Big news in the newspaper industry. (Wired News) Gannett announced last week a “crowdsourcing” initiative that will completely restructure the way newspapers gather and report on news. Reader participation is central to the strategy. I want to draw your attention to it because I believe it’s a smart move, and it shines a spotlight on the ideas I’ve been writing about here.
My dad always used to say, “the ears long to hear the words of the heart.” That’s how I felt when I read the following quote from the Crowdsourcing blog.
• I thought some of the most astute commentary came from Robb Montgomery at The Editors Weblog:
The key to me is recognizing that databases are the gold mines fueling the business models in this scenario and how well they are structured, mined and managed will be one of the keys to rolling this plan out. … I like how the values are focused on investing in community participation in a never-ending feedback loop. … Look, what Gannett is really trying to do here is build a new model around their key assets – customer data - deep, local customer data. News, community and marketing data.
That’s spot on. In my discussions with Gannett reporters and executives there was a marked focus on how best to utilize little league scores (this came up with multiple, unrelated sources), neighborhood watch information and potholes. In other words, “deep, local customer data.” Gannett calls this “hyper-local” news. Robb ends by noting that,
Managing structured data is the linchpin in executing a vision like this. I know that sounds like gibberish to some but, mark my words, getting real smart about managing all of your company’s databases will be the key to making this work
Spot on again, and this is why reporters and editors might think about dusting off their CVs, or more to the point, begin thinking about retraining. As Gregory Korte, the Cincinnati Enquirer reporter noted in my Wired News piece, “”The newspaper of the future is going to need more programmers than copy editors, and we’re going to have to figure out how to make that transition.” The only change I’d make to that quote is to strike “programmers” and sub in “database managers.” Gannett exec Michael Maness told me that newsrooms might discover that the folks in research library departments might find themselves well-suited to this new kind of newsroom.
Not to beat a dead horse, but I couldn’t agree more. As I’ve been trying to say, NFL teams have a HUGE opportunity to leverage fan data (gathered through fan participation). And our opportunities expand nationally as we consider the fact that we are not merely local. We do indeed have local opportunities - and the Colts have specific local strategies that I won’t reveal at this time - but we also have national opportunities. In fact, “local” in the NFL doesn’t mean geographic locality. It means “team centered”. When each team is running its own social network, and these individual networks are connected through an overall, league-side NFL network, we will rule the roost on-line as well as off-line.
So finally, the world is realizing “it is all about me”….
What will happen to social causes as we drive our content and interests further into our own self interests?
I don’t know. Perhaps the “Tower of Babel” is the best example?