Romenesko — If you want to know what’s what in the world of newspaper journalism, this is the place to go.
PressThink – Jay Rosen skates to where the puck is going to be
First Draft — As does Tim Porter
BuzzMachine — As does Jeff Jarvis, although he sprinkles lots of other tangy spices into the mix.
Dan Gillmor — His book, “We the Media,” was so influential on me that I couldn’t leave his new blog out even as I find it less compelling.
Blogspotting – Two BusinessWeek online reporters blogging on all sorts of media and business and marketing topics. Great tone.
Editorsweblog — Its subtitle: Practical issues and real solutions for working editors. Need I say more?
Reflections of a Newsosaur — Alan Mutter. Smart guy.
Spokane Spokesman-Review blogs — Ken Sands & Co. are leading the newspaper pack in new and innovative things. It’s hard to keep up. (In the college papers’ list, I had News & Record blogs here. I switched it out so you wouldn’t think I was sucking up to my own staff.)
Word Up — Any list without the insightful musings of Ed Cone would be lacking.

1. Network capital
2. Civic engagement
3. Sense of community

All these things are present at the News & Record blogs. Network capital is created when readers communicate frequently through the blogs and comments. Civic engagement is created because often the readers are discussing issues of local civic importance. It seems there is a sense of community, and that relationships have emerged between different members of the community. It remains to be seen, however, whether the broader social network on the News & Record blogs can be put to work, as Nan Lin suggests is vital to social capital.

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.

These three discussions stemmed from feedback the newspaper received from readers. In each case, the newspaper got an angry letter to the editor and a letter was posted for feedback.

The first example came from a picture of African-American children eating watermelon. Many readers questioned whether the newspaper should have printed the photo, considering the historically racist nature of such photos. Still, many argued that people were stuck on race, when this was simply a picture of a cute kid eating watermelon on a hot day. This post garnered 34 comments.

The second example also came from people offended by a photo, this time of naked runners. 29 people commented on the letter to the editor which compared the photo to soft core porn. People even began quoting scripture as justification for both clothing and streaking.

This discussion on good news from Iraq also came from a letter to the editor. It elicited 48 posts. Discussion got pretty heated, and John Robinson stepped in to calm everyone down. Interestingly, a few of the commentors express great disdain for the news media, and question their credibility. So why then, would they want to comment on a newspaper’s blog? Are they subscribers to the newspaper? The beauty of it is, they are interacting with the newspaper, even though they don’t agree with it. The blog allows them to give voice to opinions they don’t see reflected in their local newspaper.

The Editor’s Log post with the most comments was one on political sign vandalism during the 2004 election, which received 86. Robinson said that post gave him the record for the highest number of comments, until he was beaten out by the education blog. One commentor, however, doesn’t seem to think the blog has been successful, and writes early on: “Why do you think the Editor put his comments in here? Would it be because he has a Democratic audience? Maybe you guys should stop posting to this failure they call an Editors Log/Blogg. Unless, of course, you need a job and your an out of work Journalist. ”

Purpose:
Robinson wrote on Dec. 22: “We aren’t looking to change the world. We simply want to get better. I wrote about it Dec. 1 when I paraphrased Mark Glaser in stating the sort of newspaper we strive to be: “Creating new content. Serving the public and allowing the public to serve journalism. Building a new way of doing smart, citizen journalism. More transparency. News as a conversation.”

He clearly states the mission of the newspaper’s blogs, but it isn’t located prominently enough for visitors to see it. The sentiments above could be condensed and placed somewhere on the blog where all visitors can read it. As it is, I had to delve into the archives to find it. And, like most news stories, it cannot be assumed that readers have been there from the beginning.

People:
In the interview for Poynter, Robinson said, “I started blogging about the newspaper about five months ago and discovered that, not only was it not difficult, but that it connected with an audience that I just wasn’t reaching in the newspaper.”

A core group of people became regular participants in the conversation, many of whom were already active in the Greensboro blogging scene. Examples include Ed Cone, David Hoggard, Billy the Blogging Poet and David Wharton. All of these bloggers appear on Greensboro101 and are on Robinson’s blog roll. Virtually anyone who has commented on Robinson’s blog who has a blog themselves is linked to through his site. In some ways, it has turned into an “in-group” thing.

One spirited discussion (47 comments) occurred on Robinson’s January 15 post, an online posting of his weekly column. In it one person commented that he was skeptical of the newspaper’s ability to hold a wide-open forum. There was some argument that followed, after which the poster concluded that he was right all along – his voice would be excluded. In response, Ed Cone wrote this comment:

Jasper and Phred,

You are missing the way this new medium changes the game.

You’re still waiting for someone to say what you want them to say, you’re grousing that your views aren’t being expressed. But that’s the old paradigm.

Now you don’t need to wait for anyone to say what you want them to — you can start your own blogs, you can create your own online voices and communities — your posts will be pushed into the public eye by aggregators, and if you have something interesting to say, people will pay attention to it, and it will get linked and read.

Jim Wilson’s reduction of the local blog scene to an echo chamber is demonstrably inaccurate, but to the extent that people feel that way, it’s in their power to do something about it.

To complain that the N&R’s voice sounds the same in this new forum is to miss the point — the idea here is that more voices — YOUR VOICES — are now added to the mix.

Posted by: ed cone at January 17, 2005 12:29 PM

Policies:

The policies for the News & Record blogs appear in their Terms of Service, which users can link to from the comments pages. Most interesting is the “Take-Down Policy,” which frees the newspaper from a lot of responsibility.

Robinson has said that comments on the Letters to the Editor blog were so abusive, that the site began requiring registration. Robinson blogged about this http://blog.news-record.com/staff/jrblog/archives/2005/09/registration_fo.html#comments> decision. As soon as users navigate to this page, they can read the guidelines at the top of the page: “Feel free to comment; that’s why this blog exists. It’s fine to disagree with one another’s opinions, but please attack ideas, not people. Personal attacks have no place here. Also, please present factual information and cite sources where appropriate. For more information, please read our terms of service.”

Usability:
Preece also wrote that “Online community developers are responsible for building or selecting software that encourage a thriving community.” In the News & Record blogs, users had problems with the program at first, and the developers tweaked it to create a more hospitable environment. Writers started using permalinks and the programming was changed to allow trackbacks. They also added a content filter to keep porn and ads off the comments pages.

The whole thing started - according to an interview with Poynter’s Bill Mitchell - when Robinson and managing editor Ann Morris asked city editor Mark Sutter to investigate readership initiatives - ways to keep old readers and attract new ones. He came back with a report that called for the creation of a “Town Square,” a “trusted place where people gather to read, write, report the news, debate issues of the day, get shopping information and, generally, engage in civic discourse.”

The newspaper staff decided the best way to do that was through the internet, and so Lex Alexander was commissioned to research possible methods of creating an online community of readers. He began by asking the readers of his blog what they thought the newspaper should do. And he received several responses. A full account can be found on the Lex Files in January 2005. His full report can also be found online and can be downloaded in word document form.