“Bankrupt newspaper companies are following the lead of AIG and Lehman Brothers and rewarding executives with large bonuses. The Tribune Co. is trying to pay out $13 million in bonuses, the Journal Registers Co. is trying to pay $2 million, and Philadelphia Newspapers has already given hundreds of thousands in bonuses to its corporate officers.”

Ganett CEO Craig Douchebow racked in $3.1 million for his outstanding performance in 2008. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that the newspaper industry is rolling in the money!

I have to hand it to newspaper companies. Since we can longer reward success (due to a lack thereof) we might as well make lemonade out of lemons and reward failure.

It’s a morale booster of sorts. Think about it: What would make you want to work harder and innovate more after your furlough/pay cut than hearing that your fearless leaders are getting bonuses? Sure you might be struggling to pay the mortage on your $40,000 salary, but think about how executives will now be struggling to pay for maintanence on their yachts?

This is an unorthodox strategy for sure, but I have full confidence that giving bonuses to executives at failing companies is the best path forward.

Kent Fischer told me that about a year ago newsroom managers at The Dallas Morning News approached reporters looking for volunteers to learn to shoot video.

The managers sold these reporters on the idea of learning video by telling them that it would increase job security. You know, video is the future and all of that, and the Morning News has been through several rounds of layoffs.

Of course, a year later all of those journalists were laid off. Turns out video wasn’t the future.

One of the most depressing things I have seen with newspapers and other mainstream news orgs is how newsroom managers often follow the latest fads. They hear buzzwords like podcasting, hyperlocal, blogging, RSS, video, databases, link journalism, etc and think they have to jump on those bandwagons. Of course, they often don’t get how to fit in these new technologies or journalism techniques with what they are already doing.

Or, more importantly, if said technology even makes sense for their newsroom. And the truth is, each newsroom is unique. I can’t make blanket recommendations.

It seems like a lot of newsroom managers are trying to attempt the latest trends and stay up on the latest buzzwords for job security. But there is a large difference between learning about the latest techniques to try to make a better journalism product (and thus something more desirable to people and advertisers) versus  jumping onto the latest buzzword in an attempt to prove one’s worth.

I’m not trying to say that it’s 100 percent clear on what newspapers should be doing. But guessing isn’t it. Newspapers need a plan of attack.

And that means, if they’re going to invest money in training journalists to do video, they should stick with that commitment. Better yet, they should think carefully before committing time and resources to something like video. Video is not something you just guess at.

Either you want to make video a big part of your journalism operation or you don’t. And yes, experimentation is the path to salvation. But good experimentation requires a lot of research and forethought. Guessing is just following the latest buzzwords and trends.

I think a large part of the problem is that there are newsroom managers who don’t use or understand the technologies they are recommending. Hence why they are so prone to follow buzzwords and trends. Imagine newsroom managers from a decade ago not reading newspapers.

Unfathomable right? Then why would someone seriously take suggestions on blogging from someone who doesn’t read blogs (or better yet, have one)?

When I added podcasts to BeatBlogging.Org, I already understood the technology, and I had a reason for wanting to add that kind of content to the site. Podcasts allow for us to deliver a product that works really well on mobile devices like iPods and smartphones. Plus, I wanted a format that would allow in-depth interviews to shine.

Since I had experience with podcasting, I was able to quickly and cheaply start up a podcasting series for the site. Same thing when I added screencastserbium-doped fiber amplifier. We knew we needed a better tool for training people and screencasting just made sense.

Is screencasting the latest or sexiest buzzword? No, but it is a great training tool for the Web. So, I started a screencast series, and it has been quite successful.

Neither the podcasts nor the screencasts were guesses, however. I had reasons for thinking that both might serve a niche for BeatBlogging.Org. More importantly, I understood the technology and how to deploy it.

I just run a small non-profit Web site with a tiny budget. Certainly someone helping to run a newsroom with revenue in the millions should be as knowledgeable as me. Right?

The Internet didn’t bring the newspaper industry down.

Debt didn’t bring the newspaper industry down.

Declining advertising rates didn’t bring the newspaper industry down.

Complacency did.

When an industry goes from so high to so slow, so fast, it’s ultimately because its leaders became complacent.

They never thought that the monster profit margins would end. They never thought that diversification was important. Instead, they gleefully doubled down on print in recent years with ill-advised acquisitions.

After all, why diversify away from newspapers when they make so much money?

