News Post 8

To Save Themselves, US Newspapers Put Readers to Work

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-08/ff_gannett?currentPage=all

The article from Wired News presents an interesting situation that is very relevant to the topic Web 2.0 and journalism. Ganett, the company owner of The Cincinnati Enquirer and 85 newspapers nationwide, has realized a clear fact about the future: the newspaper business is going to have to reinvent itself. The facts are in: Online news is in demand and the number of citizen journalists is steadily growing. Traditional news media had a few choices, but not all newspapers are eager to take the leap. The Cincinnati Enquirer is one newspaper that has gone to great lengths to change its agenda and gotten up to speed with recent trends in technologies. Top editor Tom Callinan spent two years earning a degree in new media to put his newspaper a step ahead and Michael Maness and Jennifer Carroll of the Enquirer traveled around the country visiting Gannett newsrooms and talking about the need for change. Gannett is one of the first publishers to take such a huge initiative. It is the proud owner of cincyMOMs, an informal site for forums and posts moderated by staff from the Enquirer. It proved to be a hit, and in the past few years the Cincinnati post of Gannett has become the producer of 270 niche publications including Web sites and regional publications. The paper has gone even further than these endeavors; The Enquirer is has taken a hold of capabilities posed by citizen journalists. On the localized news site such as the ones created by the Cincinnati Enquirer citizens are providing most of the submissions. They are becoming a new type of generalized. The news being fed to the sites is inevitably of a different genre, since the rules governing citizen journalism are far different from the steadfast guidelines of traditional journalism. Readers are jumping the gun to take their part and share the news they care about; The results seen by the monumental are clear and undeniable. Whether other newspapers will join in the tech-based emergence of online journalism is uncertain, but the demand and the benefits of implementing hyperlocalism is certain, as those at The Cincinnati Enquirer have seen.
It is still to be determined what the boundaries and guidelines of this new type of journalism will be. A few question that came to my mind:
How much control will be given to the reader? Are we destined to be receiving our news off of internet posts and blogs? Who will be responsible for maintaining ethics and quality? How long will traditional print media survive?