News Mixer is your home for connection and interaction around news in Eastern Iowa. News Mixer adds a new dimension to your relationships with your Facebook friends by taking advantage of a new service called Facebook Connect. We hope News Mixer will helps you build new connections with other people interested in talking about Eastern Iowa news.
This first version of News Mixer is a demonstration site for you to test and explore. Take a look around! We would love your feedback.
Most news Web sites either don't allow people to participate in conversations, or offer just the simplest option: a comment box. Most people aren't very happy with the quality of the conversation that results. This site offers you three different ways of responding to the news, each designed to address a key limitation of the traditional approaches to online commenting.
This commenting structure allows a reader to leave a question about the story, and allows other readers, including the reporter, to leave an answer.
This is a short-answer format that allows you to offer a quick response, limited to 140 characters.
Letters to the editor are an outlet for readers to leave their thoughtful point of view in 250 words or less, whether about an article, another letter someone wrote, or on any subject the author deems important. News Mixer is designed to allow an editor to select and highlight the best letters.
News Mixer brings people together by letting them see and get to know each other through conversations around news and interactions with their network of Facebook friends.
Journalism isn't just about gathering and distributing facts. Throughout U.S. history, newspapers and other media have also provided a forum for discussion and debate related to local news and civic affairs. The Internet has enabled the creation of new ways for people to interact. News Mixer is designed to create conversations and connections related to local news.
News Mixer is free and open source software, coded in Python with the Django Web development framework, and uses Facebook Connect for authentication. You can read more about our development process in our report, and find our source at Google Code.