Agenda 2005; my Sunday newspaper column
Late last summer, we asked Mark Sutter, our Greensboro city editor, to spend several weeks learning everything he could about the future of newspapers.
Mark is a smart guy, and we wanted him to think deeply about how our newspaper should grow with the changing readership of the Triad.
His vision of the News & Record of the future was exciting. One paragraph in particular grabbed my attention: "The News & Record is an intensely local, community-oriented newspaper and newspaper company. It functions as a virtual town square, operating both in print and in cyberspace. We are a place where our neighbors come to hear the latest local news and share their own news -- big and small. It is where they come to shop and to play; to learn and to laugh. It is where they find out what is happening in the community, and how they can go or get involved."
It's an enticing concept, this idea that the newspaper -- through the product that is delivered every morning and the product that streams into your homes and offices via the Internet -- can become a town square, a trusted place where people gather to hear the news, spread their own and talk about both.
It is more than wishful thinking. We are beginning to build it now. Today and next Sunday, I'm going sketch out what this means.
Our pledge as a newspaper is to provide you with news and information that will help you make smart decisions and to engage with you to make the community a better place.
The idea of a newspaper as a town square is gaining some steam in media circles. One writer has proposed that journalism can no longer be a lecture to readers; it is a conversation with readers, complete with readers telling news to the newspaper -- and therefore to other readers -- and discussing, debating and supplementing the information with each other.
Here are some examples of what this means:
* We want to open the doors that separate us from you. To begin with, every news department employee will individually interview several people like you -- maybe even you -- about the newspaper this month. We want to find out what you think about us and how we can improve. We will build on what you tell us.
* We want to write about your lives, your family and your friends. We've been seasoning the hard news menu with stories about local people doing important things. You've seen this in recent stories about the letters home from soldiers at war, and James Lewis and his efforts to build community in High Point through fixing children's bikes. We'll expand that.
* We need more of your voices in the paper and online. The Triad is a melting pot of races, beliefs and languages. That robust mix demands understanding and knowledge. What's a better marketplace for the free exchange of ideas than a newspaper? We'll hold more community forums to address significant issues this year. We'll also begin featuring community correspondents, college correspondents and teen pages. We started a Readers Advisory Network to give us comments about the news and story ideas. Join by going here.
* We'll push more local news to the front page. We emphasized this in 2004, and we'll do even more this year.
* We are philosophically committed to hiring more minorities to help expand our coverage of the entire community. (I wrote about this last month so I won't elaborate on it here.)
* We will expand our Web presence. Our online audiences at www.news-record.com and www.gotriad.com are growing. The Web sites are scheduled for a much-needed revamp next month. Part of that will include a variety of ways to talk with us, including more Web logs. We have five Web logs, where you can get more information about the news of the day and where you can talk electronically to our writers or others interested in the same topics. Look for additional Web logs on different topics in the next few weeks.
* We want you to become our collaborators. Dan Gillmor, a newspaper journalist and author of "We the Media," wrote, "My readers know more than I do." You are many, we are few. When you see news, we want to know about it. When you have a story to tell, we want to read it. When we err, we want to hear about it. (I'll write more about this idea in a future column.)
This is ambitious, and some of it is still gestating. That makes it a little frightening to lay out to you. But it's the right destination for us, no matter how difficult the path. Like you, we live here. We are your neighbors, and we are bound together by our sense of belonging to and caring for this community.
How will we know when we've gotten there? When you refer to us not as "the newspaper" but as "our newspaper."
Comments (12)
To report abuse of the comment feature on this site, please use the feedback form at the bottom of any page.
I see bright skies in our future. Your experiment, no matter how well it goes, will be seen as an attempt to build community for all who have been looking for a voice admidst the clatter that has become our status-quo industrial media.
And your detractors... they've got their own agendia and will go out of their way to find fault in you.
Tell your staff there are many among us who welcome your new approach to media.
Posted on January 2, 2005 10:32 AM
It's going to work. It's also going to be amazing to watch it happen. Thank you for leading the way.
Posted on January 2, 2005 12:06 PM
I am so happy that ya'll are embracing your readers and the future of journalism. Good luck!
If you want to see a local NC online community that works you should check out orangepolitics.org. Granted it's purpose is different from the N&R but Ruby Sinreich, it's creator and editor, KNOWS what it takes to make online communities work. Ask for her help.
This wasn't an advertisement. Just a sincere opinion from one bloger to another. :)
Posted on January 2, 2005 4:13 PM
Mr. Robinson,
I celebrate your courage in turning the News-Record into Greensboro's town square.
