My professor forwarded a thought-provoking article from The New York Times, which highlights a newspaper reinvention experiment going on in a small town in the US state of Connecticut. The paper, The Register Citizen, is attempting to thrive financially by removing the barriers between journalists and the public. Changes include 
inviting the public to participate in story meetings, providing a space for community bloggers in the newsroom, and hosting courses on blogging and journalism.
It will be fascinating to see if this type of effort succeeds! Is your local newspaper doing anything innovative along these lines? Do you think these efforts will help?
Newspapers & Social Media 
This story is fascinating! I’ll be interested to see how the Register Citizen evolves as a paper. The NY Times has great stories and was the first newspaper I read regularly online. I’m wondering now, though, if these great stories will be enough to allow the Times to thrive now that it’s not accessible for free. Time will tell. I didn’t stay with it but, rather, switched to the Washington Post, which is not only still free but delivers news and columns in various categories right to my mailbox several times a day.
This is interesting! Thanks for your comment.
Timely post here, Gillian, given how desperate newspapers & pubs are grasping for new models to save the sinking mother fleet. Absolutely, this sort of initiative makes perfect sense, but I’m also encouraged by the fact that a number of new publishers have popped-up like Voice of San Diego (non-profit), which heavily leverage social media as well, but are mostly focused on bringing back into focus investigative journalism, the heart and soul of media, and the very thing that is being cut by publishers to save the bottom line.
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/
The org/newspaper may die, but as they say, hopefully their DNA lives on, especially in small towns where the newspaper is the still a lynchpin of the community.
Interesting…I’ll have to check them out…