The latest post at MediaShift is a must-read. Take a look as Mark Glaser envisions how the local newsroom of the future might operate.

All are awesome ideas.

Probably the one I liked most was Collaboration with the Community:

When would the community become part of the newsgathering and reporting and follow-up process? In every feasible part. NNR’s website could include a Digg-like page where community members can vote up the stories they’d like to see covered by the newsroom. Community experts could be part of the daily editorial meeting. Reporters could collaborate with their expert sources in the community, not only getting quotes from them but also asking them to help in the reporting process.

Also related from his last section, Thinking Outside the Box.

One of the ways NNR can break from the past is to hire or talk to people who aren’t simply trained to be journalists or ad salespeople or marketers. Why not bring in a professional athlete to blog about sports, or a contractor to do a podcast about the housing market, or a registered nurse to run a discussion forum about health care issues? Giving local experts a way to go beyond sound bites and pull-quotes would have a strong impact on the community.

This goes beyond inviting the public to watch or even attend the editorial board meetings or even the daily budget meetings. But let them become a part of these. It’s not just transparency, it’s asking the community what do YOU want to read in tomorrow’s paper? What do YOU think should go on the front page? What database would YOU be most interested in searching? What perspective/information can YOU bring to this that we didn’t think of? And so forth.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Commentary, Ideas, Journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.