37-year-old Andreessen is a multi-millionaire software engineer best known as co-author of Mosaic, the first widely-used web browser, and founder of Netscape Communications Corporation. He is also a co-founder of Ning, a company which provides a platform for social-networking websites. He sits on boards of directors of Facebook and eBay.

Portfolio magazine’s Kevin Maney asked him: ”If you were running the New York Times, what would you do?,”

Mr. Andreessen responded:

”Shut off the print edition right now. You’ve got to play offense. You’ve got to do what Intel did in ’85 when it was getting killed by the Japanese in memory chips, which was its dominant business. And it famously killed the business—shut it off and focused on its much smaller business, microprocessors, because that was going to be the market of the future. And the minute Intel got out of playing defense and into playing offense, its future was secure. The newspaper companies have to do exactly the same thing.

The financial markets have discounted forward to the terminal conclusion for newspapers, which is basically bankruptcy. So at this point, if you’re one of these major newspapers and you shut off the printing press, your stock price would probably go up, despite the fact that you would lose 90 percent of your revenue. Then you play offense. And guess what? You’re an internet company.”

Bob Guccione, a magazine entrepreneur and publisher, explains:

”That does not mean that print has nothing to worry about. It has, quite literally, everything to worry about: from the expense of its materials, workforce and delivery, to loss of revenues and the erosion of its dominance as a source of information. But the print medium can fix that set of problems.”

Guccione claims that ”the future will not be a war between new media and traditional media, but between obsolescence and vision.”

”Too often publishing executives complain about their ill fortunes rather then set about the necessary reconstruction, like depressed home owners shocked to discover their homes are not impervious to nature and weather. Newspapers have to change, because they’ve become anachronistic.”

Guccione predicts also another internet bubble:

”I think the Internet has a looming financial crisis which, when it explodes, will birth a new and invigorating way that media is created and distributed. Funding came too easy to too many digital businesses, and that always leads to an investor panic when one of the giddiest investments goes bad, as invariably happens. The valuations are once again seriously out of whack with earnings, and business models presume too clear a road ahead of them. (…)

I think the advertising model will shift — as unlikely as that seems now — from the unrealistic promise of infinite audiences to smaller aggregations of people really engaged, really interested, and predictably present.”

The New Statesman has a long track of investigative journalism. Stephen Gray wrote about CIA rendition flights, Martin Bright exposed the link between the Foreign Office’s and radical Islamists or Chris Ames worked on the government’s notorious dossier on weapons of mass destruction.

The editors believe there are five areas that they believe need investigating, but before they assigned these topics to any journalis in the newsroom, they had asked readers to vote and tell what the Statesman’s priorities should be.

The poll was announced online. Readers could vote and make comments with other story ideas.

Readers could choose following topics:

• Who funds the UK Conservative Party?
• What is the influence of giant multinational PR and lobbying companies?
• What Prinve Charles is really doing and will he stop his meddling in the areas of agriculture, architecture and education when he becomes king?
• What is the state of British Childhood? Why is it that British children always end up near the bottom of international “happiness” comparisons?
• Asylum Crisis – why one of the richest countries in the world leaves asylum seekers on the streets with no access to benefits?

Finally, on Friday evening 84 % of votes went to the Asylum Crisis. The Statesman has not disclosed how many users voted.

The magazine’s political editor Martin Bright promised on his blog that the results of the investigation will be published by the end of the year. ”An investigation into such a controversial and complex issue will take some time,” he explained.

Even if this experiment is not as unique as the UK news magazine claims, it shows that something changes at the respected newsrooms – editors try to engage readers in new ways.

Interaction is no longer just a selection of letters to the editor published on page number 87.

How a new daily involved… every household

Probably the most fascinating example of a similar poll that I know about is the case of Divya Bhaskar, a daily newspaper in Gujarat, India.

Before it was launched in 2001, the newspaper’s representatives had visited personally (sic!) all (sic!) 800,000 (sic!) households in Gujarat three times (sic!).

Firstly they asked what kind of newspaper people would like to have, secondly to find what they did or didn’t like in their old paper, and thirdly to show people a dummy and an order form for a three-month subscription.

The launch of Divya Bhaskar was accompanied with a an advertising campaign with a simple slogan: “Now your wish will prevail.”

No wonder the new daily was number one on the market from day one.

I have learnt this story at the IFRA International Newsroom Summit in 2007 in Paris.

Asking questions is not enough

Asking readers for tips and votes is only a beginning. From my own experience, it is much harder to listen to what they really say.

