Catching up on some media-type stuff from earlier this month, there’s a couple of interesting back-and-forth pieces over at the Online Journalism Review between OJR contributor Tom Grubisich and washingtonpost.com’s Jonathan Krim on whether newspapers should be doing more to build relationships between themselves and their community. It started with Grubisich’s post from January 7th wherein he tackles the Post’s recent strategy announcements and their perceived lack of emphasis on engagement:

[Post publisher Katherine] Weymouth details what the Post will do about utility (“make the paper and washingtonpost.com go-to places for local information”) and convenience (“make it possible for [local consumers] to complete many… transactions on the site”). But nowhere does Weymouth expand on how the Post will promote engagement.

How odd – and disturbing. It’s great that the Post will work ever harder to help its readers and users find movie listings and streamline their shopping. But what, if anything, does it plan to do about helping to turn them into a community that can make the District of Columbia and its suburbs – home to many of them – better places to live?

Grubisich went on to say that one of the reasons the Post fails to properly connect with readers is the use of anonymous comments on washingtonpost.com stories and features. He felt the lack of accountability lessens the sense of community vs. a site like FaceBook, where everyone basically identifies themselves as, well, themselves.

Krim and former washingtonpost.com editor Russ Walker responded in the comments, pointing out that the site has done several commendable things to promote greater awareness of the underlying issues behind a story (see the link for all the examples).

Grubisich later wrote a response post, taking up the topic of how the site handled the recent “Fixing D.C.’s Schools” series that Krim brought up in the comments of the previous article. Again, there was some great back-and-forth discussion on what it means to be a reporter of information vs. a community-building force for action.

The reason these posts and the conversation they generated interest me is that I sort of wonder if they’re both going about this the wrong way: does it really make sense for the Post to invest a huge amount of resources in building a FaceBook-like community for its readers, or would we be better off just partnering with FaceBook directly? It’s pretty clear that FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and the like are as well-established as social media is likely to get for 2009. Instead of drawing people away from the communities they’ve already formed there, should we be doing more to send information their way and let them integrate it into their existing worlds?

There’s a risk there, of alienating the very people you’re trying to reach—how dare these old-school journalists try to impose their imperialist ways on us new-frontier types and so on. Plus, how do you send your content out into the world and still maintain editorial credibility (stop giggling) over it, not to mention making money from it?

As Krim pointed out, the Post has a very active community built up around the OnFaith and PostGlobal sites. Should we have steered them into a pre-existing community instead?

Obviously, I don’t have the answers or else I’d be running the company instead of making sure the site works. Okay, I’d probably be paying someone else to run the company, since I hate the thought of being a CEO. The point is, this is one of several issues that the Post and other newspapers are facing as they try to figure out how to evolve. Although it probably doesn’t mean anything for the immediate future, I do think it’s not insignificant that FaceBook welcomed a new board member late last year.

disclaimer time: I almost ended up as a freelance writer of sorts under Russ when he worked at WPNI; I’ve met Jonathan once when I helped him with a USB drive a couple of years ago; I wouldn’t know Tom if I bumped into him on the street.

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