Thursday, May 26, 2005

Newsroom blog

Throughout my career, I've lived in two worlds: IT and media. When I first decided to forsake the world of journalism for that of technology, I thought the two were mutually exclusive. I saw myself as a bit out of my element no matter where I worked. In media, I was known as the geek. In IT, I was always "the writer" who didn't come from a pure tech background.

Over time, I've come to realize that the two worlds - and skillsets - are more closely interlinked than I ever thought. And as new forms of media - like blogging, for one - evolve in directions that cannot be fully predicted, we begin to see traditional media evolving as well to ensure they remain viable.

An excellent example of this comes from Spokane, Washington's Spokesman-Review newspaper. The editors there have just launched a blog called Daily Briefing, in which they share the results of the newsroom's daily editorial staff meetings.

Compelling stuff. Will this change the evolution of the newspaper? If so, how? If not, why not?

3 comments:

Trillian said...

Wow - this is a cool blog. Thanks for sharing, Carmi.

The Narcissist said...

It's a very interesting concept, and reading the blog I feel like I am peeking in on something I shouldn't or getting the backstage view, the insider's story. It is interesting for those curious about the workings of a newspaper, but I don't think it will change how the newspaper itself evolves. The newspaper is having to evolve because of the internet, soon, I believe, the paper version will be obsolete, but I don't see this type of blog having a massive impact on that evolution.

Ken said...

Thanks for the nice comments. We just added another blog to our collection of "newsroom transparency" blogs. It's called "News is a Conversation" and involves five community members who critique our paper daily. See it here: http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/conversation/

We've also had the "Ask the Editors" blog for over a year:
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/editors/

Cheers,
Ken Sands