Orchive Enters the Media Fray

Photo by Boris Xu

Presenting http://orchive.com/:  a startup news site that aims to unleash everyone's inner reporter and then "crowdsource" the results for everyone to read.  The site (http://orchive.com/) just launched in "private beta", by a team of mainly local high school students.

Orchive is the collective brainchild of Francis Hinson and Nik Nayar, two Lawrenceville Prep students who set out to give the public news by the people in the form of eyewitness accounts. Users will post their accounts on the Orchive website to be shared and rated in terms of accuracy by fellow users. Now added to the list of co-founders is Princeton High School Senior Ofry Shatzky.

The team now working on Orchive has reached 15, which is rather large for a startup. Hinson says that there are definitely some drawbacks to having such a large group, but that the team has made up for them by achieving a good organization. There are three sectors: marketing, development, and design. As far as investments go, “we’ve been doing as much as we can without money,” says Hinson.

The group of students stays focused and organized around their nightly half hour Skype meetings. Of planning in the summer, Hinson says it was fairly difficult because of traveling members, he does expect scheduling and availability to be better in the fall. During the school year, he says, Orchive has “a big effect on people’s personal lives.” He maintains that Orchive can feel “like a full time job.” For a group of students, this seems to be a huge time commitment and a huge risk.

Shatzky is quick to admit that Orchive will attract a certain type of person, who he says will obviously like reading and following news and will be excited about getting the chance to report it. He also said that Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, was a huge source of inspiration. Shatzky says he looks to this Zakaria quote for inspiration: “Everywhere, we see that power is shifting from large institutions to motivated individuals. Technology allows people to leverage the weight of these institutions against themselves.” The founders say they are tired of bias in the media. In their efforts, they take objectivity in the media to the next level. Opinions, Hinson says, will have their place in the comments section. But in terms of reporting, Shatzky says, “we’re tired of bias.”

The group isn’t too keen on having the comments section be a free-for-all, either. On the Orchive blog Jonathan Tang, co-Chief Technology Officer, writes: “Orchive’s approach to comments is going to be something like this: while traditional news websites base their comment ranking by date, Orchive is going to allow every comment to get a merit-based opportunity to shine. It’s not just early-bird-gets-worm.” In this way the site will be what the users make of it, with the administrative team trying to intervene as little as possible. “It’s really at the mercy of the users,” says Hinson. “They will decide what is accurate information.”

To limit bias, users will have their own ‘Newsworthiness’ number so that other users can determine their reputability. Users will be able to vote up or down on other posts, and the trending feed will also eliminate inaccurate posts as well as redundancy on the site.  

Another member of the group, Princeton High School Senior Daniel Black, is planning to launch a marketing campaign that will reach universities across the nation, with the students being their targeted demographic. Black is zeroing in on diverse schools that tend to have better journalism programs. The extremely varied list contains over 40 schools, including Princeton University. The list doesn’t just contain the Ivies though. Also to make the list are the University of Florida, Rice University, and the University of Southern California.

The marketing team also hopes to launch several minor campaigns from the schools they represent, Princeton High School, Lawrenceville Prep, Peddie, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North, and Princeton University.