When you look at industries that ultimately fail, it’s because their leaders never thought a new technology or a new way of producing a product could come along. They thought they would be able to do the same thing forever. That short-sighted thinking is ultimately doomed to fail.

After both radio and TV tried to supplant newspapers for news delivery, you would have thought news industry leaders would have been on notice. Radio news was always destined to be a supplement, not the main event, but it still changed how some people consumed news. TV news has permanently stolen eyeballs and advertisers from newspapers, and yet newspapers were caught flat-footed when the Web hit.

The irony is that the Internet and Web should have helped newspapers make even more money. They are both vastly superior information content dissemination vehicles than newspaper trucks. The cost of making a good Web site is a fraction of that of a newspaper and is falling over time, while the cost of printing and distributing a newspaper is rising.

Even when America was enthralled by America Online, it didn’t become apparent to enough in the newspaper industry that this was the future. Nimble, non-complacent industries would have loved that millions of homes were getting Internet. Here was a much cheaper and easier to scale venue for content distribution.

Right off the bat, executives should have seen that the Internet and Web could do a few things exponentially better. Classifieds are one of the first thing that comes to mind. Rather than make a searchable, easy-to-use classified system online, newspapers shoveled non-Web friendly newspaper classifieds onto the Web. These weren’t searchable, didn’t contain links and photos were an afterthought.

In fact, they were such shovelware that they even carried the same space restrictions over from print onto the Web. Space in print is limited. The whole print model was built around scarcity.

There is no scarcity on the Internet. There never will be.

So, when people started seeing ads on the Web advertising homes with a frpl, instead of fireplace, it’s not hard to see why when Craigslist hit, the gig was up. Craigslist is not a technological wonder, its UI isn’t very good and it feels quite dated.

But it at least didn’t have ridiculous print abbreviations. And it was searchable, it allowed for links, it had photos and it was easy to use. Years later, it still looks and feels much the same as it did back in the 1990s, and yet Craigslist is better than virtually any newspaper classified system on the Web.

Complacency gave away to defeatism. After Craigslist caught on, newspapers began to give up on classifieds, thinking that we’ll never get them back. But we can get them back.

Nothing is lost forever. That’s the whole point of technological change. The newspaper industry has to reinvent itself.

Apple went from the brink of bankruptcy to current darling. The Internet, and products that utilize the Internet, are a big part of what has allowed Apple to turn things around. Apple recognized that it had to change from a computer company into much more.

Even Apple’s name went from Apple Computers to just Apple. Executives at Apple realized that they were no longer just a computer company; they are so much more. They had to be so much more — it was the only way to survive.

Newspaper companies have to become so much more than newspaper companies. This means completely reinventing corporate culture, mission, products, etc. Yes, this means making products that don’t have anything to do with the paper part of newspapers.

Most newspaper products on the Web were an awful lot like newspaper products in print (classifieds anyone?). That’s the problem. If newspapers want to reinvent, it means a lot more than just finding new ways to disseminate old content.  Reinvention means thinking of completely new products that tap into separate markets.

That’s why a computer maker gets into the portable music space. That’s why a computer maker starts selling movies. That’s how a computer maker becomes a dominant player in the cell phone space.

If Apple executives insisted on only being a computer company, Apple would have gone bankrupt. Instead, when the chips were down, they decided to start taking major risks and those risk paid off. Newspaper companies have to start taking real risks, and they have to be captained by those willing to take risks.

Gazette Communications has decided to take real risksonline casino. They are separating content from products. That’s crazy right?

Sometimes crazy is what the doctor ordered. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer went online only. What’s an online-only newspaper anyway? It’s a newspaper that is reinventing itself. It’s a newspaper that wants to at least have a chance of being around in 10 years.

Defeatism must stop. The newspaper industry’s obituary has not be written. We can change the course of the future if we cast aside defeatism and complacency.

Even small steps — in the grand scheme of things — can make a big difference. Newspapers don’t have to concede the classified space. They can carve out their own niche and bring in revenue.

It just won’t be easy. To get classifieds back, we have to be non-complacent. We have to work hard — harder than Craigslist for sure. We have to build a system that is categorically superior to Craigslist.

Within a decade or two, I would be shocked if Craigslist was still the dominant online classified site. At this rate, I would also be shocked if a newspaper company overtook Craigslist. Rather, I’m sure, some non-complacent, nimble Web start-up will come along and reinvent classifieds, just as Craigslist had done decades before. Again, however, the future has not yet been written.

We cannot change the complacency of the past, but we can change the course of the future. We must make a pact never to be complacent again. New technologies will be rapidly forming and changing lives in the coming years.

