10,000 Articles
A couple of days ago, something noteworthy happened on The Sacramento Press: We passed 10,000 articles on the site. These are all original works, and they are all local news and information about Sacramento.
Some are of no real consequence. Some are even factually incorrect. But they are written by more than 1,000 different people with unique and valuable perspectives on our region (some professional, most amateur). Not only that, many of these stories are of major civic importance. All one has to do is visit our front page any day, and the laid-out portion across the top will be filled with stories that affect our daily lives.Some people don’t like our experiment for one reason or another. We’ve been criticised for allowing amateurs behind the gates. We’ve been criticized for our unique front-end design (the big size of our rating and tagging buttons, for example). We’ve been criticized for our moderation policies from both sides – are they too loose or too strict? Sometimes it is best to pull back and remember what The Sacramento Press is at the root of it.Our policies, our front-end design, our business model and our community outreach – these are all designed for the community to take ownership of their relationship with the media. At first, this shift will happen on our site and social media platforms, but I expect it to grow. It is our responsibility not only to tell stories or provide a forum for others, but to actively increase the media literacy of our community.We must create a better-informed populace and be the tool that allows residents to act as engaged citizens. This is a major shift from the philosophy of traditional media, but it is one borne by the technological and economic reality of our day. Our philosophy is the real journalism 2.0. It is a recognition that we are a public trust, and the virtuous circle has widened to demand engagement at human scale.And I expect that our community will grow into this new role and demand the same of other media outlets. This is the real revolution of new media. It is not the toppling of traditional media – I would certainly not want that – but a popular revolution wherein the community members become full partners in sharing their stories and debating critical issues of consequence to their daily lives.The Sacramento Press, with its 10,000 original articles, belongs to everyone who reads, comments, rates, tags, flags and writes. It belongs to the community at large, whose members can use it as a living history of the last two and a half years. It is not a product of visionary skill like an iPad or couture fashion. Rather, we have designed a framework to be hijacked by our community, and at this point, I can say conclusively that the community has embraced this concept and is collectively creating something more fun and beautiful than I could have ever imagined.
