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Next: Media Innovation Insights

• Experiments in Media Innovation: A Look at the 2009 Knight News Challenge Winners
• Infographic: Six New Ways to Scale
• Infographic: How Ideas Can Stall
• Media Innovation Insights (Slideshare)

LESSONS LEARNED FROM MEDIABUGS, A SERVICE THAT ALLOWS READERS TO REPORT ERRORS IN MEDIA COVERAGE.

An Evolving Effort. MediaBugs added multiple components over time in an attempt to adapt their error correction service but to-date has been unable to get traction with users and news organizations.

Interfering with a Prized Relationship. News organizations were hesitant to link to an outside site that mediated their relationship with readers.

A Problem– Not a Priority. News sites that already had inhouse corrections systems (however imperfect they may be) felt MediaBugs oered a solution to an issue they had already addressed.

Fishing with a Large Net. Faced with limited adoption, MediaBugs expanded its services to news sites across the US. However, this limited the high-touch outreach that’s often needed to secure marquee partners.

Limited User Engagement. MediaBugs was unable to build a participating community of people committed to filing bug reports.

Creating a Conversation. While MediaBugs has faced significant challenges as a service, it contributed to an important though oftentimes ignored conversation about the transparency of reporting errors.