Chile: instant Web feedback creates the next day's paper

Thanks to Danna Harman, staff writer of Christian Science Monitor for her report of a new media trend born - this time - outside the US, but very inspired by the Google fashion: "It was 102 years old, boring, unpopular, and basically, as economist Marta Lagos puts it, "a middle-of-the-road piece of nothing." Now, it's a phenomenon. Las Ultimas Noticias (LUN) - The Latest News - is Chile's most widely read newspaper today, setting tongues wagging, talk-show hosts chatting, celebrities and politicians denying, serious folks wailing, and advertisers calling. No, it's not a tabloid, insist the employees at the slightly shabby downtown newsroom. Rather, they say, it's a revolution in journalism, a reader-driven product that reflects the changing values and interests of a postdictatorship public that grew up on a diet of establishment news and now wants more. Or, as some say - because of the often low-brow content - less. This revolution has occurred, says the paper's publisher Augustine Edwards, thanks to his decision to listen to "the people." Three years ago, under Mr. Edwards's guidance, LUN installed a system whereby all clicks onto its website (www.lun.com) were recorded for all in the newsroom to see. Those clicks - and the changing tastes and desires they represent - drive the entire print content of LUN. If a certain story gets a lot of clicks, for example, that is a signal to Edwards and his team that the story should be followed up, and similar ones should be sought for the next day. If a story gets only a few clicks, it is killed. The system offers a direct barometer of public opinion, much like the TV rating system - but unique to print media...

None of the LUN correspondents have news beats anymore, rather, they compete one against the other. Edwards says he will start financial incentives, with salaries reflecting the monthly clicks each reporter accrues. Editors, he adds, will work more as coaches than bosses. "I want my correspondents to be writing for the people," he stresses. "Not for me, or their editors, or the bureaucrats who put out press releases.""
Then read the whole CSM article to understand the opportunities and evidently the risks and drawbacks of such a process. Hope we will never have to write about "automatized journalism"!

Source: Christian Science Monitor through cyberjournalist.net. See also Las Ultimas Noticias website.