State Of Media Note

Here's something I found on the cyberjournalists Web site related to the recent State of the Media report.

http://www.cyberjournalist.net/state-of-the-news-media-online-2008/

Of note is this tidbit: "A news organization and a news Web site are no longer final destinations. Now they must move toward also being stops along the way, gateways to other places, and a means to drill deeper, all ideas that connect to service rather than product."

I think that says it about as clearly as one can expect for something that's a little muddy at the moment. News sites have become search engines with minds, where editors determine which doors to open for people who visit the site.

We're going to do the work for people. We'll point them to the political and sports blogs of the day, the Onion stories that might be pertinent.

Someone might want to know what YouTube videos exist that show Michael Jordan's greatest dunks. We can provide those by doing the searches ourselves and then using the imbed code to play them right on the newspaper's site. Another person might want to read and/or watch video from every sports columnist in the country. Hell, we could have five top sports columnists do two-minute monologues on a certain subject and throw them together in a 20-minute video format.

So I guess my question to you is this: Where is your newspaper's Web site? Are you a final destination or have you become a stop along the way?

 

Answers:

1. On the interwebs.

2. Yes.