If the remnants of the newspaper industry want to survive and ultimately thrive, we have embrace new technology and get out of front of trends, not behind them. We have to embrace change. And, yes, that means we have to employ people in all ranks who are not married to the past and are willing to be a part of a revolution.

And so, the newspaper industry eventually won’t have that much to do with paper. Like Apple with computers, newspapers will still have print products (and they should, after all there is a market for them), but newspapers will be so much more than papers. They’ll produce products that are wildly different from newspapers.

That’s the only path forward.

A key part of a successful blog (and getting traffic) is building a strong community.

Check out vol. 2 for how to get people to read your blog. Getting people to read your blog is not enough, however. You look at the best blogs and you’ll notice that there are lots of comments after each post — good comments at that. How do you get those good comments?

You have to build a community. And trust me that community and those comments will drive traffic. People will start coming back to your blog over and over again to leave comments to you and to other users.

Eric Berger once told me that when he started beatblogging that he responded to every comment that was posted on his blog. He doesn’t do that anymore, but he still tries to respond to as many comments as possible and moderates every comment left on his blog. You’ll notice that the comments left after his posts are for the most part civil and thoughtful.

Those comments legitimately add value to his posts and his blog. Yes, this is time consuming, but this approach acknowledges how important comments are to a good blog. When you first start off, you probably won’t get comments on every post, let alone multiple comments per post, so it’s easy to respond to every comment.

As people begin leaving more comments, you can begin to respond to less comments. Eventually you’ll want to focus on responding to the best comments or refute the most inaccurate. Hoisting comments is a fantastic way to encourage people to leave thoughtful comments.

Many people complain that comments after blogs are often mean, banal or worse, and if that’s the case, blame the blog author. When comments devolve into a stream of banality, it’s because the blogger has actively chosen to allow a comment ghetto to take hold.

Take control of your comments section and you’ll be well on your way to building a strong community around your a blog. A strong community will drive traffic, make your blog a better product and help you find more topics to blog about.

The key to free-ium is making the free version kick ass, while making the premium version kick even more ass.

You’ll never up-sell someone to premium if they free version is so crippled that it offers no value. We have to have two gears: useful and really useful.

We’ve all heard this cliche, but it’s true.

Connections matter and networking is the name of the game. It’s not that unfair either. Think about it from the position of a prospective employer: Would you rather hire someone you are familiar with and know a bit about their work or take a chance on a total stranger?

When in doubt, people will go with the people they know. Also consider this: News organizations in particular are being inundated with resumes. After awhile they all begin to look the same, and it’s not very easy to stand out on paper.

Plus, people embellish and even outright lie on their resumes. Against this backdrop, it’s easy to see why knowing people is important. Hiring managers want to eliminate as much uncertainty as possible (I’m not talking about the nepotism kind of knowing people, however).

That’s why you need a blog and to own your name on the Web. Even without ads, blogging can make you a lot of money, because it’s a great way to get to know people. Dave Winer says he has made more than $2 million from his blog:

If I had any advice to offer it’s this — get in the habit of communicating directly with the people you want to influence. Don’t charge them to read it and don’t let others interfere with your communication. Talk through your blog as you would talk face to face. You’d never stop mid-sentence and say “But first a word from my sponsor!” — so don’t do that on your blog either.

Blogging is also a great way for people to get to know you, your work and your thoughts. Forbes advises people to get a blog to look knowledgeable in their field:

It’s a small amount of work that will likely impress recruiters and hiring managers, because it shows you to be enthusiastic and engaged with your industry. It also makes you look like an expert in your field.

I’ve advised for awhile that journalists should build a digital resume online and start a blog. Tony Pierce, the head of blogging at The Los Angeles Times, says that his blogging is the reason he is working for the Times right now. I wouldn’t be the editor of BeatBlogging.Org without this blog either.

Can you imagine someone without blogging experience running BeatBlogging.Org? And how would Jay Rosen have known if my skills and ideas about journalism would have been a good fit for BeatBlogging.Org without my blog and personal site? Osmosis?

Don’t tell, show people. Having a blog with your thoughts, work and contact info is a great way to show people your skills. That’s a great way to eliminate uncertainty in the minds of potential employers.

Plus, having a blog proves to potential employers that you get the Web, especially if you’re good at it. More and more employers and industries are looking for employees with blogging and social media skills. If people are looking for those skills, you need to demonstrate that you have them.

