I check my previous days comments each morning to see if they received any further comments or questions, or answers to questions I may have asked. Especially questions, as giving and getting answers to questions is an important part of the great value of dKos.
I was surprised this morning to find I'd received 62 "4" recommends from this comment:
* [new] 'We' are becoming the media. (62+ / 0-)
It's up to us to spread news these days. Start clicking.
by John West on Thu Jun 01, 2006 at 02:14:41 PM PDT
That's a lot of 4's so I sat for a bit and thought about why that happened.
Most of us are frustrated with the Traditional Media's seeming lack of interest in important news. We express such frustration right here on a regular basis. We condemn its failures at the same time as we brag on our successes, and rightly so. We even predict the demise of the Traditional Media and proclaim ourselves to be the New Media.
So why are we still bitching about what they aren't doing? Clearly it's not their job to do anything any more, it's ours. That thought leads me directly to the question of exactly how to disseminate important news most effectively.
Everyone is lazy in some ways. Everyone forms habits. Everyone seems to have some sort of schedule they follow each day. Starbucks and McDonalds have made their millions from understanding this and placing themselves squarely between where we are and where we're going each day. The Traditional media realized this as well and placed newsstands right there as well.
But they also took it further. They still do. They deliver the news right to our front doors. They stick it on the radio between our favorite songs. In short, they're in our faces with it because they understand human nature. If bloggers want to become disseminators of the news we can't just sit back and sip our morning latte, expecting Internet magic to do the job for us. We've got to get out on the cyber corner and hawk our wares, taking the news to the customer.
It seems a silly thing to do when Daily Kos is just a click away from most computers, but that's the way it is. Folks really are that lazy, or at least that much creatures of habit. So I propose an idea, a plan to help us become the new Traditional Media, and I hope other kossacks will comment on the idea, add to it, expand on it, improve it, because it needs to be done right.
My thought is that a dKos cyber headline page be created for morning email distribution to friends and associates and for C&P all over the web on any site willing to host it. SusanG's Diary Rescue seems the obvious format, with its convenient thumbnail sketch of the diaries. But this one would consist of a headline and perhaps a picture of the day, then thumbnails of FP and recommended diaries in an easy to distribute format. The whole idea being that it's a convenient packet of dKos goodies for us to distribute to friends and neighbors each day in order to place the New News squarely into their daily routines so it doesn't get overlooked. And, of course, it would attract them to dKos itself, expanding our overall growth.
You might ask why a simple link to dKos wouldn't fill the bill since it's small, quick, and convenient as one can possibly imagine. It is that, but a mere link doesn't pique anyone's interest or arouse their curiosity, and that's what marketing the news is all about.
Marketing is what the Traditional Media still has that we don't have. We've got great writers and lots of interesting, important news. This is good stuff, folks, and it's time other folks knew it. It's time we started seriously marketing dKos. It's time to grab a headline package, stand out on the street corner and start yelling. Or at least sit sipping our morning coffee, grab our mouse and start clicking. We've got a job to do, and it doesn't pay much, but it might just get our country back. That's the sort of work I'm willing to do for free and I hope you are too, because you just can't beat the benefit package.