Web 2.0 thinking for journalists
Here is a short quiz for all the journalists out there and it isn’t meant to be a negative thing, but honestly gauge yourself. Where do you best fit between these two options?
1) The internet is an extension to do research, look at news and find sources and that is about it.
2) The internet is a place where I contribute, participate, generate contacts and find new and interesting things that engage me and encourages me to interact and think.
I came across an article that I found on the Online Journalism Blog titled “Local News is Changing, But Not Fast Enough”.
Now what does the short quiz have to do with local news? Well according to the article’s author Paul Bradshaw, everything.
Local journalism is supposed to be all about community, but local journalists’ relationships with communities online are for the most part non-existent, or one-way.
There are lots of examples out there of journalist and news organizations who get the online community – local news connection. The article argues, in my opinion, that this year may a make or break one for those journalist who think in Web 1.0 terms and fall into option 1 in the quiz above.
Online you get back what you give out. By contributing to the blogosphere, to Flickr and YouTube and Facebook, journalists will generate contacts, leads, contributors and readers. That’s Web 2.0 thinking and it’s begging to be explored.
I believe you can’t teach a Web 2.0 way of thinking. It’s more about how people live their lives. So if you aren’t doing it already start blogging, or at least read several every day. Learn what Twitter is and use it. Experiment with Flickr. Learn what mashup means. Do a crowd-sourcing project.
Thanks for this. It’s good to have some practical “do this” ideas for those of us trying to put these ideas into play in newsrooms.
Another argument I hear in Bradshaw’s blog is that the focus on technology (video cameras, editing software, etc.) is Web 1.0 thinking as well.
I was looking into a training session put on by Knight and they required editors to promise a $2,000 investment in tech in the next year as part of the application process.
That’s fine, but the techniques they should be teaching are what you’re describing here: blogging, crowd-sourcing, mashups — living online.
Web 2.0 doesn’t mean a big investment in “stuff”. It means a sea-change in reporter culture.