gatewatching

British journalist and blogger Dave Lee wants Google’s famous workplace innovation of “20% time” to be extended to journalists. Google’s scheme allows employees to take a day a week to use their initiative and creativity in projects that go beyond what they’re assigned. Lee argues

If every reporter at every paper had 20 per cent to spend following their own nose on a story, heaven knows what gold we might find. We always hear the phrase ‘more bobbies on the beat’. How about ‘more journos on the beat’? Sounds great to me. If I was a regional reporter I’d want every parent at every school to know my face, and I’d want every copper to know my name, so that if anything happened that the public should know about, they wouldn’t be afraid to call as they’d know me as being an good, honest bloke.

Sounds great to me, too. After my experience at the Future of Journalism conference last week, I’d wager that many newsrooms would feel that they couldn’t afford this in an era of diminishing revenues and tightening budgets. But maybe they can’t afford not to be publishing the most well-informed content, and allowing journalists to make the strongest possible links to the local community.

It may be that the adoption of participatory forms of journalism can help journos serve and interact with their community in new ways. But either way, giving journos space and time to be creative (or even investigative) could pay off for proprietors.