Comments on: Can Online Newspaper Sites Survive?

By: Ara

Ara — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:25:02 +0000

@Dave Barnes … I have popup blockers to prevent such nonsense … Great article Phil!

By: Phil

Phil — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:11:44 +0000

Hi Dave,
I prefer to let my readers make their own decisions. I’m not a fan of forcing people to open a new window/tab, most users know to right click if they want to do that.

By: Dave Barnes

Dave Barnes — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:27:49 +0000

you need to learn about and use target=_blank

By: Rob McAlister

Rob McAlister — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:19:09 +0000

Depends on what you consider truth. Most good journalism work requires research and investigative analysis. Accomplishing this is not mutually exclusive to making friends. Actually, making friends can improve access to some information leading to more in-depth reporting and expert opinions instead of relying on conjecture.

Newspapers must learn to consider their web audience as participants, observers, and contributors instead of expecting the audiend to be ignorant, unintelligent, uninformed resource drains that are only useful as exposure numbers to advertisers.

By: Kathy Vetter

Kathy Vetter — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:25:33 +0000

I agree completely with your contention here. But I fear that it’s a little optimistic; unlike social networking sites and your group of friends, we have to do journalism, which often pisses people off, a fact that can interfere with building friends.

However, if we approach it as if we are like the friend that tells you truths you sometimes don’t want to hear, and that we will tell you the truth as best we can, without fear or favor, we probably have a chance to establish a relationship of that sort.

It’s funny, because our print newspaper (the Fort Worth Star-Telegram) is built on trust and feedback and a relationship with the community. Our readers believe that the newspaper belongs to them. So we should already have a leg up on this process. But we still struggle to establish that same relationship with our Web users. I think we have the right ideas; it’s just that we’re slow to implement them, probably because the majority of people working at newspapers these days are desperately trying to put out the fire in front of them.

It’s entirely possible that the kind of journalism we’re trained to do won’t jibe with building community on the Web site. I’m not sure. But IF it comes down to making a friend or telling the truth, I’ll take the truth-telling every time.

Is it possible to do both?