Eye on Winer

Dave Winer’s solution for the dying newspaper industry is to open up the newsroom to unpaid experts with time on their hands:

Here’s how you take the first step toward the open newsroom. Pick a story that you’re covering on an ongoing basis, something important enough that you’ve assigned one or more reporters to it full-time. Have them continue to do what they’re doing, we’re going to add to that coverage, in an experiment to learn how the newspaper of the future might work. Now pick two or three experts on the same subject, and invite them into the newsroom. They will not be paid. No benefits. They agree to the same rules governing the integrity of your reporters. For a period of four weeks, they report to the newsroom, the physical one, not a virtual one, every day, and are part of your news team. … Now, to be clear — I’m not talking about recruiting idiots or people whose opinions are (in your opinion) worthless. I’m talking about respected experts, the kinds of people your reporters call to get a perspective on the news the people they quote. Instead of having them talk to the readers through the reporter, I want them to go directly. Their writing should be as readable as the reporters’ so I would choose experts who express themselves well.

So in other words, they need to let people like him come in and write for them for free. And offer snacks and excellent networking.

Newspapers are saved! Saved! Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen, Jim Romenesko and the rest of the journalists, unclench your buttholes! Long live the newspaper!

In all the years he has been blogging, has Dave Winer ever identified a problem for which Dave Winer was not the solution?

This entry was posted on Monday, February 23rd, 2009 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Dave, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.