Why Not Writing a Story Is Innovation

December 9, 2008 at 12:03 am PT

Discussions about journalism innovation usually focus on technology: Twitter, RSS, Flash, Django, data visualization, and all the other cool stuff that’s making online news so rich.

But there’s an equally important conceptual aspect of journalism innovation. Newsrooms have to rethink the kinds of stories they cover and the way they tell those stories or all the new technologies could be wasted on news that readers don’t find relevant or interesting.

To do this, they have to practice innovation-by-omission. That is, they need to stop writing stories that don’t deserve to be written.

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Tagged with: Django, Flash, innovation, Josh Korr, journalism, Publishing 2.0, readers, RSS, stories, technology, Twitter

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