I was really happy to read some of the ideas in this post (also read part 1 here). Reason: I just let my Wired Magazine subscription lapse. Even though I’m probably right in the middle of their technology audience demographic, I just don’t read technology magazines anymore. I think it’s because the industry moves so quickly that I bore of reading some hot new product released by Apple, which by the time it’s solid in print, it’s already a month old.

I’m also growing increasingly frustrated with news websites that don’t have comments enabled beneath their articles. It’s getting to the point where if a site doesn’t want me to talk back to them, I’m considering it bad customer service (an email to the editor doesn’t count). If the thinking behind this is you don’t want people talking about your story, well, that battle is lost because the story is probably being commented on via digg or some other social news site, or via someone’s blog. Why not control the conversation to some degree and display it on your site?

Anyhow, I’d love to see a traditional media property incorporate some more openness, making their news more of a conversation than a one-way television like experience. We have JPG magazine using their website to generate content for the print version. The time has come where any media property that doesn’t actively engage input and feedback from its users runs the risk of looking snooty and unfriendly.

The trick would be finding a balance between quality journalism (probably for longer, investigative articles) and shorter, timely, user-driven ones that could live on the website and possibly end up in print. I’m not saying the “wisdom of the crowds” could do a journalist’s job. There will always be a place for quality reporting and writing. I’m just agreeing with Chris Anderson that there are a few parts of the current process which would benefit from being opened up to the masses (namely, I’d be most interested in deciding what stories to cover and rating articles). And I definitely wouldn’t recommend handing everything over, because I wouldn’t want Wired to turn into Maxim.

But anyhow, I’m glad to read a post that indicates some are at least thinking about it - rather than old media folks just hoping all this Web 2.0 social stuff will just go away.

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