Author: Michael Higdon | 03.11.2009

I finally have a chance to sit down and write about the Future of Journalism Think Tank at the Reynolds School of Journalism’s J Week. To make it easier to digest and easier to write, I’m breaking it up into six parts, that way if you don’t care about certain sections you can skip them. If you want the whole story, you can read it all.

To make it all easier, here’s a table of contents for the six parts:

1. The Process
2. Discoveries and highlights
   
3. Group 1 prototype
   
4. Group 2 prototype
5. Group 3 prototype
6. Critique & launching point

GROUP 1 PROTOTYPES

Group 1 consisted of David Calvert, Jennifer Carroll, Dwayne Spradlin, Mary Peskin, Dennis Dimick and Alex Grishaver (see Part 2 for full list of people and links to their information).

Remember, these prototypes are rough concepts of what we wish news could do in a more or less perfect world.

The concept

They wanted to create a news experience around a physical public space, likened to town halls of Benjamin Franklin’s day. So they chose to partner with places like Starbucks, Wal-Mart and other congregation areas within communities.

These various stores would represent sections of the city based on zoning and size. Group 1 wanted to create an economy around these spaces with customized regional news. People would buy their specialized newspapers (or visit specialized news sites) in these stores and develop geographic conversations.

They used The New York Times as their example for this and said there would be a special “Joe Crowley Student Union” (location of the think tank) edition in each one at the Starbucks on the first floor.

In doing this, you create a cohesive community that centers around news, interest-based conversations and tasty merchandise.

As a business model, you’re giving incentive to companies to participate and encourage participation with the news and other media companies. This allows journalists to go where the people go instead of forcing them to come to the news, enforcing a beat system and community-driven content.

Also, I’m sure you can find a way to get Starbucks to pay the newspaper to drive customers to their stores. And if not, use Starbucks as an edge to drive-up subscription sales (though that’s not a way to save or sustain journalism)

Wild ideas

• Print news on the outside of paper cup holder for each day. Part of the price of coffee goes to pay for the news on the cup holder.
• Put small newsrooms inside grocery stores (instead of banks or gambling establishments) or hold office hours in a Starbucks.
• Print news headlines on the receipts.
• Create loyalty cards rewarding people for contributing/consuming news.