My Op-Ed: AJC Blog Experiment Too Top-Down
With its half serious, half frivolous Commutants blogging exercise the Atlanta Journal-Constitution opened itself to new citizen journalism possibilities. I share my advice on the paper’s opinion pages today.
Its editorial writers looked for alternative ways to get to work and blogged about their experiences, while asking citizens to comment. Here is part of what I wrote:
It was cute to watch your editorial board struggle to get to work, but what about all the poor people who have no choice 365 days a year? The newspaper’s editorial reach could be extended almost infinitely through your audience, through their photos, audioblogs and printed words. Conceptualize it as an eBay-like work force dealing in ideas rather than merchandise.
The Commutants blog was a top-down model, which indicates the “bottom-up takeover” is not yet in the Journal-Constitution’s vision.
But it should be.
Think of Commutants as a first step, or better yet visualize it as a mutant gene that is about to change the Journal-Constitution’s entire DNA.
