The Greensboro N&R is on the brink of something pretty extraordinary as far as traditional newspapers go. They're discussing and beginning to implement their idea already, with the help of and some prodding from Editor John Robinson. From Robinson's Blog:The Greensboro story starts with its active group of citizens who blog
on the affairs of the day. Ed Cone, who introduced News & Record readers to blogs in his newspaper column in 2002, has been a tireless champion of the medium. He's joined by David Hoggard, David Wharton, Sam Hieb, Patrick Eakes, Billy Jones and many others who write anonymously. Their ranks grow every day, and now include Guilford County Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen, and Greensboro City Council members Yvonne Johnson and Tom Phillips.
The News & Record has five different blogs at www.news-record.com. Mine, called The Editor's Log, is another way for me to explain what we do, to listen to readers and to ask for advice. And that's where things got interesting.
Editors here want the newspaper and its Web site to become a virtual
town square, a trusted place where people can read and write the news,
share information, talk to each other and engage in community building. Now sure, there are tons of websites out there that do this. The idea of creating such a website, actually, isn't what's interesting. It's the idea of a local newspaper's website being set up in such a way that's so revolutionary.
Imagine citizens and newspaper readers being able to submit their own news stories and directly communicate about them, or provide interactive feedback with the writers and editors. It's a pretty cool idea.
Lots of big people have chimed in and given their advise, such as Jay Rosen at PressThink.
Alot of the updates about what's going on with the N&R are available at the blog of another N&R editor, Lex Alexander. I actually got in touch with John Robinson and told him I'd love to help work on the project, so he passed my name onto the person who runs their interactivity department. We'll see where that goes. Keep watching their websites and this one for more updates
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