Ryan Sholin

It’s high time to send our pigeons out into the diaspora

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by

Ryan Sholin
in

⚠️ This post is more than five years old. Links may rot, opinions may change, and context might be missing. Proceed with cautious optimism.

Jeremy Wagstaff on the outdated definition of ‘news’:

“We journalists have been schooled in a kind of journalism that goes back to the days when a German called Paul Julius Reuter was delivering it by pigeon. His problem was a simple one: getting new information quickly from A to B. It could be stock prices; it could be the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.”
(via Techdirt.)

Wagstaff’s column goes a long way to explain the wall I’ve been beating my head against here for the last few days: It’s time for newspapers to step up their efforts to send their stories out into the diaspora.Pigeons

That means full text RSS feeds, active Facebook profiles maintained by real live staffers who drive discussions and answer questions, full-fledged mobile versions of newspaper.coms, Flickr accounts, YouTube channels, podcasts and videoblogs formatted for iTunes, and paying close attention to whatever’s next.

Start setting those carrier pigeons free, put down the flags, and get off the roof. They’ll get there. They’ll be fine.

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Comments

2 responses to “It’s high time to send our pigeons out into the diaspora”

  1. Zac Echola is muffin but trouble » A couple thoughts

    […] I think Ryan Sholin and others have got me thinking quite a bit about unbundled media lately. So instead of talking […]

  2. Zac Echola is muffin but trouble » Upward mobility

    […] One Web site doesn’t cut it in the overall picture of the Web. You need to get out there and actively engage with your communities: That means full text RSS feeds, active Facebook profiles maintained by real live staffers who drive discussions and answer questions, full-fledged mobile versions of newspaper.coms, Flickr accounts, YouTube channels, podcasts and videoblogs formatted for iTunes, and paying close attention to whatever’s next. (Ryan Sholin) […]