The world as community
For some time we've been told to focus on local news because it is where we can make the greatest difference in the lives of our readers, and it is where we can distinguish ourselves from all the other competitive media.
At the same time, we've been told that we need to target a younger audience, an audience that wants highly customized news and information and knows how to find it.
Meanwhile, that same audience tells us newspaper researchers that it wants more national and international news coverage in its newspaper.
To win, we must be intensely local, but at the same time have a prominent dose of national and word news.
We've been talking about how to satisfy these needs, which seem contradictory on their face. They aren't, of course.
That brings me to Doug McGill's concept of glocal journalism, which I mention in the post below. McGill talks about localizing global news and globalizing local news. It's a wonderful concept that we plan to experiment with more often with more vigor. (In addition to "glocal" journalism, Chewie, McGill also calls it "worldplace news."
McGill writes: The job of the worldplace reporter is to investigate and to write about his worldplace. The invisibile strands of mutual influence connecting his place to the world, are his subject. They are what he tries to make visible, to bring into public light and public life.
This is more than the world news commodity that anyone can get on television or any of the thousands of news sites on the Web. It is local on the grandest scale. Thinking about the Triad's impact on the world at large -- furniture, tobacco, textiles and Blogsboro are just a few -- suggests that there are many opportunities. We've scratched the surface and must do more.