Lawrence, KS: The future of local media.
The New York Times has a fascinating look at the Lawrence (Kansas) Journal-World, a newspaper that truly, truly gets the Internet.
They have a daily and a weekly. They host blogs written by any community members who care to sign up (and feature them on the front page of their website), have a database of local music, host MP3s of local bands, webcast local music, maintain a comprehensive community calendar, encourage the posting of comments at the end of every story, have full RSS feeds of all of their offerings, podcast daily news/music/talk, list restaurant information (with their reviews and reviews from the general public), host and promote local films, make available audio interviews with their story subjects, and surely a lot more — every time I click on a link, I find something else.
Of course, they include all of the things that other newspapers include — classifieds, obituaries, etc., etc. But they’ve gone way beyond the self-imposed constraints of what it means to be a newspaper — they’re a film distribution company, a radio station, a blog host, a community organizing tool, the hub of their whole town, all wrapped up into one.
And they’re not some huge paper. It’s a family-owned paper, around since 1891. They’ve got a circulation of 20,000 but, of course, that’s only counting dead trees. With a solid commitment to making media a two-way street, a willingness to experiment, and an understanding that my generation gets our news online, The Lawrence Journal-World may well be around until 2091. The same can’t be said of many other newspapers.
I’d love to have the gig of development and running those websites. Maybe someday a C’ville media outlet will get it. Lord knows I’ve been beating them over the head with this stuff long enough.
6 Comments