Link globally, think locally

The dawn of a new age - in OJR, weblogs casting sunshine on the workings of editorial boards, taking "one giant leap toward openness" -
The Dallas Morning News editorial board leads the way with a group weblog:

"[The blog] shows the reader how we reach our decisions," Willey told me. "We argue about things and we arm-wrestle and we dispute one another. [Readers] like to see that what appears in the paper is the result of an exercise. We get enormously positive reader feedback. Even in instances where people disagree with our point of view, they say, 'We like your openness, it helps us understand how you reach your point of view..'"
...
As newspapers fight for readership and relevance in an increasingly segmented media audience, the time is right for editorial boards to make deeper connections to the readers they serve. It will take effort...but the payoff will be an informed citizenry and an engaged Web audience.

Note that "engaged" is spelled with 2 g's, and no r.

From Tim Porter:

The irony is that the greatest threat to newspapers' struggle for continued relevance may be not the new media companies, but members of the disenfranchised public who cannot find the news they want or need in their local paper so they're, to borrow from Scoop Nisker, going out and making some of their own.
...[and]...
newspapers will live or die on how well they reflect and connect to their communities.

In the 'Likewise for local radio' department, Tom Mangan comments-

Boggles my mind how obvious it is that local news is the only guaranteed niche we have, yet so many papers...think they must have all this national coverage...it sure seems a lot of our energy devoted to nation/world coverage might be better diverted into local.

Citizen Journalism is alive and well in Madison, Wisconsin - "All it takes is one citizen who cares... and a keyboard.", says Jeff Jarvis (also see his Citizens media meets bulldog journalism; finds the future of news)

Chapter 1 draft of Dan Gillmor's We Media

MIT Media Lab Offers a Simple Recipe for Publishing Homegrown News: (via)

Veteran journalist Jack Driscoll's research group has teamed up with senior centers and schools around the world to teach would-be journalists how to write and publish community news. The program gives participants simple online publishing tools -- and a few key lessons in how to be reporters and editors.