The future of journalism is probably a pretty deep subject for a non-journalist like me to tackle but humor me for a few moments if you will.
Here is my premise. Could a feature article be written from a flow of “Tweets” submitted by a collection of writers? Could you envision a series of entries from multiple writers all attending the same political event feeding into one online page creating a time line of ”Tweets” that provide insight and detail of that event? Could this collection of writers work for different companies yet share their collaboration on their own individual web sites?
Forget walled gardens — this is the spirit of journalism’s future.
I must give credit where credit is due, I didn’t dream up this concept myself. I am writing about a concept called “link journalism“ or the “Washington Link Project” detailed in a Publishing 2.0 article.
In some ways this networked linking process is an extension of how newsrooms collaborate with traditional wire services, but I think this concept is more than that. Papers using a traditional wire service aren’t really collaborating. They’re primarily trying to a) extend the reach of their stories, and b) get access to material they can’t afford to produce on their own.
Innovation that’s easy, popular, and cheap
The Washington link projects should serve as models for the entire news industry. They show that collaborative linking draws readers, is easy, and costs nothing more than time (and not even much of that).
