I’m going to go ahead and wrap up my initial thoughts on this community media project with a few of the ways I think it could be used elsewhere.
Up until now, I’ve focused on some specific small-town media sources and lobbed a lot of large stones toward their small staffs, budgets and circulations. I’m not writing to take those comments back – I have no patience for bad journalism, regardless of the situation. It’s the nature of journalism – it’s in the business of having audiences. And so any time the media puts on a bad show by putting out bad or incomplete information, or missing important stories… or do this – every time we let our audience down, it hurts the cause. It muddles the lofty ideals of journalism.
And it’s not just small geographic-based communities I’m thinking of. Rather, there’s plenty of practical applications for this project, which is fundamentally about making communication more meaningful and more accessible to communities.
How about a non-profit?
How about a university?
How about a political campaign? (Not just the presidential ones…)
How about any organization with an existing community, plenty of agents of conversation and a story to share?
Journalism isn’t gone, it never will be. Journalists are wired to be the best storytellers and investigators and analyzers. That takes training and talent.
But the days of waiting for someone else to tell your story – those are gone. There’s no sense in waiting anymore.
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Your thoughts?
