links for 2009-09-23

# f we were a local newspaper, the editorial and op-ed pages would publish the best of, and be a guide to, the conversation the community was having with itself online and in other public forums, whether hosted by the news organization or someone else. Our website would link to a variety of commentary from the usual suspects, but syndicated columns would almost never appear in the print edition.
# Editorials would appear in blog format, as would letters to the editor.

One defining characteristic of the project is its bottom-up character — allowing an army of volunteer reporters to individually determine what is and is not news. Another is its funding. The Rapidian procured multi-year grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Grand Rapids Community Foundation, among others. It won't operate through commercial sponsorship.

The Rapidian is not intended to compete with established local media. Much content produced on the site will be available to news outlets for use in their own publications and broadcasts. The Rapidian will be hyper-local, focusing entirely on news within the Grand Rapids city limits. Eventually, The Rapidian hopes to establish bureaus in each quadrant of the city.

Any tweet that presumes that the rest of the internet noticed or cared about your "off grid" sabbatical sounds conceited. We weren't just chatting amongst ourselves waiting for you to come back. The same rule applies to any tweets – such as "so it's finally here" – that presume universal internet anticipation of your new project.

Their postcode based pilot in Teeside was hailed as a success with "200 bloggers writing for free", although Neil later acknowledged that "we find it harder to work with community groups and small local organisations."

Why? Because, he said, "we are hard to work with".

But the all-important question is: how much would they be prepared to pay? Answer: as close to nothing as they can get away with…

When asked the maximum amount they would be prepared to pay, respondents who read a free news site at least once a month gave us the lowest possible amount in each category – annual subscriptions under £10, a day pass costing under £0.25 and per-article fees of between 1p and 2p.

Journalism.co.uk wonders how Telegraph.co.uk will monitor and police misuse of the videos – if abuse was extensive. Or how they decide who is commercial and who is not? If, as the Syndication people tell us, ‘on this occasion Telegraph.co.uk are not offering this video for web syndication’ why bother supplying it at all? Isn’t that just asking for trouble?