links for 2009-03-29

One thing social media allows that past media platforms don’t is the ability to put more of “yourself” into the medium. TV doesn’t allow that. How many historical nuggets did we lose to people watching “Must See TV” instead of living their lives?

Internet news doesn’t come in boxes. It’s always on. It’s available in myriad combinations. It’s interactive. It’s a different product for every reader.

“Let’s not see that money wasted on newsprint.
Money should be spent on giving regional news outlets a proper online presence. It should be spent on equipment for local audio/video. It should be spent on allowing every regional newsroom to be right in the heart of the town it covers — not in some soulless newspaper factory in a big city. It should be spent on giving regionals better individual controls over their web output. It should be spent on making the coder and the graphics person as important to the news operation as the reporters, subs and editors. It should be spent on community managers, whose sole job is to reach out to readers in a way that goes far beyond a drab letters page.A bail out is needed. But this is no bail out for newspapers — it’s a bail out for journalism.”