E-Media Tidbits

Neurmadic Aesthetic, via Flickr (CC license) Should newspapers care if people in its community are "bowling alone?"

He continues: "Publishers of special-interest magazines have the best chance of turning their readership into self-sustaining online communities. Newspapers, however, don't. Their strength is creating content and their best chance of building community involves giving people a chance to discuss, comment upon and contribute to their content. USA Today does about the best of any major newspaper at encouraging this kind of reader participation. But USA Today isn't trying to become a community. Its management knows better than that."

Newspaper consultant and former Tidbits contributor Steve Yelvington takes the opposite view in Bzzzzt! Wrong! Community should be job #1: "Failure to build community is one of the many reasons so many newspapers are in so much trouble right now. Yeah, the Internet this and the economy that and television blah blah blah, but don't overlook 'failure to lead.' Far too many newspapers have either intentionally abandoned or simply lost interest and wandered away from the mission."

Yelvington continues: "Newspapers can and do feed community, but it works both ways. The newspaper very much draws its sustenance from that same process. In communities that score well on other measures of social capital, newspaper readership tends to be high. Community doesn't scale. I've previously written about the Dunbar Number. Each of us has hard-wired limits, so don't go looking for nationwide 'USA Today' community around general news. That's clearly the wrong place to look. Because of the scale issue, community flourishes in the niches, and geography happens to be one. But as I've said before, this whole notion of 'hyperlocal' seems to be sailing over most journalists' heads. Or beneath their noses."

It's an intriguing discussion. What are your thoughts? Please comment below.