Luckie Shares Tips for Open-Source Newsroom

SAN FRANCISCO — The open-source newsroom of tomorrow has arrived.

Mark Luckie, a veteran journalist and expert in using new media tools, provided journalists with a smorgasbord of open-source technology they can use to improve they way they gather, process and distribute news to their readers. Luckie, creator of the popular “10,000 Words” blog, spoke Sunday during the “Journalism Innovations III” conference at the University of San Francisco.

All the tools he demonstrated can be downloaded for free or purchased for less than $10. Luckie uses many of the tools regularly in his job as a multimedia producer at CaliforniaWatch, a project of the Center for Investigative Journalism.

Declaring himself at “PC guy” at the outset, he noted that he uses Macs at work and all of the software he demonstrated can be used on either system.

These days, he added, journalists at large, medium and small organizations as well as those flying solo are using these tools to better organize information, tell stories and serve readers.

Here is the list of tools he discussed during his presentation (See http://10000words.net/ji3 to link directly to all these tools):

Content Management Systems/Collaboration
WordPress
Drupal
Buddy Press
Google Docs

Audio/Video Editing
GarageBand
iMovie
Audacity

Photo Editing
Splashup
Fotoflexer

Creating Maps/Interactive Graphics
UMapper
Map Builder
PhotoPeach
Dipity

Wikis/Collaboration
MediaWiki
CoverItLive
UStream

iPhone Apps
WordPress for iPhone
FourTrack
Pano
AudioBoo

Luckie has written about most of these tools on his 10,000 Words blog.

The conference was sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter, and Independent Arts & Media.

For more information, Luckie invited e-mail at mluckie@10000words.net. Or follow him on Twitter — http://twitter.com/10000Words.

-rp-