About
Around the world news is constantly happening: a picture, a video, a short text message captured by someone. These captured, random experiences in unison are the indicators of events that have impact. It is a conversation happening in communities that anyone can join – anyone with a cellphone – can be one voice heard by many. An essential part of media is to connect the web to the world, to deliver a message that is timely, relevant and has impact. That process must now be accessible and not limited to a few. Often the communities whose stories need to be told are the least connected to the enabling tools.
Our project will implement a citizen news center based on taxi dispatches made by taxi drivers in two cities, Oakland, California and Guatemala City, Guatemala – both increasingly violent cities where taxi drivers are often attacked or serve as the eyes and ears of the community and immediate events that impact the community. Our project will setup a platform much like http://www.thetaxinews.com/ that will make it easy for drivers to post newsworthy content quickly using cellphones. This will become a backbone for a citizen news hub to influence coverage by a few to many.
Cab drivers are the life lines of a community in that they take passengers to and from their homes and in the process are often witnesses to events that often go unreported. In addition, the penetration of cellphones amongst cab drivers while affording them immediate access to their customers also makes it easy for them to file things using voice reporting. They are perfect members of a news dispatch service, playing a vital role in crime reporting, news alerts and tips and events.
We will provide cab drivers with free cellphones in exchange for each driver registering with our Web site and file reports every day on what they see and experience. To make the service as simple as possible we propose using a voice podcasting model where the cab drivers will be able to call in their reports daily. We can push put their updates via Twitter or an SMS gateway and when people reply we can push back those comments via sms to their cells. The other incentive to this project is that customers can also register with our platform and also use the service to text a taxi for pick-up, thus providing the cab drivers with more business.