By: Pauline Millard The Online News Association continued with the theme of change and opportunity when it closed its annual conference with a panel that focused on innovation.
?Journalism Next: Impact of Aggregators, Blogging and Social Networking on the Industry? focused on what new technologies can add to the current state of online news. The panel was made up of Meredith Artley, executive editor of the latimes.com, Josh Cohen, the business product manager at Google News, Ian Clarke, founder of Thoof.net and Anil Dash of Six Apart.
One issue that came up was creating a new business model for the web. One example cited was how the rock group Radiohead asked listeners to pay what they wanted for their new album. After its release, the average price paid was between five and eight dollars and the band netted about $5 million.
Some on the panel weren?t sure that this model would work for newspapers. Cohen at Google thought that experimenting was worth it, for any business, not just news. Artley was less optimistic, and recalled a newspaper in Jerusalem that once tried that and wasn?t successful.
Some of the panelists aired frustration with large news agencies that seemed afraid to try new things online, due to a fear of failure.
?There?s a culture of infallibility in newsrooms,? Dash said, who left a newsroom to start his company. ?It?s like, if you get something wrong in a story, then why do you exist??
An important point that came up was comments at the end of stories. Throughout the conference few speakers had concrete answers about how to monitor them, if at all, but most agreed that they had a role as journalism moved more and more online.
Dash felt they were good for business, since comments would drive page views.
Artley thought more broadly about the role of comments paired with quality journalism. ?Comments start the conversation -- and good journalists help foster conversation,? she said.
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