Manifesto for the future
If I were the publisher of one of America’s lumbering and suffering major newspapers (which I certainly will never be), I’d go hire Greensboro News & Record Editor John Robinson but not let him into the newsroom for a month so the staff can go to his blog and read pieces like this and fret about the future under an editor who embraces change.
Tags: Book, Media, newspapers, newsroom
January 1st, 2006 at 8:38 pm
If you’re a publisher: Good luck with that, inasmuch as his roots, and his wife’s family business, are here. Also, I would have to hurt you.
January 1st, 2006 at 9:29 pm
Wow- Watch out for this guy. He gets it. He’s got the ability to actually save some credibility for the MSM.
And this is why I read blogs. Thanks, Mr. Jarvis.
January 1st, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Lex would simply be at the front of the line. It would be a long line. We’re grateful to have JR’s leadership in our ‘boro.
January 2nd, 2006 at 9:45 am
“intensely local” and full of “blogs” and “forums”?
Sounds like it could be run by one guy in his pajamas with user-generated content.
The revenue just isn’t there to support large staffs
January 2nd, 2006 at 12:10 pm
I love Emperor Bush! I will blindly follow his greatness of the edge of the Earth! I hate all those moonbat lefty peace hippies! I hate them soooo much!I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate …
January 2nd, 2006 at 12:11 pm
Them hippies deserve death! Lefty librels! Hate them all!
January 2nd, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Who needs papers no more anyways! I got fox news! Fox news is great! Fox news makes me fell warm and fuzzy! They put them librels in thier place! Wow if Jesus came back with a flame thrower he d burn up all them hippy librels he would. I hate them leftys.
January 2nd, 2006 at 2:10 pm
Thanks for the mention. You’re a big influence. And Lex should speak for himself.
January 2nd, 2006 at 4:35 pm
John Robinson has been a great asset to Blogsboro but his smartest move was when he teamed up with the local Blogosphere instead of trying to control it. Unlike other MSM outlets who have attempted to monopolize the local bloggers, John, Lex, Herb, Allen, and the rest of the N&R staff saw us not as a threat or a new territory to control, but as an asset that could only thrive if left in the sun.
While at the recent ConvergeSouth gathering I got the chance to express to bloggers and journalists from around the world what the N&R’s entry into the Blogosphere had done for them. I told those attending a session led by Jay Rosen and Lex Alexander that (I’m paraphrasing) the News & Record was no longer just a big brick building downtown, shrowded in secrecy, but was now in-fact a place filled with people who are not unlike you me, and everyone else.
That’s reason enough for any newspaper to follow John’s lead and this post is the reason you’re in the news at Blogsboro.com.
January 3rd, 2006 at 10:04 am
Jeff’s comments don’t just apply to the big, “lumbering” news companies, but all the way down to the local weeklies that depend so heavily on real estate and other advertising for their survival. I follow a number of small papers around the country (where friends and relatives live), and find very few with any imagination at all — if they’re even on the web in the first place.
One aspect common to almost all of them — no surprise — is that feedback is strictly controlled. As with the traditional letters to the editor, staff members feel they must filter the feedback. Their loss.