How to improve editorial pages
Dan Gillmor offers some good suggestions as to how newspapers can improve their editorial pages by building conversation around their communities:
• Editorial page weblogs. Discuss upcoming topics among the staff and welcome reader comments.
• Offer user-moderated posting and comment systems. Moderation by the newspapers -- that is, removing obscene or illegal postings or trolls -- will be necessary.
• Use comments and community postings as letters to the editor. Better, publish greatest-hits threads of the best conversations, not isolated letters referring back to stories and editorials that no one remembers clearly. Provide context.
• Publish the best reader-written essays in the paper. Let readers decide which are best. (Sometimes you will disagree with the readers and have a good reason for not publishing a certain piece; explain why you made that decision.)
• Over time, think audio and video for commentaries.
• To ensure that people in poorer neighborhoods can be part of this conversation, buy some computers and install them in community centers, churches and other places where people gather. Encourage the people who'll take care of them to ensure that the computers are used only for this community purpose, not for random surfing.
Feb 06, 2005 | E-MAIL | SAVE | PRINT | PERMALINK | DISCUSS(2)
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2 comments about 'How to improve editorial pages'All excellent suggestions, except maybe the suggest that we provide computers to the poor and then put limits on what they can do with them. Sorry, no searching the employment classifieds for you--too self-regarding, not communitarian enough--but you CAN weigh in on property tax issues that don't affect you and the cardboard box you live in so just so that the paper can print column inches it doesn't have to pay for. Funny idea of community service you have. This sounds very much like what the Gates Foundation does: giving people access to the world computers but only if the computers run Windows--the notorious "drug dealer" strategy described in those terms by Gates himself. Do what you propose and you'd have 12-year-old kids running DoS attacks on your publication's server from these charity PCs in no time, bet you anything. And I'd be cheering 'em on.
Posted by Colin from Bklyn at February 6, 2005 10:34 AM
"not for RANDOM surfing" is what Dan Gillmor said.
Random Surfing is different from online job seeking, which I'm sure a community center would allow.
Please, Colin from Bklyn (is "Brooklyn" too much to type?), learn how to read more closely before rushing in with a satirical comment.
Go read your Stalinist or Maoist manuals a bit more rigorously and come up with some real bile.
Thanks Colin from Bklyn for proclaiming how you would "cheer on" cyber vandals, DDoS attackers, who are digital terrorists.
Now we know exactly what you really are, despite your posing as a Champion for the Poor.
Posted by Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate at February 13, 2005 6:09 PM
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