Out With A Bang

For reasons that may well become apparent over the next couple of weeks, we’ve started to put a lot of thought and effort into this idea that the future of journalism might have something to do with the art of stimulating and sustaining a conversation.

We’ve been round this block before; as have others – we’ve even proposed an idea that, say, Channel Four could become this ‘House Of Many Conversations’… if we could only just give all those passionate niche communities that gather around www.channel4.com/lost a ‘voice’…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=166

It’s actually quite interesting poking our nose round that little Lost community – they have a forum that seems to have withered on the vine of late…

http://community.channel4.com/groupee/forums/a/frm/f/4290090682

and a Lost blog that, spookily, appears either to have been written three days in advance – or is a year out of date. How very Lost…

http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/L/lost/blog/index.jsp

Either way and there’s some interesting ideas floating around both spaces – even if Lost itself has packed its bags and headed off to somewhere into Sky’s space, there are still a lot of familiar themes to be found…. of community, of shared passions, of a shepherd looking for her ‘Lost’ flock in the shape of the official Mistress of the Lost Masses, ‘The Other Girl’…

http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/L/lost/blog/aboutme.html

What’s interesting is what you could get if you ‘mashed’ forum and blogger together…

Made the two into one, 24/7 conversation that ‘The Other Girl’ led, sparked, managed, curated, moderated and mediated.

Maybe with a little help from one or two of her C4 pals. Maybe she even went a found a cast member from Lost and introduced them into the conversation.

Fascinating. Because, in more and more ways, my ‘reporter’ day job hosting and writing for www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity is seeing me morph into this new media hybrid; this bastard child of old and new media; part blogger, part journalist.

A jogger?

But I suspect in the none too distant future I am going to have step out of the ivory tower that was old media and join the conversation that lies at the heart of new media – and all in a very real sense.

That part of our new thinking may well be mingling with the masses; rubbing shoulders with what was once our audience and getting down and dirty with them – in their new worlds as our old one implodes beneath our feet.

The test may well be whether or not we can still hold our own in said company; whether whatever ‘brand’ recognition and trust we still enjoy as a passionate niche journalist will then allow us to if not command a conversation then to guide and influence one – particularly if when we enter the conversational fray we can come ‘badged’ up; like a steward at a mass rally; like a shepherd with his crook; like a cinema usher with her torch.

Of course, to achieve any of the above we’re going to need a new piece of kit; such practices are going to have to be technology-led.

But what if when we rummaged around in the new tool-box of our trade and bolted this bit onto that and screwed this application onto that premise, you could find a way of being this jogger? Where would that then take us?

Could we, finally, find a role for ourselves as a leader of the Lost?

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