Ken Sands has been added to the roster of writers at Morph and his first post points to more big doings in Spokane, including plans to begin webcasting morning and afternoon news budget meetings for the Spokesman-Review. Also:
The (Spokane, Wash.) Spokesman-Review’s editors blog has been going for more than a year now, but comments on the column were just enabled yesterday (first comment). We’re hoping the comments remain civil, as they have in our very popular Huckleberries Online blog, which is written by our Idaho-based editorial writer Dave Oliveria. Some of his blog posts get 50 or more comments. Quite a lively dialogue.
Next up, we’re recruiting a few local readers to write a “citizens ombusdman” blog for us, which would allow for unfiltered criticism of us on our own pages. We’re not quite sure how or whether this will work.
Earlier this week, Ken told me in an email that he’s also working on developing more and more original content for the Spokesman-Review’s web site, so that it relies less on “repurposed” content from the newspaper.
Spokane, Ventura County and Greensboro are emerging as the leading exponents (and experimenters) of bringing together newspaper and community in new ways. They’ve bought into Dan Gillmor’s “news is conversation” in a big way and at each newspaper, they are exploring ways of remaking the newspaper. It’s interesting that these experiments are, by and large, taking place away from what are usually considered media hot spots. These are three communities I’m watching and three newspapers I’m cheering for.
TECHNORATI TAGS: SPOKANE, GREENSBORO, VENTURA COUNTY, NEWSPAPERS, RETHINKING MEDIA
