Rebooting The News podcast #12 

The latest Jay/Dave podcast, recorded last night at 7PM Pacific.

A little glimpse inside the news industry's mind: the recent recommendations of the American Press Institute. Charge for news, go after the aggregators, police fair use, look to consumers because the advertiser doesn't pay the bills anymore. A suicide pact, Dan Conover says.

The New York Times has a neighborhood blogging experiment, The Local. This week it extended an invitation to users: be the journalist. "Here is your first assignment: We're looking for someone to go to the 88th Precinct Community Council meeting next Wednesday, the 10th."

Three interlocking elements of a new system. The start of our kit for re-booting the news.

1. The pro-am invitation: help The Local cover Ft. Greene. Help us investigate.

2. Posted guidelines: how to cover a meeting for The Local; how to contribute to Chicago Now.

3. Assignment desk: an organized online list of everything we would cover if we had complete coverage of...

The launch and logic of inberkeley.com, a new local news blog that Dave and Lance Knobel have started. "It may not end up being the Berkeley blog. It may be the other thing that starts because people hate what we're doing."

The coral reef method of getting things done online. The Wikipedia stub. Their equivalent in news.

"Why wouldn't you want to be the newspaper of record...?" (Dave) vs. The Era of Omniscience is Over (Jay).

Sources of inspiration (Jay's turn this week.) Andrew Leonard's 1999 article in Salon, Open-source journalism. "This vision is alive."