BusinessWeek Forays Into Social Media Signal Publishing's Future

I've cancelled most of my print subscriptions because I so rarely read anything in them that I haven't already read online. One sub I've continued is BusinessWeek because they tend to have deep coverage of stories I care about, and they're trying harder than Fortune, Forbes, etc. to truly involve readers in co-creation of content.

This week, for example, Steve Baker sourced his upcoming story about Why Twitter Matters on Twitter in 140 word questions and answers which you can track here

Among Baker's tweets :

#bwstory Going to have a race. Will Twit to 5 or 6 customer service Twits and see which ones respond fast. No @ yet. Shudn't alert them

BusinessWeek Online has taken readers comments a step into the future. "Sure most mainstream media outlets allow readers to comment on stories, but that doesn't count for real involvement in the editorial process, says BusinessWeek Online editor-in-chief John Byrne. "

Our audience knows their subjects intimately. It makes sense to make that knowledge part of what we do."

Byrne says

I'll respond to your suggestions just as I do to my own reporters. “Tom, that’s a brilliant and original idea with importance significance to our readers.” Or, “Frank, I’ve read that story a hundred times. What can you possibly add that’s new?”

Missing from the mix, as far as I can see, is a Digg-like way for readers to vote on which topics interest them the most.

What does this mean to PR types? Better start paying attention to social media because flaks, and clients, who are still just counting clips are nothing but dinosaurs. Where will you find the time? Here's a hint. Posted by B.L. Ochman
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Hi BL, thanks for the very nice post. I'm going to try to pull much of this stuff together today, and to write at least part of the article. I'll post on blogspotting. It's so much easier to assimilate a handful of interviews. One idea I have, which I'll have to bring up with Jeff Jarvis, is to have a class of j school students all write 20 or 30 different articles based on all these tweets. Of course, anyone on the Internet could do it too. But my experience is that most people are too busy.