I have a feeling Dan Gillmor is one of Robinson’s personal heroes. He often quotes Gillmor and in his Poynter interview he said, “To steal directly from Dan Gillmor, our readers are smarter than we are.”

In his book “We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the people, for the people,” Gillmor provides a brief history of the media and how it has evolved over the years. He points out that today, readers prefer a more interactive style of journalism. Brian Carroll also touched on this concept in his article “Culture Clash: Journalism and the Communal Ethos of the Blogosphere.” He wrote, “Newspaper readers are aging and dying off. Their children and grandchildren, Generation Y’s 16- to 24-year-olds who spend $200 billion annually, want to interact with the news, not merely to passively receive it (Pohlig, 2003). Generation Y sees news coverage more as a discussion and less a lecture, an analogy for the tradition in print news.” Gillmor recognized in “We the Media” that “If markets are conversations, as the Cluetrain Manifesto authors have noted, then journalism – the information people need to manage their lives – will increasingly be part of those conversations” (45).

In his chapter on “Traditional Journalists Join the Conversation,” Gillmor touched on a lot of the same issues John Robinson is dealing with at the News & Record. Audiences today have higher expectations. They want to have a hand in how the news is produced, but editors are used to having more control over the content their paper produces. Gillmor points out that, with blogs, editors relinquish a lot of that control. Robinson wrote in one post that the News & Record blogs are not edited before they go online, and “this flies in the face of every tenet editors cling to.”

Citizen Journalism:
Robinson refers to “OhMyNews,com,” the Korean onlinr newspaper Gillmor described in his book. The site is made up of entirely submitted material. Robinson said in his Jan.8, 2005 post that the staff at the News & Record had visited many sites and he liked the model at OhMyNews. Robinson said that Lex’s report would look at ways to “develop interactivity, forums, communities of place and of interest. He’s going to help us develop more staff and reader blogs, and bring on more citizen content, stories and photos.” Just what Gillmor ordered! Robinson strives to create the type of “Open Source Journalism” that Gillmor perscribes in this chapter. In fact, Jay Rosen, media critic at NYU, used the term to applaud the News & Record’s efforts to connect with their audience.

In his book, Gillmor wrote that the qualities that make a journalist’s blog successful are the same that make any blog worth reading:
- voice
- focus
- real reporting
- good writing

Robinson’s Editor’s Log has nearly all of those qualities. He does not do so much reporting, because of his position at the paper. His column, and therefore his blog, is more reflexive in nature. One of the reasons Robinson started blogging, he said, is to give the newspaper more personality. He certainly succeeds. His particular personality works well, and it doesn’t hurt that he has a good sense of humor. He also has a way of interacting with the people who read and comment on his blog that creates a community.

Link love:
Gillmor wrote that newspapers have been doing a better job of linking outward to other people’s content, but they need to do more of that. In his blog, Robinson’s posts contain several links to content outside of the News & Record fold. He often links to local bloggers, like David Hoggard at Hog’s Blog, local councilwoman Sandy Carmany, and ed cone. He also links to other publications, such as the New York Times and Newsday. Many journalists have resisted this practice saying, “Why would we send readers outside the site? We want them to stay here!” The point is, these external links often provide context and background. But the newspaper provides something else. Also, if it can act as a portal in this way, people may be more apt to visit a newspaper’s website.

Plans for the future:
- Allow comments on news stories (except for crime stories).
- Start blogs for different neighborhoods.
- Guest bloggers.
- Submit a story idea.