Poynter Online on Interation Isn’t Optional

More musings on the role of social in social media — which some more mainstream types refer to as interactivity:

[from The Costs and Benefits of Interaction Poynter Online]

interaction isn’t optional. Maybe it never was — an institution
that behaves arrogantly eventually reaps the whirlwind. A lot of the
anger directed against “mainstream media” comes from people who resent
the historic imbalance of power between media and so-called consumers.
At any rate, the individual empowerment made possible by the Internet
has rendered the notion of a one-way media lecture obsolete. We have to
deal with it.

But a lot of institutions — including old school media, governments, corporations — are organized around controlled access, controlled messaging, control, control, control. They don’t want to let the loonies ask questions, or snicker when someone says something stupid. Remember Mena Trott at Les Blogs, melting down when Ben Metcalfe posted “bullshit” in the IRC backchannel?

You can’t have it both ways: it’s not a social medium if you pull out the social aspects, where the “audience” can’t shout back, and the “market” can’t tell you your marketing message is laughable.

So, the Washington Post’s retreat away from the give-and-take in the wilds of the blogosphere — back into the quiet halls of the fifth estate, where our emails and letters can be filtered and flushed — is exactly that: a withdrawal from a more dynamic, participative, and egalitarian model of journalism. And if the Post and other old school players decide not to give us what we want, we can certainly find it elsewhere.