In response to the previous post, Brian Duggan, Donica Mensing and I began an interesting disucssion via email. The question: Is advertising capable of being journalism ever?”
Brian Duggan said:
Ads provide objective information, yes, but to what degree? Does that baked potato in your Locals BBQ ad always look picturesque for every customer?
Ask yourself this: how credible [...]
A lot of people in the hardcore journalism world don’t think advertising is journalism (it’s threatening) and many people don’t believe advertising should be in journalism schools. But I think advertising is journalism and belongs in J-schools.
Advertising can serve the same purposes and affect the same goals as journalism when done a certain way for [...]
In imagination land, we’ll partner with Comma Coffee, a locally owned coffee shop in Carson City. We’ll go with the original idea, where Swift partners to put Nevada Appeal newspapers and a Nevada Appeal reporter in the coffee shop almost all day. We have Online Community Managers (OCMs), so let’s say it’s one of those people.
That reporter/OCM gathers news, talks to people, answers questions (even just common questions about town goings-ons), reports, moderates, etc. He/She is the community hub – the all-knowing journalist. But he/she is only the all-knowing journalist because of time spent with the community members. So really, the OCM is a facilitator between customers who buy coffee for breakfast and customers who buy at lunch.
Also, we buy one of those nice big flat screen TVs (about $1000 to $1600) and start selling advertisements on a rotating screen. As an incentive, it also includes specials in that coffee shop with nice food photography compliments of the ad staff. Nothing is better than a photo of a greasy croissant sandwich or steaming coffee when it comes to making point of purchase sales.
In addition to ads, let’s stick news headlines on that screen. Not unlike Las Vegas Sun’s billboards.
On top of that, if there’s breaking news using Twitter or Cover it Live (or other live tools) let’s put the Nevada Appeal’s Twitterfall on it too. People in the coffee shop could participate from their mobile phones or laptops and see it live.
[Click the headline to read more ...]
The “future of journalism” discussion usually gets framed in the context of editorial content.
We ask questions like: “how can we better connect with readers?” “how can we use technology to build communities?” “how do we ingrain ourselves into the conversation of existing communities?” or “how do we become a vital part of readers’ lives?”
Some of these [...]
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but what you can do for SND