Ventura County Paper Gets Message
Howard Owens is director of new media for the Ventura County Star, a newspaper in southern California. (I'm fond of the paper in part because it used to run my column.) Owens has a personal blog of real substance, and is becoming a champion of the best ideas in grassroots journalism.
In a recent posting to a mailing list, he said the paper's online editor has the new, additional role of promoting citizen journalism in the community. He wrote:
We see blogs, forums, photo blogs and other forms of citizen journalism as a significant part of the online news world. Our readers want to be part of the process of sharing the news and shaping the news.
(To see his posting in full, go to this link, type "Owens" -- without the quotes -- into the Search box, click on Search and then select the item entitled "Citizen Journalism (Owens, Howard) [2005/02/03]" and click on the View Message button.)
His paper's decision is heartening. It's a move by a relatively small daily (90,000 circulation) owned by a medium-sized chain (Scripps Howard) to embrace the future.
I can't wait to see what the result will be.
Dan, I'm fond of the paper, too, because it paid my salary years ago :-) The Star has always embraced technology and community involvement, and Owens is extremely dedicated to the effort. I for one will be watching their progress!
Posted by: Gary Goldhammer | February 07, 2005 at 10:29 PM
Great to come across another good news story. May the creative force be with the newspaper ..
PS: Permanence of note: Most e-mailed NYT article is 2 months old: While I don't have the time to cite the specific posts, Doc Searls has often used the NY Times archives (and their cost-wall approach) to explore the value of what he refuses to call "content." One aspect of their archives not subject to the costwall (just the registration requirement) are the reviews and articles appearing in the Sunday Books section. This means that for some reason I have missed, this two month old article regarding the best books of 2004 has hit today's list of the "most e-mailed NYT stories." Most e-mailed NYT article is 2 months old
Posted by: Jozef Imrich | February 08, 2005 at 02:05 AM