March 24, 2005

Newsflash!

Catherine Mayhew, executive editor of the locally owned free daily the Nashville City Paper and a former editor with the rival Gannett daily The Tennessean, had some interesting comments about the current and future newspaper industry during a talk yesterday to a group of college journalism students.

How is the news business changing? The story and accompanying photo of Mayhew's visit and talk were uploaded to the university's site before she left the building. Had a I had a good digital video camera and Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5, I could have done a multi-media report with video.

That's part of how the news business is changing. Blogs are the other part. The City Paper doesn't publish in a blog format, but it - unlike its larger rival - welcomes readers to post comments under stories on its website. Reporters don't interact with the commenters, as they would on a blog, but the gesture of allowing comments is a good one. And Mayhew said yesterday that the paper has even gotten story ideas from comments left by readers.

Full disclosure: I wrote a weekly column for the City Paper for more than a year back in 2001 and 2002. You can see all of those columns via links in my online portfolio.

Related item:
EditorsWeblog.org has a link-filled blogposting looking at "bloggers' future influence on the media industry."