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Duncan O'Leary

photo of Duncan O'Leary

Duncan works on projects looking at public services, skills and work.

Posted by Duncan O'Leary at 2:17pm on Tuesday, 9th November 2004

An experiment on the Guardian newsblog starts today which might be worth keeping an eye on. Every day someone from the newsdesk will post on the newsblog, explaining which of the main stories the paper will be covering and why, and will be asking for comments and suggestions. It seems like an interesting attempt to reconcile the attractions of real-time blogging, a live website, and a daily newspaper – and is a shift (albeit a pretty small one) towards involving its readers earlier and more substantively in shaping the content of the newspaper.

Comments

1
I stumbled across this too Duncan. Will it make the agenda setting role of the media more transparent (uuuuhhhh ... check out good old Chomsky - http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z9710-mainstream-media.html) or is it merely window dressing? To what extent will this interactivity allow "truth syrum" properties of the internet to manifest in the mainstream instead off in teh underground(i.e. someone somewhere on the internet was there to actually see the news worthy thing happen and post a report)
Posted by Chris Kubiak  at 11:36am on Friday, 12th November 2004
2
Welcome to the greenhouse Chris! Personally I’m not sure whether it will lead to a more authentic or transparent version of the truth, but do think that it has the potential to shape the content of the paper in a slightly more subtle way that has previously been possible. At the moment editors rely on the market (circulation figures/subscriptions) and the letters section to get a sense of what their readers think about the paper, but the blog may well provide a less blunt - far more pro-active - form of engagement with their readership. And, if they’re lucky it might not just help them switch their existing running order around, but might also deliver new content. ps - if you are interested in this, you might enjoy the Demos wiki, where there are a couple of projects on the go.
Posted by Duncan O'Leary  at 4:44pm on Friday, 12th November 2004
3
Nice points Duncan. But you know, I find myself thinking of the Liverpudlian bouycot of the Sun newspaper following the bollocks reporting of the Hillsborough disaster (see http://www.fact-index.com/h/hi/hillsborough_disaster.html). To what extent does providing readers with the apparent facility to influence a newspaper is a way to build allegience and loyalty? By giving the semblance of influence and input readers may be more likely to stick with a paper and feed into its blog than change papers in response to shabby reporting. (But then, no amount of blogging will withstand the decade-long bouycots following a Hillsborough).
Posted by Chris Kubiak  at 10:08am on Monday, 15th November 2004

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