In 1998, I spoke to the top managers of the Asheville Citizen-Times about the paper's role as a community leader. At that time I said, "Newspapers are windows on a community? There is no other place in a community where the whole community can talk to itself. ... Newspapers are the only place where all the voices of the community can be heard."
At that time, the technology didn't exist in a cost-effective form to accomplish these complementary ideas. Letters to the editors and guest columns could only meet part of the need for community interaction in the pages of the local newspaper. With the advent of weblogs, that is no longer the case.
Weblogs provide a way for the whole community to have an immediate voice in the issues that face them. However, instead of it being just loud declarations of opinion, it can be a community-wide conversation that has the potential for building a vision of the future and a better level of communication for the collaborative efforts required to meet the opportunities and challenges ahead.
I wish you, the staff of the News-Record, and the citizens of Greensboro well in this grand 21st century experiment in citizenship.
Posted on January 2, 2005 6:50 PM
This is a bold vision; but it also reflects considerable humility. Since you traffic in information and ideas, involving others to a greater extent inevitably alters the power relationship between the community and the News and Record; and may generate insights and perspectives, especially on local matters, that otherwise may go unexpressed. As a business strategy, engaging the customer seems to make sense.
Ensuring the survivability of newspapers is an important and worthy endeavor; and this is the most creative approach I have seen toward that end.
Posted on January 2, 2005 11:06 PM
John,
Your column was uplifting and inspiring. I think it is certainly sincere and I have no quarrel with your goals. The newspaper is a great American tradition wort saving. I would wager however that a considerable number of intelligent subscibers are skeptical that the liberal bias they perceive will remain even if you include a sausage biscuit with the paper each morning. If you are serious about LISTENING here is an idea : please dump Doonesbury and replace it with Mallard Fillmore.
Oh yeah today's headline above the fold " Bush Weakened " sounds like a medical rteport from Vatican City about an ailing Pope. Who writes these things anyway. Still listening ?
Now for a compliment. The editorials on the yellow dog idiots at the State Board of Elections ( Cobb v. Troxler )were on the mark. In fact a long time Democrat told me the other day that things like this were going to turn him into a Republican yet.
Finally as a gesture of your fidelity to " our newspaper " give a copy of "The Last Editor" by Jim Bellows to all your reporters and editors.
Who says a newspaper has to be dull.
Posted on January 3, 2005 7:06 AM
The value of the well is not known until it goes dry. A number of stories published in the Czech Republic and Australia last month indicated that the flow of newspaper readers is drying up ...
There are one-story intellects, two-story intellects, and three-story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors with no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare reason and generalize, using labors of the fact collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine, and predict. Their best illuminations come from above through the skylight.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
You seem to be building a magnificent fourth story so may many editors around the worl get the cloning of your initiative right ...
Posted on January 3, 2005 10:05 PM
Yes, Fred, we blew that headline. Sorry about that. As you know, I have nothing to do with the editorials or editorial cartoons though, so I can't take any credit for your compliment or for adding Mallard.
Thanks for all the support out there. As we move along this journey, please keep the suggestions coming.
Posted on January 3, 2005 10:16 PM
I am glad to see this expansion of BLOGS. I have run for Governor in 2000. I was very disappointed by the quality of coverage I received as well as that of my opposition. It would have been nice to have had several on-line debates.
Posted on January 4, 2005 11:16 AM
Ok John the usual cop out about the ed page cartoon de jur ( Doonesbury ) . So building a market place of ideas, a community newspaper would exclude the opinion section. That's an odd concept , but if you say so, ok. Anyway, I suppose that putting a conservative comic strip in the News & Record would be akin to dropping a grain of salt in the the pepper shaker. Perhaps my suggestion about using Bruce Tinsley's " Mallard Fillmore " will be noticed by Robin Saul in the event he reads this site .
Posted on January 5, 2005 5:32 PM
Keep up the good work as I have been reading the News-Record since I.could read. Most of the service has benefited the great area of the piedmont in a constructive manner. I may be a little biased for I am an older retiree from the mechanical department of the corporation.there would be a great void in the community without the Daily News. Many good things can be accomplished with the aid of a little bit of shoving. Thomas B. Yow Sr.
Posted on January 9, 2006 5:11 AM
Every morning I read the News-Record from the front to the back. I like to see the newer colors mixed to show the various themes from weddings to sports. You and the pressmen or women can really make a page so colorful that I just have to look long and hard. I still check the paper like I did for a number of years as the first edition was sometimes too rushed and full of errors. These pages had to be corrected and sent back to the presses. Thomas B. Yow Sr.
Posted on March 1, 2007 4:34 AM