Thoughts on newspapers, again

Doc Searls and Dave Winer riff on the future of newspapers and what can be done to change journalism in this new media world.

Winer starts it off, with a post entitled Trouble at the Chronicle. Among his thoughts on how to change journalism: Make journalism courses mandatory in college.

Why? Because journalism like everything else that used to be centralized is in the process of being distributed. In the future, every educated person will be a journalist, as today we are all travel agents and stock brokers.

The next suggestion:

Second, embrace the best bloggers. How? Easy -- every time someone is quoted in your publication, offer them a blog hosted on your domain.

Doc expands, in How to Save Newspapers , rerunning his 'Newspapers 2.0' guidelines. First among all of these, stop charging for archives; next, link to stories in the archives. These two simple steps have always seemed to me to be the logical best use for a newspaper's website. Then, link outside the paper, often, and link to local bloggers, not just the ones on your site. Says Doc:

Result: more readers, more authority, more respect, higher PageRank and higher-level results in searches....I'll betcha you'll make more money with advertising than you ever made selling stale editorial to readers who hate paying for it.
...The whole "bloggers vs. journalism" thing is a red herring, and a rotten one at that. There's a symbiosis that needs to happen, and it's barely beginning.

This posting also contains my favorite quote on journalism of anything else I've seen lately: Stop calling everything "content".

(Bonus link: Is linking the new content?)