MediaShift

As the redesign and revamp of the MediaShift site continues apace, I am looking for a few good folks to serve as correspondents for MediaShift, so I can get better insight into industries or worlds that I cover only occasionally. My hope is that with a group of 10 to 15 correspondents, I'll be able to give my community of readers and contributors more food for thought and interaction.

One idea I am pursuing is having "embedded" bloggers who are in the midst of change at a media organization or institution. Rather than being embedded reporters in a war zone, they would be embedded bloggers in the swirl of change that is happening at a rapid pace in mainstream media outlets. Here's what I would want:

> Honest accounts of what's going on at that workplace -- both the good and bad of technological change.

> A buy-in from the organization itself for the embedded blogger, allowing the person to be honest in their assessment. Or, if that's not possible, then the correspondent would have to have a comfort level at writing reports anonymously.

> Correspondents who have been in the organization for some time, so they can compare how things are with how things were.

> Regular "change diaries" telling first-person accounts of life within a news organization as it's changing. These can be in text, video or audio -- or a combination of formats.

Ideally, I would like to find correspondents who are working at newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, magazines, book publishers, PR firms, Hollywood studios and music labels. I already have a journalism school student lined up to give "embedded" reports from that school.

I would expect the person to write about twice a month, at 800 to 1000 words per report. I am also looking for correspondents who can cover the following fields, but who don't have to be "embedded" in the industries:

> Politics
> Online video
> Virtual worlds
> Mobile media
> Podcasting
> Photography
> Legal issues [thanks to Rich, in comments]

If you are interested in becoming a MediaShift embed or correspondent, please use the Feedback Form on the site, which goes directly to my email in-box. Tell me why you think you'd make a good correspondent, and include a link to your blog (if you have one).

Any ideas or critiques on how this new feature for MediaShift would work out (or not) are welcome in the comments below.