Last October and again this past August, I published a ten-point list of things Newspapers needed
What they need are developments that can only come from unmanaged hackers working out in unmanaged nature, doing what only hackers can do — invent useful stuff that's pure NEA (Nobody owns it, Everybody can use it, and Anybody can improve it), and improve it continuously out in the real world.
Cases in point.
Not long after the San Diego County fires got out of control, the San Diego Union-Tribune, which goes by SignOnSanDiego.com on the Web,
Here's the LA Times Google Map of fire locations, with data balloons that pop up when you mouse over them. And here's the outline to the right of the map:
Resources Breaking News Blog
What we're seeing here is how newspapers are learning to take advantage of the Live Web as well as the (relatively) static one.
The Live Web is the one where you post and syndicate and update and follow and twit and message and converse.
The Static One is where you architect and design and build and "manage" stuff called "content".
They overlap and you need both, especially if you're a newspaper. What the papers are discovering, now literally under fire, is that the Live Web is not one you can "manage" with an expensive CMS you buy from a third party. Its developers are out there in the wild. New developments are coming along all the time. Ideas such as Dave Winer's twittergrams (among other payloads) And Chris Messina's hashtags can only arise out in the wild open natural world that comprises the real Web. There's no way they can come from the kind of company that produces a traditional newspaper CMS (Content Management System).