Blog 8 (Week 9)

After reading about another on-line website success story, STOMP, it’s really starting to sink in that ‘the times they are a-changin,’ as Bob Dylan once famously sang.

As much as I hate to admit, the younger generation are turning their backs on traditional newspapers and instead, consuming news mostly through the on-line medium.

It doesn’t seem to matter whether these news websites are user-generated content or written by professional journalists.

My attention is turned onto the daily paper I work for, The Standard.  I ponder if upper management is visionary, or it’s head is burrowed in the sand?

  I’ve noticed over the last couple of months, The Standard has introduced a series of blogs written by senior journalists, and incorporated some of its weekly publications into the on-line form.

This is encouraging, considering we have a very conservative readership in Warrnambool who are committed to their local rag.

It shows that management are starting to embrace that the readership habits are changing, and that an on-line presence needs to be established. 

If STOMP is anything to go by, with 5 to 6 million page hits a month, and dare I say, but I think my bosses need to take a good hard look at blending citizens into the journalistic fold. 

What I mean by that is that user-generated content could slot in nicely, helping produce a more interesting and broader mix of news stories. 

Our professional journalistic eyes can’t be in a million places at once, but citizen’s peepers sure can!

Considering I’m vegetarian, this was the first STOMP story that captured my attention.   Check it out here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 12:51 am and is filed under ALJ 301 Blog posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.