Feb. 18

In "the wisdom of the crowd," I have to admit I was a little nervous of the idea of "crowdsourcing." This sounds even more threatening than "citizen journalist." I am not surprised to find that when asked to ordinary citizens did not want to write feature length articles, and to be honest who would have wanted to read them anyway. One of my biggest problems with using user-generated content on the Web is the amount of comments and articles you see that have no bearing on the larger community. But it is interesting that the Q and As turned out productive. As for Gannett, I find they do too much "crowdsourcing," and audience created content. It clutters the page and makes me go someplace else for my news.
In "when journalists blog," I think our media outlet could utilize the blogging by journalists. I like the idea of being able to "put out the call" to readers when working on a story. I also really like the idea of updating a story every time the journalist makes a phone call, finds out something new. It lends itself to the immediacy of news on the Web, allowing readers to be informed without having to wait for a writer to compose a pyramid story and then have it go through edits, copy and design. The idea of also have shorter blogs is good. I think that is what mainstream media blogs tend to miss -- that advid blog readers like their information in short bursts and quick.
In "Digging into social media" I found it interesting that only 40 percent of a newspapers traffic comes from a reader typing in a specific URL, I'm one of those readers. I never knew that there was really any other way because I seem to be in the dark ages these days. I love the idea that a newspaper can have a social network alter ego, and we will definitely be using this. Using social networks was something Final Draft had decided to do already but this is just a great way to use it.
In "Ethical Values..." I completely agree with the idea that community bloggers have to be questioned about ethics, just like any journalist. The Web is a new free medium and the idea of a "page-view whore" is real and out there. And yes there needs to be a "truth alert" for editors who use citizen journalists, but of course there isn't. I think ultimately it is up to the readers to use their best judgement in deciding if a story is credible or not.
In "Suggest a topic," I think the idea of creating a brand out of your media outlet is a smart business model to use. I have to admit, I think this idea that a story is a growing thing, no longer a product, is kind of a hoax -- a myth of the online world. I see some Web sites do it, but not affectively. I'm not buying it yet.