A Partyline photo from last winter by contributor Carly Swain.
By BRIAN DONOHUE
Here’s a sad, and frankly disturbing habit of modern life many of us have fallen into without even thinking about it.
We see something wonderful, beautiful, amusing or, perhaps awful, happening in front of us and we bust out our phones and take a picture. Ok, so far so good.
But then, the first thing we do with this snapshot of amazingness is say (through our actions, at least), “I think I’ll give this great content away for free to a billionaire like Mark Zuckerberg so he can post it on his world-eating web site and build his advertising audience and make some more money from it.”
And, then, we do it. Why?
A recent Partyline photo of Darth Vader at Welsh Farms on East Front Street.
How about using that photo of the tee ball home run celebration or the sunset over the Navesink or the random guy in the Darth Vader mask at the convenience store and using it to boost a sense of community and appreciation of place, and help local journalism in the process? How about posting it someplace your neighbors and members of your community will see it, not the jerk who sat behind you in fifth grade math class and now lives in Arizona?
Rather than send that photo into Facebook oblivion for a few fake “likes,” wouldn’t it be nicer to have the neighbor on line at the bagel shop say to you in person, “Hey, I loved that photo you took on our street!”
Redbankgreen has the answer.
It’s called Partyline. Partyline is a service that allows you to take a photo from your phone, send it as a text message automatically into redbankgreen’s content system where it will be checked, edited if necessary and posted to the site. It’s actually more simple than posting to social media. You can send in one photo a week or one photo a year, it’s up to you.
You may have seen the Partyline feed on our home page, with content provided by our staff and a small group of early adopters. We love it and it’s going great so far.
But we want this to be bigger, with more members of the community involved and contributing.
This isn’t a social media, fact free, free-for-all. You’ll fill out a brief form so we know who you are, and all your submissions will be checked by an editor before being posted (you know, we have to confirm the alien abduction you took a picture of is actually real).
We see party line as the sweet spot between unfettered, unchecked, unedited rumor blizzard that is social media (awful) and us having a staff of dozens of roaming photographers (financially impossible). But like an other aspect of community it’s only as good as the contributors who participate.
So here’s the form. Please sign up and join the party.
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