Employers are searching Google, Yahoo! and other search engines to dig up information about you. You want to own the top search results for your name. It’s impressive to have the top spot on Google (it shows you get SEO), but it’s also a great way to prevent people from getting you confused with other people with the same name.

Now remember, being a good blogger is more than just about your blog. It means getting out into the blogosphere and connecting with other bloggers on similar topics. It means posting comments on their blogs and being a part of a larger community.

There is a large journalism blogging community. It’s made up of some of the best minds and talent in the business. Want to connect with that community? Get a blog.

Listen, not all of us have rich parents or powerful connections and we can’t always network in person, but that’s the beauty of blogging and social media. Any one can form connections with blogging and social media. So, get out there and start making connections.

BeatBlogging.Org doesn’t have any offices.

There is no newsroom. Jay Rosen and I don’t even live in the same state. Oh, we do collaborate like mad.

We just don’t need to be face-to-face to do it. The NYU students who work on the project don’t need to be at NYU or even in the New York area to get work done. We can work from anywhere.

We use Google Docs, wikis and an internal blog. We have a modern e-mail Web app like GMAIL to send e-mails and IMs. We use Skype and Twitter.

We use Mevio for our audio files and WordPress for our site. We have Dropbox for backing up our files and could use it to share large files if we needed.

These Web tools have made us incredibly efficient and allow us to run extremely lean. We’re not wasting money on PC-based software or a physical location. Why should we?

In fact, I’d say working collaboratively and remotely makes us more efficient. I don’t have people stopping by my home-office (or a coffee house) bugging me, telling me random jokes or asking me if I want to go to lunch. And I can get work done wherever, whenever.

Sometimes inspiration strikes at 2:00 a.m. Because I’m set up to get work done remotely, I can capitalize on that inspiration.

This all brings me to my real point: What’s the point of a newsroom in today’s era of limited resources? What would you rather fire: content producers (and by extension money makers) or a physical building? For knowledge workers, I’d argue that physical buildings often make us less efficient and always cost a lot of money.

Workers > buildings

Michael Rosenblum and a client got rid of the newsroom. Why? It wasn’t worth the expense:

We had an office for the first station, but realized after a year, no one went there. There was no need for it.

All of our video journalists work from the field, cut on their own laptops, and set their own schedules. Coming into an office every day would only eat into their reporting time and serve no purpose. Not to mention the vast cost of a physical office - the building, the desks, the carpet, the lights.  All unnecessary.

So when we set out to design our second station, we eliminated the building and the office entirely.

Don’t need it.

Don’t want it.

Why do content producers need to be in a physical building? They don’t. Reporters should be out reporting and conducting office hours for the community.

If I’m an editor, I don’t want to see my reporters. If I am seeing them, they are not out being a part of the community. And I really don’t care where editors are located.

They certainly don’t need to be in the same building together. Heck, they don’t even need to all be in the same state or country. Same with Web developers, database journalists, etc. I just want people who are good at what they do and can work with collaborative Web tools.

Instead of laying off employees, news orgs should consider laying off their office buildings. Or at least downsizing them with the idea that workers would show up to this smaller, collaborative-focused newsroom less often.

In my experience, companies that require workers to come in every day to get work done aren’t utilizing collaborative tools that make them more efficient. If they were using Web apps like Google Apps/Docs, wikis, BaseCamp and Web-based e-mail, they wouldn’t need you to come in. With those tools, almost all meetings are obsolete.

Telecommuting is all about mindset. That’s all it is. Many mangers have only known showing up Monday-Friday, 8-5 in the office each week. They think that’s the only way to get work done.

They can’t envision a different way of working. They assume you’ll just slack off if they can’t walk over to your desk whenever they want. They think you won’t be in the loop and be able to collaborate.

You don’t want to work for these kinds of managers. They let fear override logic. They are stuck in the past, when the present and future offer a better way of doing things.

I’m here to tell you that those kinds of managers are wrong. In my previous jobs, I worked in an office. Now I telecommute full-time.

I no longer waste two hours of my day commuting into work. Instead, I can spend that time actually working. Now, if I want to get work done at 2:00 a.m., I can. Also, I can update our Google Site (a powerful wiki-like tool) whenever a good idea strikes me.

Nothing sapped my creative energy like being told that I had to think about work a certain part of the day and personal stuff another part of the day. Now, I can think about work whenever it makes sense to. I don’t work straight through my day and then go home.

No, I work in chunks and then do non-work stuff for other chunks. I’m much more flexible now, and I have to be because I follow journalists all over the world. You can find me doing work early in the morning and late in the evening.

