newspapers

This is the year of the great reunification. Throughout the newspaper industry, the Internet and print people are being bound together into one organization. It is dangerous, but I'm pushing hard for it.

It's dangerous because we could lose any ability to innovate, especially in the area of content. Clayton Christensen has documented how successful organizations fail because they kill innovation. It's not that people are bad or stupid -- the organizations strangle on their own history of success.

Tim Redmond of the San Francisco Bay Guardian questions Craig Newmark's community-building schtick and says:

The Bakersfield Californian is working reader contributions into both online and print products through a feature it calls Your Words, and kpaul has an interview with Ray Hacke of the Californian about how that process works. They're avoiding the term "citizen journalist" and preferring "contributing writer."

The UK's National Union of Journalists has conjured up a thoroughly bizarre "Code of Practice" that attempts to throw wooden shoes into the gears of the new journalism that is growing around us. It's available only as a Microsoft Word file.

There's a temptation to look at the Washington Post blog blowup and perform a cost-benefit analysis on interactivity. Clearly you can't just toss interactivity technology -- comment systems, forums, chat rooms, whatever -- onto a website and get nothing but happy flowers and joy blossoms. User comments alone aren't interaction. Staff needs to be involved -- responding, leading, and occasionally mopping up spills. Human resources aren't free.

Jim Brady's decision to shut off comments on the "post.blog" is being second-guessed all over the Web, and I suppose I should join in ... after first acknowledging Jay Rosen's typically excellent, thoughtful essay on the subject that includes an interview with Brady. Read it before you read anything I have to say.

I missed this last week, and maybe you did, too. Tim Porter dissects local reporting in local newspapers: