyond the usual one-off journalist-source relationship. How it works, according to WNYC's John Keefe, is that it sends an email or text to folks who've
