Zombie Journalism

TBD.com came out of the gates with a few community engagement experiments you might find helpful at your own news orgs.

Allbritton’s Washington, D.C. metro site will be named TBD – and I think it’s perfect. News at the start of the reporting process is “to be determined” – and that’s exactly where readers should come in.

When it comes to weather coverage, sometimes all we need to do is give readers the latest information. We at Cincinnati.Com used Wordpress to get the weather updates out in a simple, quick way during this month’s snow storms.

While the Communications Decency Act of 1996 grants media sites immunity from legal liability for user-generated content. The Barnes v. Yahoo defamation case revealed a possible loophole in that immunity that can occur if you promise to remove content – and don’t follow through.

Changes to the federal shield bill to exclude unpaid journalists and bloggers seems to go against the entire premise for the law in the first place – and we should all be upset about it. We need all the watchdogs we can get.

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