Shawn’s posterous

I just read If you never listen you never learn , a post by Dave Winer. It's a great quick read and I recommend it.

His closing really resonated with me:

"It really is long past the time for the news industry to listen to its users. We've been trying to start this conversation since the first blog post, but there's not been much listening. That may turn out to be the epitaph of the news industry, the users did care, but the industry never listened."

I find that to be so true. I hate that news media is so disconnected. There are so many  social media applications available and so much potential for innovation, yet it's not happening. We live in a reasonable-size city - approx. 200k people live here. We have one local paper, the Rockford Register Star. I've heard and read about their struggle to survive. On one hand, it saddens me to think that a local, long-standing business is struggling. But as is the case with almost every other news outlet that is struggling, I think they're writing themselves to death, so to speak. I read the news they offer, via an RSS feed in Google Reader. There's so much more they could be doing to connect with me. There are ways that they could get me to their website, heck even ways to get me to buy an occasional paper. There are ways that they could make money off of me.

Do I represent the bulk of their audience? No, definitely not. But if they give me what I want, I tell others like me and pretty soon I am representing a portion of their audience. Regardless, in a few more years, that portion will be the bulk of their potential audience. But they have to start listening now.

In my opinion, one of the most innovative things to happen in the news world is The Big Picture. It's fantastic. But it begs the question - why is a simple website, updated every other day so innovative? It shouldn't be. The idea should have been implemented a while ago, and would have been if news outlets were paying attention and striving to be engaging. Do you know who came up with the idea for The Big Picture? A software developer (great interview with him here). He works on it on the side, among his other daily tasks working as a programmer at Boston.com.

As Dave said so well, I do care. I want news. I want local news. I want up to the minute news. Give it to me or politely step to the side and let someone else take your place. One way or another, I have no doubt that a solution will come. And right now it doesn't look like it's going to come from the news media.