In which I’m hard on Dean Singleton, again

Jamie — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:57:00 +0000

I wrote last week about Dean Singleton’s plan to make people pay for local content. I don’t think it’s a good idea, because instead of increasing revenue, it’s going to shut off access to content, not just for local readers, but for search engines, as well, making the sites less connected with larger conversations.

Jeff Jarvis makes that point (and more) more eloquently that I could.

I’m much more concerned about what Singleton wants to give away. He’s expecting to create a rich site filled with user-generated content and other information, but no local news stories.

Putting aside that the company should being doing their best to create context, including using that user-generated content; or arguments about the actual worth of most local news these days; or even questions about how much user-generated content there will actually be, this sends the wrong message. It tells readers that their content is less valuable than content produced by trained reporters.

In some cases, it might be, but not all the time. In fact, to some people, the user-generated content is more important than the latest on sewer rates or the zoning board. It shows life in the community, and it also can help to break news. It isn’t secondary anymore. Having a user base that’s dedicated to documenting their community and talking about issues that matter to them isn’t optional, and it isn’t secondary to the local news that’s being written by staffers. It’s a vital part of any news organization’s future, and giving it (or appearing to give it) second-class status is a mistake.

A strategy we can steal — er borrow

Jamie — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:54:35 +0000

I was pretty surprised by a commercial on the Olympics by shoe-makers Crocs. The site invited users to upload videos about the shoes saying why they loved — or hated — the shoes.

The site has a bunch of videos now, of varying levels of production quality, ranting or raving about Crocs. It’s an unusual idea for a company, to give hate the same billing as love. But it makes sense.

There are a lot of places for people to spew hate on the Internet, so why not try and corral it when you can?

And for newspapers, it’s even more useful. We are — and we should be — polarizing. People will be angry about our editorials and have opinions about our stories. Why not give them a place to talk? It would be useful to find out what people are thinking and what we might need to change.

There will inevitably be the usual trolling: OMG yr paper is teh sux0rz! Die plz. Kthxbai

The Crocs site doesn’t have to deal with that as much, because they set a relatively high bar to entry. But we can igore the useless comments and work on fixing the problems we find. It helps to follow Chip Scanlan’s advice to Be a sponge, be a duck.

So are any papers out there giving people a place to talk specifically about the issues they have with the paper?

Writing Hurts » user-generated content

In which I’m hard on Dean Singleton, again

A strategy we can steal — er borrow