Bluffton Today – A new kind of newspaper

BlufftonToday.com – promoted as “A new kind of newspaper” is a grand experiment in citizen journalism, a complete inversion of the typical "online newspaper" model with an Internet-powered interactive community center. It’s a place where community members take the lead in telling their own story.

    •     Everyone gets a blog. Not just staffers
    •     Everyone gets a photo gallery.
    •     Everyone can contribute events to a shared public community calendar.
    •     Everyone can contribute recipes to a community cookbook.
    •     RSS feeds are everywhere -- all the blogs collectively, all the blogs individually, classified ad search results and so forth.
    •  Those with Windows XP, receive BT Reader, a branded, customized RSS application that fully supports podcasting. It comes preloaded with RSS feeds from BlufftonToday.com and SavannahNow.com

In return, members are required to be a good citizen and exhibit community leadership qualities.

The experiment comes at a time when Associated Press President and CEO Tom Curley, recognizes that "AP is on the cusp of a historic shift from the telegraph model that has characterized AP's business for the last century and a half to a new database model. He notes "News enthusiasts have already begun to shift away from the newspaper, the scheduled broadcast and even the bookmarked Web site, instead consuming their information on the desktop, on the cellphone, or time-delayed on television."

Another AP story  discusses how many local newspaper are adapting to the changes brought by the internet – specifically noting the changes at the News & Record, a 93,000-daily circulation in Greensboro. There's a page for reader-submitted articles, another for letters to the editor and an online tips' form. The Web site hosts online forums on 23 topics, including safety at a local high school, FedEx Corp.'s move to the area and cameras at local stoplights. Traffic cams monitor local road conditions.

It's all further evidence that traditional media publishers are being forced to embrace the growth of community and grass roots generated content.

Furl bookmarks: Community Journalism
deli.icio.us bookmarks: Community Journalism
Technorati Tag: Community Content