Want to Save Journalism? Think Community Building First
Nice conversation started by Ryan Sholin at Invisible Inkling and carried on by Howard Owens. There is a lot of talk about hyperlocal and community news, but not enough about local connections. My own thinking is moving in the direction of this Owens insight:
Ryan…writes, “I can’t emphasize this enough. No one wants to connect with your brand, they want to connect with their town,” but I would say people don’t want to connect with a town. They want to connect with their friends (and potential friends) and neighbors so they can talk about their town and their lives.
January 22nd, 2007 at 7:11 pm
A while back a paper I consulted with asked about integrating blogs and other tools into their online mix. I asked, “Why do you want to do this?….and if I hear page views or revenue as one of the top reasons I’m walking out the door.”
In many ways papers are adopting the tools, but not necessarily the thinking. They have blogs, they have podcasts, but like you mention above they’re not building the local connections.