The News Blackout

We’re launching a new recurring community experiment that we’re calling News Weird Ways. Rather than relying on website hits or people to come to news, the goal of NWW is to infuse local news in places and ways that people might not otherwise experience it: the intersections of community where people are already gathering and communicating, and going to them rather than driving them to news.

And, in order to do that, the news has to look different. And, well, weird.

Today’s News Weird Ways is a way to reach artistic and creative folks: blackout poetry. I personally love reading through random publications and (after finishing the article of course), ruthlessly defacing the work with black sharpie to make something different, often finding deeper truth in the truncated words and language.

Using a little help from AI, I created a tool that can provide a feed of local news (in this case, I chose NBC 8 WGAL) for users to write their own blackout poetry from the story text. The resulting poem can either be then shared via an image or displayed on another website via html/css.

Here’s why I like this Weird News:

-It encourages direct interaction with content

-It has the ability to aggregate multiple sources into one place for folks

-It’s sharable with a watermark so folks can not only send the content but, in theory, know where it came from (still working on that part!).

Give it a whirl, and send your blackouts to us at Aaron_spangler@steinmaninstitute.org!

The News Blackout

Welcome to a new way to experience your local news.

Create blackout poetry with your local news! Find hidden meanings, or create new ones, and help reimagine the ways we can connect with the events in our community.

How it works:

Step 1: Check out the RSS feed of local news stories below.

Step 2: Copy (ctrl/cmd + c) and then paste (ctrl/cmd + v) the text of the article into the Blackout Poem Creator below.

Step 3: Click generate

Step 4: Use your mouse to hover over words you’d like to use in your blackout poem. Click to add them.

Step 5: When you’ve got your masterpiece, you can either copy the html to embed the poem on your site, or download an image to share.

Happy creating! And remember, don’t let local news become a blackout.

Select a news story to start:

Do you have an idea for some News Weird Ways? Get in touch!