Other than WordCamp, my favorite local geek event is BarCamp, because it brings together all sorts of people that are smarter than me to have great discussions on a variety of random subjects.
Last weekend there were a number of discussions related to journalism and “new” media, as well as the possibilities for knowledge transfer between traditional journalists and those with skills related to conversational media such as blogs and Twitter. As noted previously, Rick and I hosted a discussion on Saturday morning that focused on bloggers learning from journalists. The audio from that discussion is now available (approx 43mb, .mp3 format).
Following the first discussion, a related session led by three Columbian employees looked at the future of newspapers (timely, given that their paper had declared bankruptcy on Friday). I have a video of that session but need to figure out hosting options. John Hill (one of the Columbian folks) posted his thoughts on his blog.
We didn’t touch much on the conversation aspect of new media during the morning sessions, so some of us gathered for an afternoon talk about comments, Twitter, and the two-way nature of internet media as opposed to traditional (mostly) one-way media blasts. I posed a question, wondering if most newspaper and TV websites’ half-assed attempt at comment abilities were because the companies didn’t really care or want to hear the readers feedback and a couple of the journalists validated my hypothesis. That attitude will need to change. Tonight, @oregoniansteve linked to a piece suggesting that if newspapers aren’t going to do comments right, they shouldn’t do them at all. I wholeheartedly agree.
What’s next? Abraham Hyatt has announced Digital Journalism Camp Portland, to be held some time in August. Follow that link to find out more. The BarCamp discussions were a good start, but there is a LOT of conversation to happen in this area and I applaud Abraham for taking the next step to facilitate the learning.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m curious – was there any talk about how comment systems are often abused, as well? I mean, comments left on O-Live, KATU.com, etc., are generally awful – mean-spirited, ignorant, contain personal attacks…hard to have a conversation around that. And I imagine that seeing those kinds of comments does NOT make newspapers want to do anything more interactive.
I think the @oregoniansteve link sort of touched on potential solutions for that. i do have a bias, and do want to hear comments– but only the constructive ones (good or bad.. key is constructive). we sadly get so much drivel it sometimes makes me shake my head.
Thanks, Steph – you’re right, that link does outline helpful solutions.
We talked a bit about the issue of abusive commenters… in my opinion the best option is to allow for community-driven moderation by providing a reputation or karma system. Look at how the (IntenseDebate-powered) comments work on KATU’s site. Each comment can be given a thumbs-up or thumbs-down vote. Collectively these votes work to increase or decrease a commenters reputation.
The next step (not implemented on KATU, but existing in places like Slashdot) is to allow one to filter/hide comments that are below a certain threshold, ensuring that one generally won’t ever notice the trolls.