Zac Echola is muffin but trouble

Think it: Compete, cooperate and community

Published on 01/03/08
by Zac Echola

I’ve been thinking a lot over the course of the last few months about community. What does it mean for journalism? What does it mean for business?

Journalism culture has always been like most business: Full-on compete mode. But now, in a world where communication can scale from one-on-one to one-to-many and back again at the drop of a hat, we’re in the nasty situation of trying to compete with the people we want to converse with in the first place. Everybody is media.

We do this because we think resources are limited. That if we don’t take all, we don’t win. If we don’t beat “them” we lose. But is there a better way?

“They” can mean different things. They can be bloggers or advertisers who spend their local dollars in places other than our products. They can be the competition.
We think of content as ours. The high school sports photos are ours, even though the subjects are our neighbors. We clash when the school posts our photos to their sites, we ask that they take them down. We do the same to bloggers. There’s a much better way. The conversations happening all around us are liquid and don’t fit our business models anymore. Stop looking to the past. It’s over.

We need to foster community. We need to build on our relationships with the people around us. Instead of fighting the fundamental purpose of the Internet, sharing information, we need to be stewards of its organic growth for the betterment of our own products (and for the betterment of the conversation).

We attack bloggers for unoriginal reporting and commentary on our work. This is silly. Who has the right to share information? Instead of breeding animosity towards our communities, we need to look to ways that benefit all of us. We must rethink copyrights before our stodginess becomes our complete demise. The digital culture, by and large, has already moved away from this traditional sense of ownership. We must adapt to the current climate or risk death.

We’ve built language for how to gain and control audience. We call our communities “readers,” “users,” “citizens,” “citizen journalists,” “the former audience” and “targets.” “Them.” It’s long past due to that we start seeing people in our communities for the individuals they are. We’re a part of that community. There’s no us vs. them anymore. That idea started to die when AOL chat rooms and The Well were still around. Sorry. There’s only communication and it’s going to happen with or without newspapers and broadcasters.

There’s a lot of money to be made. There’s a lot of journalism that needs to happen. But there’s a huge shift in culture that needs to happen. Start asking yourself how can you help your neighbors and how can they help you.

The single most important thing about the Web is the strength of the network.  If you’re not looking for ways to make your network stronger, you’re simply not going to grow.

How ironic would the loss of the Fourth Estate be because we failed to comprehend the elegance of democratized communication?

The end. Or is it?

Please leave a comment so I know what you think about this post. After that, check out It's randomonium! Or, if you're so inclined, take a gander at what I'm reading and my del.icio.us links.

Trackback URL: Compete, cooperate and community.

Tags: