Last week I attended an exciting example of how new media organizations can bridge the gap between scientific/academic research and enterprise journalism. In Amsterdam, representatives from 30 sites, comprising 17 countries, discussed how their originally academic Wage Indicator Project could develop into a media operation.
This project, which began in 2001 in the Netherlands, gathers online information on wages and labor conditions. Last year it expanded into eight additional European countries, including the U.K. Now it's grown to cover some larger economies such as the U.S., Brazil and India. The project is expected to expand to 25 more countries in the coming year, including China and Japan. (Disclosure: I'm the project manager for China Wage Indicator.)
Wage Indicator sites offer a scientifically weighted "salary checker," so visitors in participating countries can compare their wages and decide whether they're being compensated fairly.
I think this focus is ideal for a successful online media project. Is making money not the hottest online subject after sex?
Country teams include researchers from prestigious universities, a media organization and a social organization (often a trade union). The project is attempting to gather enough surveys to match the requirements for peer-reviewed journals. However, from the start ambitions were higher than producing boring academic reports for dusty shelves.
"We are now in a position where -- after the Netherlands -- other countries are delivering valid data," says Paulien Osse, director of the Wage Indicator Foundation and a former journalist. "The first projects to compare salaries between countries are getting in place and are very promising."
For the journalists -- or "content managers" as they are called in the new media parlance -- the Amsterdam meeting was the first attempt to pool efforts on a global scale.
