Amy Gahran (Content Strategist, Info-Provocateur) blogs about an event Columbia at University Graduate School of Journalism: “How Newspapers Can Survive (and Thrive) In the 21st Century.“
Now they had a who’s who in terms of lineup for he panel discussion:
- Robert Kuttner, founding co-editor of The American Prospect and author of an 8000-word treatise on the session’s topic, The Race, published in the latest Columbia Journalism Review.
- Steven Rattner, former New York Times reporter and author of the controversial Feb. 15 Wall Street Journal op-ed Red All Over. He’s now managing principal of Quadrangle Group LLC
- Jill Abramson, managing editor of The New York Times
- Amanda Bennett, executive editor/enterprise, Bloomberg News
- Jim Brady, executive editor, washingtonpost.com
- Nicholas Lemann, dean of the journalism school, moderated the session
Here is a question:
“I asked the panel what value, if any, they thought fostering and
engaged online community brought to news organizations’ bottom line.”
“After a bit of silence, Lemann then offered this: “This might not be
what you want to hear, but I guess getting more content from the
community could ‘help’ a newspaper’s bottom line by allowing them to
get rid of news staff.”
Huh? That’s all the value of an engaged community to a newspaper?
An engaged community for media allows:
1. Innovation and product direction: How to ensure that newspapers can evolve their content and model to suit more the users needs – see Chicago Tribune.
2. Localize and personalize the news to allow for multiple points of view on the SAME topic. This leads to more loyalty and readership.
3. Create a true sense of community within the newspaper readership which facilitates greater ad revenues.
What am I missing?
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