community, community, community

At the risk of starting to sound repetitive, there are some other perspectives on the new Yahoo!News and Reuters community journalism projects that circle back to some of the comments I have made earlier.

The Readership Institute’s Limor Peer has an interesting piece about 'What’s in it for the user? It’s all about community.' Mindy McAdams, who I should disclose is one of the influences on Limor Peer writing her article, and is subsequently referred to in the Peer article, continues the conversation on her Teaching Journalism web site. So, setting aside the incestuous aspect of people blogging about people blogging, what emerges? Community. People desperately want to get involved in communities.

So the next step, in my ideal world, is to ask what should we do as professionals to involve people in community, facilitate their desire to be in community or cover their community? Two interesting articles on community from the Readership Institute are Online communities can build engagement, but require a plan and User-Generated Content: The Problem. If you don’t already know about the Readership Institute, I suggest checking out their site, soon.


Additional links regarding Reuters and Yahoo!News new citizen journalism programs can be found at the Center for Citizen Media and Viewfinder Blues.