Asks Victor Keegan in Can a crowd really edit our daily paper?
One of the most fascinating questions is what, if any, future there is for newspapers as the creative destruction of the internet gathers pace. What is happening to the media is merely a high-profile version of what is going on in almost every other activity from politics to film-making. The digital revolution is turning ordinary people into both creators of content (whether videos, online journals or books) and arbiters of the process that decides what gets published and how it is rated.
The article also references Digg.com – Megite and Reddit , which enable readers, not algorithms, to decide the prominence of stories.
Why are these sites so much a threat to traditional newspapers?
Blogs and sites such as Digg are more dangerous because they generate their own views and have a different notion of what news is. But, just as Old Media crushed the upstart Eddie Shah's hi-tech newspaper, Today, 20 years ago by adopting the technology themselves, so they can do the same with the social websites. Newspapers may yet turn out to have a comparative advantage in becoming "trusted sites" at a time when an explosion of blogs not only makes it impossible to read even the best of them regularly but also to decide what is true.
Trust a vital component in our 21st Century world
The need to be the first blog on the block to spread a bit of regurgitated news, complete with your own spin, isn't obviously a way to become a trusted brand. Speed is the enemy of depth. Newspapers still have a vital role in generating trusted content. Whether it then appears on printed paper, on a portable screen, on a website complete with video (making it converge with television) or a mobile device (where the potential has only been scratched) remains to be seen. At least newspapers, unlike the music industry, aren't trying to deny that a revolution is taking place.
There is no doubt that the Guardian, and the BBC for example are trusted brands. And I believe that there future lies in a global marketplace vs. a local one. News is defintiely more social, the start of the conversation. But good journalism will always be thought provoking, challenging, questioning. And that has to start somewhere. To be listened to in the first place people have got to value your reputation as a trusted authority.
British news reporting via the BBC, and the Guardian have a distinct advantage and one they need to capitalise on.
If the world is watching and reading and discussing, I suggest there are revenue opportunties to be discovered also
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