And why not? It’s just more efficient to work when you have work to do, not just to show up for work when you are scheduled at the office.

I’m more efficient now, and I work more. I have more time to work, and I have less distractions. No longer do I feel drained from a long commute, and I don’t waste time traveling to work.

Rethink the office

There are times when it may make sense to meet in person, but we don’t need to meet everyday. In fact, I’d argue that meeting daily makes us less efficient, and a bonus of not having an office is that it cuts down on meetings. Of course, there are companies that will never really need to meet.

Want to collaborate? Use collaborative tools! Meetings are a time sink.

Get rid of the building, and the you’ll get rid of the endless, unproductive meetings.

Here are two options that should save money and make for a better product, while still keeping a physical office space when needed:

1. Have a smaller space that workers can bring their laptops in for collaboration.
2. Rent out a space just when you need it for in-person collaboration.

Option one is less radical, but it still saves money. If your workers work from home several days a week and don’t have set desks and offices, you don’t need anywhere near the same amount of space.

For instance, different teams could have different days of the week where they come in for collaboration. During these days, they would have access to the work space, which would be built around people bringing in laptops. There would be lots of white boards and spaces designed around serious collaboration (not around stupid, daily status meetings).

But it would be much smaller, and smaller means less money. Imagine if only 25 percent (or less) of your work force was scheduled to be in the office each day. Plus, you don’t have offices wasting space.

Option two is more radical, but it makes sense. Why not just rent out space once a week for collaboration or monthly or whenever you need it? Why buy or lease a building if you don’t need to?

Simply rent out space when you actually need to meet in person. If more businesses did this, there could be a sizable market for rent-an-offices. But these wouldn’t look like today’s cubicle-filled offices.

Again, they would be built around collaboration. They would be open and filled with white boards. They would have tons of wireless bandwidth, and they would have personality.

After all, if you’re going to have a physical office space, why not have it be something that people actually want to come into? Why not have something that is actually inspirational?

You can’t put a price on happiness

This is an often over-looked benefit of telecommuting. Employees will he happier. Many of us have to deal with huge commutes (especially those in markets like New York, Chicago, D.C., San Francisco, etc).

Trust me, no one likes spending his life in traffic, and American workers spend unconscionable amounts of time in traffic. So, why not get rid of one of the most stressful and least productive parts of your employees’ day? They’ll be happier if you allow them to skip that commute.

Employees will call out sick less. Heck, they’ll get sick less because A) they won’t be in the office with other sick workers and B) they’ll have less stress in their lives.

Which reminds me, I’ve never been sick since I started telecommuting. I used to get sick a few times a year when I had to make a commute each day (on the metro), be exposed to germs and sick people and then show up in the office and be exposed to people who refuse to take sick days. My health has improved, and I am just plain happier.

Child care suddenly becomes a lot easier and no longer a hassle for employees. Parents can work and spend time with their young children. If their school-age children get sick, it’s not an issue to find child care that day.

If the only reason you require workers to show up daily to an office is because, “that’s the way we’ve always done it,” you don’t get it. You don’t get how modern, Web-based collaborative tools can make your workers more productive and can save you money. And if you’re a manager, and you aren’t interested in making workers more productive and saving money, you’re doing it wrong.

And let’s be honest, doing things the way they have always been done has gotten news organizations into a lot of trouble. How about we make a new pact right here, right now: We’ll do things because they make sense, and that means being willing to rethink everything we do.

If you read one blog post this year, make it Clay Shirky’s “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable.”

It’s the kind of thoughtful research and ideas about the future of newspapers and journalism that you won’t find in Time Magazine or The New York Times. It’s the kind of straight realism — and not the radicalism that many would have you believe — that this industry needs. I know it, you know it — we all know it: Journalism is rapidly changing in ways we can’t predict, and the old models are becoming obsolete faster than new models can develop:

When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.

I refuse to lie to people about the state of journalism or our future. I hope more journalists stop this game. Everything is changing.

I have been saying for awhile that there will be a dead period between when newspapers finally fall from being the dominant form of American journalism until new, viable journalism enterprises take their place. I can’t tell you how long it will be until the Internet/mobile can effectively replace newspapers. It could take the majority of my life until we see that reality.

But I can tell you this, a revolution is occurring. Make no mistake about it. Everything that we have ever known about journalism is coming to an end. It is both incredibly exciting and scary. Newspapers will be replaced.

When and by what? None of us can say.

