Marc Matteo proposed the radical idea on a comment earlier today:
In the same vein that there are requirements w/in newsrooms to subscribe to the paper, I’d like to see the “online desk” staffers barred from taking the print edition.
Why? Because it clouds online news judgement. When online staffers are still happily existing in a 24-hour news cycle of monologue presentation, they fail a lot of times to expand their thinking to a web-based, constant news stream, dialog model that will, it seems pretty clear to me, define the future of news online.
In short, they become liabilities.
I recognize the value both financially and functionally of a print product, I truly do. I don’t think such a restriction should be permanent by any means. It’s just that since many newspapers are not hiring “web natives” for their web positions — and therefor crippling themselves — a “print ban” on online staffers seems like a good way to whiplash them into starting to think like web natives.
Sort of a “total immersion” type of approach.
It’s a crazy idea. So crazy, it might just make a lot of sense. The idea, as I see it, is simple: Web employees will think about how to present and produce content differently if they live in a Web-vacuum.
Their only way to disseminate content will be the Web. It will also force employees to forget about print models of distribution, which are entirely one-way.
The Web is two-way, and maybe the only way for newspaper employees to fully grasp that concept is to force themselves to be apart of that two-way conversation without a one-way conversation to fall back on.
Can a “total Web immersion” strategy work?
What do you think? Agree? Disagree?