Wall Street Journal: News Sites Solicit Articles Straight From Readers. In the past year, a handful of small newspapers have launched variations on that model. Newspaper publishers are eager to find new ways to connect to readers -- daily newspaper circulation dropped 11% between 1990 and 2003, according to Editor & Publisher magazine. Now, as do-it-yourself Web publishing tools are making it easier for laypeople to create blogs, newspapers are borrowing ideas from those informal Web journals in an effort to make their own coverage more accessible, and, they hope, attract more readers.
Hi Dan,
Newspapers aren't just asking people to write articles. Some are also encouraging people to send photos of interesting events or news items -- increasingly with an emphasis on camera phones.
I've also seen one newspaper, the Kansas "Lawrence Journal-World" include a credit that specifically says "Camera phone photo." Here's the URL with the photo: http://www.wirelessmoment.com/2005/01/lawrence_kansas.html
Posted by: Alan A. Reiter | April 14, 2005 at 07:30 AM
We also will be accepting and publishing reader-submitted photos as soon as we get our new Web-publishing software up and running -- within a couple of weeks, I hope.
Posted by: Lex | April 14, 2005 at 08:41 AM
Dan,
What do you think about what Mary Lou Fulton is doing with the Northwest Voice in Bakersfield, CA?
Under the umbrella of the Bakersfield Californian, she is publishing a successful (delivered free to 21,700 homes every other Thursday) community newspaper in which most of the information and pictures are "submitted by readers, community organizations, churches and schools."
It seems to me that she is way ahead of everyone in redefining traditional media to adapt to the readers' demands for both greater accountability (on the part of the publication) and more citizen/reader involvement.
Because people can get breaking news 24/7 now, what they want/demand/require from their daily paper is changing -- they want local news, specific to them, that addresses what they believe is important.
The other effect of this: a shift away from straight "just the facts ma'am" AP-style reporting, to stories biased towards the views of the community that's reading them.
It seems to me that Fulton, with her experiment, has taken this shift and run with it to its far extreme.
Posted by: Jane Richard | April 14, 2005 at 11:44 AM
ps. I referenced your post in my blog but couldn't get the trackback function to work.
Posted by: Jane Richard | April 14, 2005 at 11:45 AM