Otterblog

We ran a story Sunday about the pending closure of The Pavilion, one of those boardwalk-era type places that are fading fast from the American consciousness. They’re all a little frazzled and frayed, like they’ve spent too much time in the sun and the surf, which they have. What’s most interesting about our story and the topic for discussion today is our use of what I will call UPC, or user-provided content. There’s another term for it, but it escapes me at this time. UPC—much of it enabled by better communication and technology—is changing a lot of the world. It’s how Myspace and Flickr essentially work. And it’s traveled all the way to a newspaper near you, this time in the form of folks reminiscing about an entertainment complex on The Grand Strand.

It’s an interesting and seismic change for journalists—particularly those in newsrooms. We’re by nature reluctant to let outsiders contribute to our pages. That whole gatekeeper complex etc. But the walls are tumbling down. Several reasons: One, readers like it. They want to be part of the newspaper and its extended online empire. Two, editors have decided that the newspaper can be lots of things to lots of people. A true bazaar of content. Three, we still get to be the gatekeeper, and if we reject a lot of stuff for not being up to snuff, that still leaves a lot of UPC that is really very good for the format in which it was intended.

It’s all part of being interactive, which happens in fits and starts, and of being open to possibilities of letting others help, where appropriate.