Attended the Washington News Council’s panel discussion at the downtown library Monday evening, entitled “Today’s News: A ‘Webolution’ in Progress.”
The six panelists came from different corners of journalism/commentary (Cory Bergman of KING-TV, Robert Hernandez of the Seattle Times, Josh Feit of the Stranger, Alex Johnson of MSNBC, Chuck Taylor of Crosscut, and Joan “McJoan” McCarter from Daily Kos). The moderator, Merrill Brown, used to work for MSNBC and was now with a Vancouver-based “citizen journalism” site, NowPublic.
But all seven of them are nowadays competing for the hearts, minds, and eyeballs of you, the online reader.
As one who’s seen this medium (or, as one panelist called it, a “distribution vehicle” that can carry umpteen different types of media) grow, I must confess I didn’t learn much I didn’t already know, and didn’t hear many arguments I hadn’t already heard. Buzzwords included: “Aggregation” (i.e., links to stories on other sites), “user generated content” (i.e., unpaid bloggers and videographers), “the end of the news cycle” (i.e., posting new content all the time), the supposed last days of print newspapers (someone suggested that some papers might not last another decade; I say we’re more likely to see some suburban and JOA papers fade out, but local monopoly papers in major markets would decline far more slowly).
The one real disagreement came when an audience member asked how these different organizations would reach out to under-40 readers. The Times guy mentioned recruiting teen volunteer bloggers from the Vera Project to cover rock shows at Bumbershoot. Crosscut’s Taylor, being the ever-dutiful David Brewster acolyte, scoffed at the very idea of needing anything to do with them pesky kids. The Stranger’s Feit gave the loveably cocky reply that his outfit already owns the advertiser-beloved young demographic; it’s built into everything they do. MSNBC.com’s Johnson had the best answer: He’s got a genuine 26-year-old single woman running the afternoon editor’s desk.
You’ll be able to view the whole thing on the state-owned cable channel TVW sometime in the coming weeks.
