A 30,000-word, online compendium of reporting and resources on religion and Web 2.0, created to assist congregations with social networking tools, could be a lifeline for the reporter who must suddenly cover religion.
The project, “The Networked Congregation: Embracing the Spirit of Experimentation,” was created by Andrea Useem, producer and editor of “On Leadership,” at washingtonpost.com. It is sponsored by the ecumenical interfaith Alban Institute.
This guidebook can be printed as a .pdf, but its logic, design and resources are link-laden and searchable, so it works best online.
Whether you write about religion or not, this project provides a concrete example of journalistic curation. The work of the journalist as curator, according to Jeff Jarvis, is to “create order, to correct and vet” information. Mindy McAdams fleshed out the role further, explaining that a journalist curator uses selection, culling, context, arrangement, organization, and expertise to create a networked, hyperlinked project, like exhibits in a museum. The resulting project is non-linear and interactive — a searchable, Web-based structure of knowledge, made up of text, hyperlinks and effective site navigation.
Andrea Useem has populated the exhibits in her project space at “The Networked Congregation” with profiles and stories about real congregations and individuals that embody the Web 2.0 and social networking concepts presented. This is a good fit with her intended audience, which ranges from digital novices to congregations meeting in cyberspace’s Second Life. The knowledge and interest brought by each visitor to the site will interact with the context provided by Useem’s writing and organization.
Effective navigation is key to making the site useful to a variety of users. “Navigating the Site,” explains this at a basic level. There are four primary sections of content, each with subsections, and resources and reference pages. Moving between them is easy and the navigation sidebar helps keep track of where you are on the site. There is site search and a site map. Browsing the site was easy, whether you needed detailed directions on how to navigate, or wanted to skip directly to the stories and reportage.
Good journalistic curation means keeping the site updated, especially to eliminate “link rot.” Time will be the test of that aspect of Useem’s curation, but “The Networked Congregation” is off to a solid start.
