Jeff, As usual a thought-provoking post. But I don’t think your dismissal of ‘quizzes and such fripperies’ is necessarily fair.
We (Fuel by AFP, a SF-based subsidiary of Agence France-Presse) have recently put a news quiz app on Facebook called Deadline, which we see as a first step in just the process you say would be your approach: “figuring out how to get news that matters to you in your news feed (and)… finding ways to tie you with other people who share your interest and know what you want to know….”
Deadline (still in a very early form) entices people to learn more about the news items they find interesting (via the quiz), and will allow them to bookmark, share, post to their news feed and comment on news stories related to the quiz questions.
The data we gather through the app shows us which news areas people know well, or don’t know at all, which topics they choose to read more about, and share, etc. We can adjust subsequent questions to both suit people’s expressed interests and provide more information on areas they know less about.
The quiz is just a starting point, the spark for beginning conversations and debate around world events through features we will be adding in the weeks and months to come.
As you have long argued, people, and particularly younger people, have little interest or trust in “The News” as handed down by traditional media. And yet they clearly care about world events — witness the big FB groups around the tragedy in Darfur, climate change, even the recent crisis in Myanmar.
Our hope is that we can help bridge that disconnect by providing a way into the news that is both entertaining and engaging — engaging in the social sense where news is active, part of a community of conversation and debate.
If we can make headway in that direction, we think Deadline will be more than a frippery. Give it a try and let us know what you think.
David

Jarvis, get a hold of yourself. These are delusions of grandeur, civic journalism turned megalomaniacal.

Isn’t providing news difficult enough for journalists to do? Now you suggest that journalists also take on community organizing too?

Surely the advantage of the networks that the Internet offers is that it allows each of us to specialize in what we do best, secure in the knowledge that there are political organizers and dating services and youth clubs and community outreach and sports leagues and organized religion and tax-funded municipalities trying to do all that other stuff.

Journalists should be reporting on how well all those institutions perform their tasks and the innovations and controversies that arise from those efforts — not trying to muscle in and take over their worlds.

Sometimes this happens even with community support because of bad management, rising costs, economic downturns.

This means that a lot of very good newspaper journalists are unemployed or underemployed.

They may not want to go to Facebook but is it possible for journalists who write to get an income and not just for fun (full-time or freelance) to get a regular income online?