Hey everyone! Yesterday was a great class. We had Mark Potts from BackFence.com as a guest speaker. Mark is the co-founder of The Washington Post online website and he is the CEO of BackFence.
Of all our guest speakers we have had this semester so far, I enjoyed Mr. Potts the most, and that's saying something because we have had some very good and well known speakers in this class.
I think the idea of a company starting a website in different cities around the country in which the users are the people who have control of that site is genius. I think it gives people the opportunity to publish what they think is important in their town and see it online right away, instead of having to call a newspaper company and beg for them to cover their child's soccer game. The person can now do it themselves. It's amazing where have come and where we are headed in just a few years.
Obviously, the major problem people have with this idea, is that it is not real journalism and you cannot trust it, just like you have to be wary of wikipedia. However, I love the response Mr. Potts used to tackle that complaint. He pointed out, that actually this new form of media the world is experiencing right now is more self corrected than mainstream media, such as printed newspapers.
Mark Potts is a former professional Washington Post journalists and he even admitted that it is nearly impossible to correct an error in the Post. Not only is it difficult to get through to the company that made the error, but if you do get through, the journalist is more likely to be offended and defend his article to the death before admitting a mistake and correcting it.
In this new form of online journalism created by the users, you can respond immediately in any length that you want and challenge the validity of articles. As Mr. Potts said, "Sure you can publish a bunch of BS if you want, but as soon as you do, someone is going to call you on that BS right away."
It's NOT that this new form of journalism is better than mainstream by any means. It is just different and it deserves a shot.
Journalism is changing and the world is having trouble adjusting to it in my opinion. I think new forms of media are inevitable with technology changing as rapidly as it is. As Mark Potts said, "The best story journalists have right now is the story happening to them."
What an awesome time to be in the media industry!
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
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