Rethinking your approach in the face of New Media?

My two month hiatus from posting to my blog is over. We had a lot of work going on with our efforts to ramp up the Interactive Media Department at The Day. While I wish we had more to show for the work, I've come to realize that our 'tacking' has been an important phase to go through. By the end of December I will be able to write and introduce our first real initiative, but that is not what I want to write about today.

Recently, I found out about the Rethink the Mercury News project. For the past 3 months the Mercury News has been going around talking to members of the San Jose community to try and get a handle on how their company needs to change to meet current needs. As part of this effort they have launched a public site where they are sharing their thoughts and engaging in conversations with readers about the project.

It is very refreshing to see a publishing company appear to take a top to bottom look at what needs to change in its approach to serving their community. I stress appear as only the outcome of this project will show how encompassing a change the Mercury News actually embarked upon.

If nothing else, the public Rethink site could be a valuable tool for others in the industry looking to change their mode of operations. There is value in the model of the approach as well as possible value in the information that is distributed through the site.

I continue to hold-out hope that the Newspaper Industry can react and change in the face of the disruptive innovation going on in the industry. This change is going to take bold reactions like Rethink the Mercury News. While history has shown that normally it is not the incumbent who comes out successfully in the face of such disruption, we all know technology has rewritten a lot of the historical business lessons.

A salute to those trying to create the new lessons.

Opening pandora's box

I always thought opeing Pandora's box was supposed to be a bad thing. Well today I stumbled upon Pandora the site. If you're into music, this seems to be a really 'cool app'.

Pandora allows you to create 'Stations' based on your favorite musicians and/or songs. Based on these entries Pandora selects similar music to play on your station based on their "Music Gnenome Project".

I've been playing with the site for awhile here and so far so good. I've even added the Pandora App to my Facebook page so that I can share my music likes with visitors there. While, I am writing about Facebook I also recommend Shelfari as another cool app to add to pages. Just like sharing music, through Shelfari I can now share the books that I have read with my friends.

Happy Browsing!