Is the answer in your own backyard?
I’m going to take a breather from bashing newspapers to salute one: The San Diego Union-Tribune.
The paper’s launch of sdBackyard is intriguing. The allows customers to network, generate news and receive targeted news. The paper even plans to convert some of the content generated to print for its community papers.
My early review of the site is mixed, but at tleast the folks in San Diego are trying to use technology rather than fight it.
My primary concern is that the site isn’t very edgy. It looks and feels more like eons.com than it does Facebook, Craigslist, etc. That’s safer for the paper and makes it more likely that traditional newspaper readers will feel comfortable using the site. Therein lies the rub: It feels like an adjunct to the existing product more than an aggressive attempt to expand the company’s audience to non-traditional customers. I think other efforts, including Seattle’s NWSource do a better job of targeting a younger, more active audience, but without some of the tools sdBackyard employs.
Having said that, the best social-networking sites take on a life of their own and develop personalities shaped by users, so if editors and marketers can relinquish a good deal of control the site could be incredible.
Unfortunately, newspaper folks are not good at relinquishing control. There are complex concerns about credibility and civility that every social-networking site wrestles with (or should). Too often, however, newspaper execs’ concerns about the web take on an ethereal tone. Vague references to “quality” and “integrity” sound noble, but unless we let consumers take the lead in defining what those terms mean to them there’s more fear and arrogance than substance to the concerns.
Similarly, fear of losing control can keep smaller publishers from trying similar experiments. To keep complete control over a site like sdBackyard, from proprietary programming to maintenance to content, is expensive. Free, open-source platforms such as Drupal and Joomla are more than capable of doing the job for a small or mid-sized paper. For example, I have a little Drupal site for my family that allows users to create blogs, post photo galleries and videos, participate in forums and polls and more, and I’m no programming genius.
Using these tools does result in the loss of some control over the look and functionality of the site, because unless you are a programming genius you’re at the mercy of diffuse international band of developers for enhancements, upgrades, etc. Still, I gave up that control, and I invite smaller papers to do the same.
I think it’s a small price to pay for the survival of your company.
