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3.3: What does this mean for journalism?

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    305674
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    Readers are no longer passive receivers of our messages. They create, share and comment. And they expect to do it on news Web sites, too.

    Jay Rosen, journalism professor at New York University and author of the Press Think blog, has coined the concept of “The People Formerly Known As The Audience.” (To read more about it, Google “TPFKATA.”) This recognition of the fundamental change in how messages are received from mainstream news organizations turns on its head the lesson most of us learned the first day in Communications 101: We send, they receive.

    This idea has also come to be known as “news is a conversation, not a lecture.”

    It is important to recognize the change in your audience. They want to participate, so help them. Many traditional news organizations include e-mail links on news stories to make it easy for readers to contact the reporter and ask questions or comment on stories. Some have taken the next step and allow readers to comment directly on the story online for all to see.

    If you have the opportunity, read the comments posted on your stories and write to those who deserve it. Be proactive in seeking feedback on stories before they are published. It can be as simple as posting a “call to readers” in the newspaper or as advanced as assembling an e-mail list of good targets. For example, if you cover education, build a list of teachers and administrators and send e-mail blasts when you need general comments for a story (more on this later).

    Even if you’re not ready to collaborate with your readers on reporting and writing, you can take advantage of Web 2.0 technology. Sites that employ tagging, for example, are useful in reporting on niche topics (del.icio.us chief among them). Use them to organize your searches and to see what other tags related to your beat are popular.

    Don’t know where this is heading?

    Part of the difficulty for traditional journalists is that we’re not very good at moving forward when we don’t know where we’re going. No one knows how all of this is ultimately going to change what we do or what opportunities this new model presents for us. But the only way we’ll be able to take advantage is if we’re aware of the technologies and actively participate in the changing landscape.

    “RSS and tagging are tools I use to track and obtain information in a more timely manner,” said John Cook, a business reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “So in that way, they are helpful to me in publishing information quickly online.”

    Assignment: Take part in the revolution

    To understand fully how Web 2.0 works, you need to use these sites. Open accounts at all of them and test drive the services they offer. Each of these assignments should take you less than a half hour. If you do one per day, you’ll get through all four steps in a week.

    1. Upload photos and apply tags to them at Flickr.
    2. Find a handful of Web sites that are interesting to you and tag them on del.icio.us.
    3. Visit Technorati and browse blog content using tags.
    4. Visit Digg, Slashdot, Reddit and Newsvine and compare the news stories you find there with your regular news sources.

    This page titled 3.3: What does this mean for journalism? is shared under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Mark Briggs via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.