Comments on: News innovators aren’t innovative enough

By: John Hill

John Hill — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:21:45 +0000

Keep in mind too that a lot of great ideas probably die on the vine because it’s tough for innovative thinking to trickle up the food chain, and newspapers are typically run by a stodgy bunch. Of course, some ideas do get a hearing with the grand poobahs only to get shot down because they’re too “bleeding edge.” News execs are the first to ask, “Is anyone else in the industry doing this?” And then, “Are they making money, and how much?” They are so focused on the short-term bottom line, especially these days, that they’re afraid to do anything too bold lest it kill the golden calf. What gets me is that they like to say “content is king,” but what they really mean is “the content our staff produces is king” and anything else, ie, UGC, is gunk. It seems to me at times that our arrogance in the media is stifling the free exchange of ideas we allegedly champion. When it comes to the message we’re control freaks. Wow. I just doused the flames of optimism there. Probably now an industry watch list. Time to slap on my filter.

p.s. I too love the city budget idea. It could be like that movie scene (escapes me now) where the lead character (wanna say Michael Douglas) slaps on some virtual gloves and goggles and virtually enters the company’s file system a la Tron to find some files critical to his case.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:20:27 +0000

Isn’t the average age of the CNN viewer something like 65? THE AVERAGE. Maybe news is for old people? In which case, old ideas make sense…

By: t.a. barnhart

t.a. barnhart — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:52:37 +0000

did we innovate anything on the day? not much. however, for a lot of us, these were new issues, or at least issues with new dimensions. what we have done is begin a conversation, and tomorrow we’ll finally have a chance to get together and see what steps we want to take next. if we end up with a number of ways to experiment our way into the future, i think that will be innovative enough. not sure there’s anything brilliantly innovativey sitting around waiting to be found anyway. as you imply, the old standard values still apply. combining those with modern tools & creativity, and the right group of people, then innovation will emerge.

By: Michael Andersen

Michael Andersen — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:00:50 +0000

Wow — I love the walk-through budget idea.

When I grow up, I’m going to be a journalist-sculptor who travels the country persuading municipalities to pay me to build unbiased three-dimensional renderings of the budget in their city hall courtyards.

By: Audrey Eschright

Audrey Eschright — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:21:51 +0000

Re: “One of my craziest dreams: Hire an artist to create a three-dimensional, walk-through representation of the city budget, to be displayed in downtown Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square.”

I love this idea. Maybe based around a treemap graph, so every area of funding got a proportional amount of space on the bricks? Then people could see what areas get enough money a group of people can stand on them, vs. ones where there’s no elbow room.