Here on Ricochet, I look for examples, commentary and sparks of ideas that can be applied to online journalism. The thing is, we’ve been doing it in one form or another for about 10 years and still, online news sites are so far behind in taking advantage of the Web medium.
Most sites are trying is to engage readers through participation — inviting users to comment, rank, post their own photos and video, etc.
Doing so produces a double-edged sword. On the one hand, users like it because they like being able to vote and point to their stuff on a site that has brand recognition — and even to then find themselves mentioned by name in the traditional platform.
But I’ve heard editors, CTOs, BizDev people and advertisers say that being able to count and quantify the audience and its behavior allows them to refuse to invest in or even kill projects when something doesn’t get sufficient traction.
Chip Griffin at Media Bullseye suggests that those who judge a blog’s success according to the so-called rules of social media should think again.
With so many newspapers now offering a plethora of blogs, news directors and editors should reconsider the terms of success as well.
(via Chris Brogan)