Blogger Ethan Kaplan has an interesting post titled What I would do if I bought a newspaper, reacting to a post from Jeff Jarvis, who was reacting to a post by Jay Rosen.
Kaplan deconstructs (literally) the OC Register, shedding staff and office space and turning attention to collaborative face-to-face journalism, distributed over the ‘net. There are some interesting thoughts in there but to my mind there’s a big gap. Other than this…
Take the third floor (newsroom). Move them out and cut some staff. Put them in a big warehouse type space that was computers on the outside wall, and conversation areas inside. Make this warehouse in a public space, open to the public. Put in a coffee bar, open wifi and invite the consumer to come in. Leverage the content the consumer creates in this environment so that the reader is also the (co) writer.
…there’s nothing about how the journalism would be committed, beyond what’s produced produced in the warehouse. That might make it interesting to those involved, but I don’t see how it serves the basic newsgathering function.
TAG: NEWSPAPERS
