I mean, aside from the idiots who don't understand most of the content in existence on the Internet comes from newspaper reporters. It seems everyone loves talking about it and the sole three "solutions" given involve (a) concentrate your entire staff on hyperlocal crap, like Little League scores and games (excuse the eyerolling, please,) ignore the national or international news because Joe and Jill Six Pack just don't care, (b) pare down your staff to a bare minimum of multimedia performing monkeys and (c) have them create an online community!Following (a) is a fallacy. Readers, including myself, want to know how national or international news affects them locally. Following (b) is 2007's new buzz word, "multimedia journalism" because last year's was "watchdog journalism," and every year has to have some big trend. (Too bad the average YouTube contribution has better editing, sound and picture quality than I see on most sites.) And like (c) no one understands quite what it's supposed to mean.
If you look at all these places with supposedly "great" communities, it all seems to filter down to a whole bunch of rednecks bitching about "illegal aliens." If that's the online community we're trying to create, then I think we've succeeded admirably, especially on Bakersfield.com.
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