Today CyberJournalist.net reported that The Nation re-launched its site. The headline: “The Nation launches new site built on Drupal, emphasizing community.” The Editor of The Nation posted too talking about how media is undergoing dramatic change and how “What we’ve decided to do is go for it.”
Now I don’t meant to belittle The Nation. They indeed are taking bolder steps into social media than most. But will this work? Let’s look at how they’re “emphasizing community.” Here’s their new site header:
Indeed you’ll see that there’s a new “community” link in the header. Here comes community, right?
Not really. Think of the big community sites: Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc. There’s no “community” link in the header. Community isn’t a side show. EVERYTHING is the community.
Furthermore, there aren’t different classes of users. There’s not the employees who can actually initiate and create content and then the users that can then do “community” reactive activities like liking and commenting.
If you really want user to participate, to build a “community,” then users have to be able to function at the top tier, and not just react to what the “pros” produce but produce themselves.
For media organizations to truly get going with “social media,” they need to take this next step.