New Desk in the Newsroom: The Citizen Editor's

Blogs and journalism. Citizen editor as a job of the future. Steve Outing is catching on, but journalists in general and the traditional media are about 5-7 years behind the curve. Anyone working with interactive media, from an educators to website developers has been finding out that community is one of the most important C's in communication. Virtual communities share some aspects of communities but are not always in a one-to-one correspondance. Virtual communities are opt in, reputational, generally shun hierarchical organization. They work from the wisdom of the crowd the popular book talks about. One of the biggest blindspots I have in coming from an interactive media background to journalism and traditional media is a failure by the people working in MSM to use the technologies themselves. If you aren't in a virtual community, you don't know what one is like. If you don't use "furl" or "flickr" it is like you are unconscious toward a whole important aspect of many people's lives. My advice to journos--get yourself a blog, even if you create a k-blog and don't have lots of readers. Use the Internet features that will save you time, or at least connect you into the e-world. When you do, send me your dodgeball moniker. I am waiting for some people of a certain age to come play with me via dodgeball. New Desk in the Newsroom: The Citizen Editor's