MB: It would make conversation and engagement as easy as engagement is in Facebook. If you think about the community component of things like Facebook and popular blogs, and how easy it is to participate in the core mission of those sites, how easy it is to engage in Craigslist, how easy it is to do [instant messaging] — news companies have to look hard at that ease of use and that level of engagement and wrap it around news products for this audience, because that’s what they expect. They want to talk about the news, they want to be a part of a conversation about the news, they want to contribute their own ideas, they want to do so in real time, and there are plenty of Web models one could look at to begin to think about product development in this fashion.

PM: Using this idea of more interactivity in the news, what role do you see traditional, trained journalists occupying in this interactive future?

MB: There’s certainly an overlap. I’m not somebody who thinks conventional, hard-nosed reporting is irrelevant. Conventional, hard-nosed reporting is critical to information sharing in a complex world. But I also think that the things reporters do and the way they interact with various publics is going to have to change to involve the public more.

It’s funny, I just had this conversation with somebody in journalism. It used to be the case that you’d report your story on your own, you’d write it on your own, you’d get published and you’d walk away from it. … That’s no good anymore. You have to really engage people, think about how to involve the public when you’re reporting your story, and then be open to and conscious about feedback after its published. Reporters … historically aren’t trained to do that. They have to be engaged with people in many steps of the process that they’re not used to. So you don’t just get your story published and walk away form it and ignore a couple of nutty letters you get in the mail. People should be engaged in getting feedback from the moment the story hits the streets, and that’s why email is important and newspapers and news organizations publishing email addresses for reporters and producers [is important] because people need to be responsive in order to engage the public or the public is going to walk away.

PM: Do you see this interactivity expanding the public sphere?

MB: Yes, the process of engaging the public in the production and evaluation and assessment and ongoing reportage involved in stories is absolutely critical. We have to learn, as journalists, how to do that in a way that’s consistent with our ethos but expands our public engagement.

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