A few of my newspaper editor friends have tweaked me recently about the reporting I've done on community news Web sites. All had the same question: Given these sites' mostly tiny size (audience, news content, revenue), haven't I been hyping their impact a bit? It's a fair question. So is a related one that also comes up. Aren't many of these sites likely to fail because, despite valiant efforts by their creators, they'll be unable to generate sustainable advertising revenue? Since coming to USC Annenberg last fall, I've reported extensively on the rise of community Web sites, in posts at……
Tag: hyperlocal media
Washington Post: Readers get a seat at the news meeting
They may be moving too ineptly and too slowly, but newspapers are confronting the reality that their longtime role as gatekeeper of information has reached an end. My former boss, McClatchy’s Howard Weaver, used to put it this way: Some newspapers are still standing guard at the gate; problem is, because of the Internet, the fences are all down. One of the results is that the old days of one-way communication – the newspaper telling its readers what was important, take it or leave it – are fading away. Two-way communication is the order of the day. But only now……