Stalking the Consumer

Starting my search on the Knight site, I came across quite a few things that have a lot to say about our current discussion on the future of news. I apologize if this post gets a little messy with links. This blogger led me to several others who's general message was, follow your audience everywhere they go. NBC has begun placing video screens above gas pumps and reaching their audience while they are fueling up. Put your product somewhere where people are forced to notice you. This is coming following the placement of monitors in taxi cabs. People are in a small confined space and force them to pay attention, you are certainly likely to spark their interest.

Jeff Jarvis's blog essentially serves as a place to ponder and and predict the future of news. One thing he suggests in this post, echoes the idea of catering to your audience.

* The next generation of local (news) won’t be about news organizations but about their communities. News is just one of the community’s needs. It also needs elegant organization. News companies and networks can help provide that. The bigger goal is to provide platforms that enable communities to do what they want to do, share what they want to share, know what they need to know together. News will become a product of the community as much as it is a service to it.

Organizations need to appear that they have no selfish desires. Their work isn't about them (as we have discovered it often is) but about the people they serve. They need to adopt a how can I help you mentality.

That particular post has a lot more to say about what Jarvis expects news to become if you have some spare time.