The Flower Mound News Project: Day 1 update
Reference Your News, Your Way just below.
Less than 24 hours since I first published the concept of the Flower Mound News Project, and I'm thrilled to say three people have contacted me to express their interest.
Why would a community-built and -managed hyper-local news website be so useful? Here's one example:
Two and a half weeks ago, a young girl told her mom a strange man tried to kidnap her on a Flower Mound neighborhood street. Notwithstanding the FMPD's dropped ball on getting the word out to the mainstream local media (read my recent blog post and all the subsequent comments), there is still going to be a time issue with getting the word spread to the media, and then to the people who need to hear it most -- our neighbors in Flower Mound.
I'll be thrilled if/when the Town builds an urgent e-mail notification system, but I still think we, the community, can do better. And that's one of the features we should build into the Flower Mound News Project. If the police get the word out, great -- we'll hear about it. But even quicker, a neighbor can get on the site, and publish an article about what happened. We could tie our site to an independent breaking-news alert system. Think how fast the word could spread when time is of the essence.
Take a look! Be a part of something great for our Town! Let me know if you're interested.
posted by Chip Mahaney @ 8:58 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
I think it would be very valuable for all the Neighborhood Watch groups as well as other citizens to be linked into a common community site so they can share information, and even form a notification system.
I do worry about a couple of things, such as someone putting out false information on purpose or by accident.
There is also the remote possibility that a case could be damaged (for example if the police have a suspect under covert surveillance and we blow their cover by calling 911).
Those cases are probably very rare, but of course in those cases, nothing prevents the police from monitoring the notifications and asking subscribers not to act.
The third problem may be that someone over-reacts or gets reckless and hurts someone instead of calling 911. However, if they do that, it's on them.
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