Every day, millions of pieces of information stream through the newsrooms of every newspaper in the world.

Some of them land on paper, to be quickly discarded or recycled. Some of them land on websites where they're quickly shoved aside by newer information. Yesterday's information is relegated to poorly searchable archives.

Very little is put to good long-term use.

Newspapers should be the experts on their communities, but the typical newspaper website provides almost no useful background information.

An editor for Ifra's magazine, Newspaper Techniques, interviewed me via email. Here's my response:

How can newspapers implement community sites?

I think the first step is to recognize the nature of community, and the constructive role played by journalism.

We typically don't do that. We typically think our job begins and ends with "covering the news," and we don't think carefully enough about what effects we have in the community.

Ifra's Citizen Media Summit in Malaysia looked like it might not happen, but the word this morning was that the class enrollment was sufficient, so we're greenlighted. If you're interested in attending, there's probably still space available. The three-day, workshop-style conference will be held July 2-4 at the Parkroyal Kuala Lumpur Hotel.

Core newspaper readers?

Jay Rosen's Twilight of the Curmudgeon Class deserves linkage just for the delightful title, but also for his synthesis of viewpoints and reactions to Neil Henry's recent "you kids get off my lawn" op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Upcoming in July: a citizen media workshop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, under the aegis of the international newspaper technology organization Ifra. From the webpage:

First Time In Asia! Citizen Media Summit

How to Ride on the Wave of the Digital Deluge

Date: 2 - 4 July 2007
Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Language(s): English

Summary / Composition / Zusammenfassung

Journalists are chronically confused about why people read newspapers. As Clayton Christensen has pointed out, the best way to understand product-market relationships is this: People don't buy products; they hire products to get specific jobs done.