Managing director/editor-in-chief, Oorvani Media, Bangalore, India
subbuvincent@stanford.edu, @subbuvincent
Subbu Vincent’s journalism challenge is to help city newsrooms track ongoing civic proceedings with community support. He interviewed around 45 people: editors, reporters, activists, designers, architects, nonprofit leaders, interdisciplinary professionals and professors. His lessons were this: One, city experts and activists were willing to share source material and insights with newsrooms they trust. Two, crowdsourcing could be used to get this support ahead of the reporting process. Three, there is a lot of skepticism about whether crowdsourcing will actually work for this, and agreement that the promise of human agency it brings into the newsroom is worth a try. Scraping, wrangling, and alerting emerged as a complementary approach. Subbu is working on a few pilot experiments in live newsrooms to get deeper and extract a working prototype.
Journalism Challenge
How can we keep city newsrooms in the loop?
How can city newsrooms track ongoing public issues and proceedings ahead of the reporting process, instead of parachuting in?
Posts by Subramaniam
A visible lesson from Hacks/Hackers Connect in S.F.
At Hack/Hackers Connect San Francisco, JSK Fellow Subramaniam Vincent discovers that visuals are the key to defining startup goals.
About Subramaniam
Subramaniam Vincent is a software engineer turned journalist entrepreneur. He first came to the United States to pursue a master’s degree in computer engineering at the University of Southern California. After graduating, he went to work at Cisco Systems in San Jose, Calif. He kept up with news of home by reading Indian newspapers online. When he and a friend became frustrated with their coverage of socio-economic issues, they decided in 1998 to start India Together, an e-journal focused on tracking campaigns for reform in India. Five years later, in Bangalore, they turned India Together into the country’s first reader-financed publication covering development. Vincent later co-founded and is also editor-in-chief of Citizen Matters, a Bangalore-focused civic newsmagazine that integrates the work of citizen and professional journalists. It is owned by Oorvani Media, of which he is CEO and co-founder. The journalism in both publications has won 10 awards in all, and is currently funded by the nonprofit Oorvani Foundation, where he is a trustee. A nurturer of young talent, he also teaches at journalism seminars.