By design, journalism is often here today, gone tomorrow. It raises awareness, but leaves the scene for others to deepen the information connection.
Should it be a living, breathing, updated and refined form of content --- like a Wikipedia entry that aims to improve with time? Is there a new physics to journalism in the offing.
At the recent Associated Press Managing Editors' meeting, Google advisor Richard Gingras raised that as an option for journalism in the time ahead.
He believes journalism needs to find a new model and value proposition. Apart from a Wiki, he thinks news organizations can benefit from telling more people about who gathers information and how.
Anonymity is hardly the best way to commit journalism. Newspapers long ago found that readers liked a question-and-answer format on issues, and FAQs online have been with us from day one (particularly, it seems, for troubleshooting chapters in hardware and software manuals, instead of a live troubleshooter at the end of a phone line --- but I digress). |