The Online Journalism Review is one of the best sources of reporting on the applications of new media to the journalism business.
Today, OJR is making news itself by producing its first wiki-like article. Five writers are engaged in the development of an article titled, “Video journalists’: Inevitable revolution or way to cut TV jobs?” According to OJR stalwart Mark Glaser,
We’ve decided to create a special limited wiki for this story, where you the reader will be able to actually watch the sausage get made, so to speak. For two days, this page will be open for myself, VJ evangelist Michael Rosenblum, Lost Remote editor Cory Bergman, video blogger Andrew Baron, and TV cameraman and blogger Stewart Pittman to contribute their answers to my questions and to each other. Rather than being a totally open wiki, I’ve asked them to mark each of their edits so we know who has added what. If you’d like to submit your questions to the group, please hit the button below. At the end of the two days, I’ve reserved the right to the final edit that will live on this page afterward.
The article itself doesn’t live on a wiki; Glaser is picking the content off the wiki and updating it on a traditional OJR web page. But watching the evolution of a story could be fascinating, particularly when it’s produced collaboratively. And the page does include the ability to submit a question to the writers. How often to journalistic endeavors query the readers about what the writers should address? It’s an intriguing step by OJR, one that other journalistic enterprises should study. After all, in an online world isn’t this more interesting than a print story shoveled onto the screen?
Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.
As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.