Printing a newspaper took considerable resources. Starting a blog is free. That’s the fundamental problem with newspapers.

You can’t monopolize a free distribution medium. And newspapers were monopolies. They were uncompetitive.

We probably suffered because of the uncompetitive nature of newspapers. Imagine instead of having one outlet with one voice covering an area or topic, a virtually limitless amount of voices covering an area or topic? The Internet has the power to free us from all the bad parts of newspapers — shallow coverage, lack of transparency and misplaced trust in an ethos of objectivity, instead of honesty and fairness.

Make no mistake about it, there is a lot not to like about newspapers. And I would be shocked if journalism wasn’t exponentially superior 50 years from now than what we have today.

Trust me, business models will follow, especially when newspapers fall. When billions of dollars of advertising are freed from newspapers, it will naturally flow somewhere else. Advertisers will eventually realize that the Internet is by far the superior advertising vehicle.

The Internet will finally allow for targeted advertising, and it also gives far greater metrics over who is viewing ads. Plus, the Internet is opening up the ability for many more people to advertise too. Many people couldn’t afford to advertise in newspapers, even though they wanted to.

Advertisers have also been slow to grasp the power of the Internet. But they will. And people will make money off of journalism on the Web.

It’s not a matter of if, but when.

And that’s just the thing. None of us can say when that switchover will occur. It’s going to be a bumpy ride, but when we make it through this revolution, we will be producing better journalism.

It’s time to embrace what we know to be true.

The Washington Post has launched a new “community reporter” position that requires more skills than a typical reporter and pays less.

What a new media double whammy!

In a letter to the newspaper guild that represents Post workers, the Post says the Community Journalist will write for the paper’s Extras, Web, and the daily paper and perform multimedia work, all for $34,000 a year.

34k in the District? Sign me up!

This position requires reporters to produce content for three different entities and in a variety of formats. Just to be clear how highly the Post thinks of this position, it’s warns those applying for it that they should not expect to be promoted to reporter.

What is a reporter exactly? Well, at most papers it’s very similar to this “community reporter” position, minus all that fancy Web work. But I digress.

Here is where the serious part of my post begins.

This is what the Post should do instead

Forget this shallow attempt at staffing the newsroom for less. Make this a real community journalist position. Make the main requirement of this position that a person already lives in the community they will cover.

No more bringing in candidates from outside the region to cover communities they know nothing about. Heck, I live in the Maryland suburbs of D.C., and I don’t think I’m qualified to cover Arlington or inside the District. Get people from Georgetown to cover Georgetown and people from Silver Spring, Maryland to cover Silver Spring.

That’s what a real community journalist does.

But here is the real kicker. $34,000 is too much for this position. Let’s slash the pay to $25,000-30,000. Let’s get rid of those expensive benefits.

Instead, make this position 20 hours a week or so. Yes, this will be a part-time job, and it doesn’t come with benefits. It’s also a telecommuting position, because I want community reporters to be out in the communities they cover, not stuck in a newsroom.

Encourage these community journalists to have other jobs. Maybe they’ll be local baristas or office workers or shop owners. Maybe someone who covers a government worker beat — gasp — works for the government. We want these people to have other jobs in the community.

I would give these community reporters their own beatblogs. In fact, their main focus would be on filling these beatblogs with great content (written, audio, video, photo, etc) and interacting with users. They would build networks of sources from within the community and online.

They would hold weekly office hours, ala Monica Guzman. They would be active on social media. They would carry a digital camera, laptop and smartphone with them wherever they went.

They would be a part of the community. That’s why the position should be part time. We want them to have another job, because we want these people to be a part of the communities they are covering.

That’s the point.

And get this, we’re not going to require them to have a journalism degree or journalism background. If they have a blog and understand social media and multimedia, that’s good enough for me. It’s more important to me for them to be of the community and to understand it rather than to have institutional knowledge of journalism. Plus, I don’t want to have to deal with teaching journalists “new” media.

For those of you who think $30,000 is a lot for a part-time job (especially one based on a $34,000 full-time job), consider this: we’re not paying benefits or retirement, we’re not training them on any newsroom systems, we’re not buying them computers, cameras, smartphones, desks, office space, etc. That all costs a lot of money, and could easily double or triple the $34,000 salary. Instead, these people will be independent contractors, and they’ll bring their own equipment (this can all be written off come tax time).

The possibilities to reinvent journalism are endless.

Instead, it’s clear to me that the Post is only interested in saving money, not in saving journalism.

Yes!

I’m totes getting this.

That is all. Good night.