I AM a big fan of Dan Gillmor and his views on the changing relationship between newspapers and their readers.
In a recent speech he highlighted the importance of news organisations taking part in conversations with readers and how those that embrace this role will prosper. Please see:
What I Said at Columbia University
Eveything I’ve been working on in the past few years is about an evolution of journalism from the lecture mode of the past to something much closer to a conversation. That’s a shift I consider absolutely essential for all of journalism’s constituencies.
Only a handful of newspapers in the UK are taking on this challenge, and there is no right or wrong way of doing such - it's more important that news organisations get the basics right and actually take their first steps.
Unfortunately these first steps are only being taken by the national press, there are few examples in regional and local newspapers, who are the perfect breeding ground for this new conversational media.
Naming journalists' columns blogs, without providing comment fields, or pushing out the day's news via RSS in the early evening is not the way forward.
I've written in the past (
see Citizen journalism and the media) that the local press should provide their readers with self-publishing tools, helping and guiding them to produce news relevant to their neighbourhood.
But first they have to understand the benefit such tools will bring to themselves.
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Dan Gillmor