Jay Rosen, of "Public Journalism" fame, in a long post about the active blog community in Greensboro, North Carolina where the local newspaper, the Greensboro News-Record, is looking to make its website into an online community, has a great list of suggestions for any newspaper's website:
* Change policy from the industry standard, "never link out in news stories" to the new standard, "always link out."* Change this page: There needs to be a free archive from now on. Articles get one url and that remains the url forever, with a powerful directory to find stuff. "Now your fine work will be in Google," you tell the staff. "The knowledge platform of our time."* Create one or two blogs, the main purpose of which is not to project the author's knowledge (or opinion) "out there," but to draw knowledge from its dispersed location around town and around the Web. These would be weblogs founded in the faith the Dan Gillmor is right when he says: "My readers know more than I do." They are primarily learning machines run by a journalist from the newspaper. A simple example would be a drug pricing blog.* Create a home (bio) page and stable url for every journalist on staff, with a goal for having 100 percent of your bylines linked to live bio pages, updated by the staffers themselves. Then begin experimenting with transparency by asking staffers to explain "who they are, where they've been and where they're coming from," but limiting it to those willing to disclose. In a story like this, Jennifer Fernandez's name would be clickable, (it isn't now) and we could find out something about her. Watch as some of the bio pages evolve into blogs.* You want to be the public square, News-Record? Then keep a running list on the front of your site with the twelve most important, vital, involving and humanly real stories in the Greensboro area, and if some of them are problems that remain on the list for years, so be it. The Big 12 in GSO. Move one off when it's decided or solved or it fades. Change it weekly. Change it monthly. Make it six instead of twelve. It doesn't matter how you do it, what you call it. All that matters is that your list be "live," capable of changing on a dime or not changing for years-- and of course, it has to be accurate. How's it going to be accurate? Only if your site is two-way. Only if you're in touch. Only if you're good.
I found it via oxblog who also pointed me to this fine post in The Moderate Voice.
