Ideas for news site as 'public square'
As promised, writer Lex Alexander delivered a detailed report to his editors at The Greensboro News & Record on how to make the newspaper's Web site more of a "public square."
Here are some of the more innovative ideas he listed to better involve the community in the news site and make the newspaper more transparent:
• Assign local bloggers to cover in depth some things that we don't -- e.g., community sports by team, business specialties, etc.
• Recruit a blogger for each neighborhood from among its residents, a la Waterville, NY, paper.
• "Get Me Rewrite!" -- readers re-write stories to emphasize what they believe are the salient points, or to highlight what they think was missing in the published story. Reporters and their editors review those comments to learn.
• Build wiki(s) (cf. en.wikipedia.com) on subjects, e.g., histories of Greensboro's neighborhoods.
• Interactive assignment editor: Readers suggest stories and a dedicated (e.g., this is a full-time beat) reporter does them, explaining how he did them, why he made certain decisions, etc.
• Structure Letters to the Editor as a blog, with each letter having its own permalink and comments.
• Invite area bloggers in to blog budget meetings. (Note for non-newspaper folks: "Budget meetings" aren't financial. They're meetings in which merit and play of stories for the next day's paper are discussed; a "budget" is a list of proposed stories, with information on what it's about, who's writing it, any accompanying art elements, and deadline.)
• Invite area bloggers in to blog editorial-board meetings.
• Regularly staff-blog budget meetings.
• Regularly staff-blog editorial-board meetings.
And in the interest of being transparent, he posted the entire staff memo online.
Jan 11, 2005 | E-MAIL | SAVE | PRINT | PERMALINK | DISCUSS(0)
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Posted on unmediated at January 12, 2005 12:18 AM
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