I understand why people are jumping all over the discussion of the outsourcing of news to offshore operations. It sounds crazy and just might be. Maureen Dowd writes about it today in the New York Times.
But why is everyone focused on trying to make the old model of newspapers and reporting survive as opposed to innovating and embracing new forms of news, like participatory journalism or hyperlocal bloggers?
The unfortunate events in Mumbai showed that witnesses can be a great source of news. And, you don’t have to look any further than our weekly Blogiology 101 posts to see that there is incredible coverage happening at the hyperlocal level.
These are new forms of news gathering and they cost a heck of a lot less than even offshore operations. News organizations should embrace their community of readers to find new ways to help cover their news. Use your brand, traffic and salesforce to drive traffic and revenue to new groups of people who are already writing about their own communities. Hey, they already live there and actually really care about it too!
The days of expensive and daunting content management systems are long gone, as is the monopoly of the big daily newspaper in any market. Everyone can be a publisher in 2 minutes or 140 characters. We’re working with a few visionary publishers who want to embrace this revolution and be a leader in the next types of news organizations.
But, apparently it’s more fun to talk about the (maybe) crazy ideas than the ones that might actually work.