Many newspapers ask questions, but they don’t really care about answers. Many newspapers invite readers to join the debate, but want to control this debate on every stage.

People in the newsroom interacting with readers often face problems like these:

• How to explain to a journalist that a reader complaining about a story or sending a correction is not a foe?
• How to convince a journalist that maybe the story idea submitted by a reader should have a higher priority that a story this journalist is working on?
• How to convince an editor that reader’s question or view may not be less important than traditional sources of opinion – like scientists, analysts, lobbyists, politicians, spokesmen etc.?

These are common problems in many newspapers and we don’t even touch issues like usage of user-generated content, crowd-sourcing etc.

Where are the limits of readers’ involvement

I asked Sue Matthias, an acting editor of the New Statesman, the following questions:

1. The Statesman has limited the readers involvement to vote on the topics and to share people’s views of what media have missed when covering the issue. Have the magazine ever considered any deeper involvement of readers?
   Just as an example I mean: collaboration in data gathering, analysis of documents, or any other activity assigned usually to proffesional journalists.
2. Can they imagine that a news organisation like the Statesman goes deeper into a collaboration like this in the future? And what would be the troubles, or challenges one would have to face?
3. In the Statesman’s poll Asylum Crisis story was a winner. What will happen to other story ideas like party funding or lobbying? I understand the editors have found them important enough to put them on the list. Will they investigate these issues even if they don’t get readers’ appreciation in the voting?

I will publish Sue’s answers here as soon as I get them.

Join the debate

What do you think: are there any limits of readers’ involvment in editorial work? Should editors of respected newspapers and news magazines go deeper in collaborations like this? What would be the troubles, or challenges they would have to face?

In June 2008 two historians claimed in a new book that Mr. Walesa, a legendary leader of Solidarity, informed to the SB, the communist secret service, in the 70s, and after becoming president destroyed the evidence.

Mr. Walesa (now 65-years-old) co-founded and led Solidarity in 1980, the Soviet bloc’s first independent trade union, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. After the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989 he served as the President of Poland (1990-1995).

The book has been published by the state-financed custodian of Poland’s surviving communist-era archives – the National Remembrance Institute - and is based on the Communist secret service’s file.

The Institute’s director and the two historians are allied with Poland’s conservative President Lech Kaczynski and his identical twin Jaroslaw Kaczynski, an ex-prime minister, both of whom fell out with Mr. Walesa in the 90s.

Mr. Walesa replied to historians’ claims: ”That’s a lie. The documents suggesting my collaboration are all fakes!”.

Polish intellectuals and former Solidarity activists have launched vocal protests over the book’s “smear campaign” against Mr. Walesa.

Jan Litynski, opposition activist in 70-80s, said:

[Historians] have set out to destroy the Lech Walesa legend. They want to prove that independent Poland couldn’t be an authentic creation. But they won’t succeed in proving to millions of Poles and billions of people in the world that the Polish independence movement wasn’t authentic and that the III Republic was created by the SB [the Communist secret service].

Andrzej Milczanowski, who as an interior minister in 90s read the Communist secret service’s file on Walesa, added:

The file contained no originals. Nor did it contain any document handwritten or signed by Mr Walesa. There is no evidence to suggest that Mr Walesa was an SB agent at any time in his life.

Gazeta Wyborcza’s editors felt that it was their mission to tell their story about Walesa. Gazeta was founded in 1989 by a group of journalists and activists of the underground press as the platform for the first democratic parliamentary elections. The first issue of Gazeta held Solidarity logo on the front page and featured Walesa’s greetings to readers.

1. Commentary: We defend Lech Walesa

”We defend Lech Walesa,” was a headline of the front page commentary written by the first deputy editor-in-chief Jaroslaw Kurski. “So, we learn that Walesa talked to the SB. But does this mean he crossed the red line?

That’s far from certain,” wrote Kurski. “Walesa is like one of Shakespeare’s characters. He’s a tragic character but also a great one. That’s how he’s always been, a combination of pettiness and greatness. That’s the Walesa we know and love.”

Mr. Kurski was Lech Walesa’s spokesman during Poland’s transition from communism to democracy in 1989/90. He wrote the first critical biography of Walesa ”Wodz” (”The leader”).

Additionaly, Mr. Kurski and Adam Michnik, Gazeta’s editor-in-chief, both wrote long opinion articles about Walesa in Gazeta’s weekly literary supplement Gazeta Swiateczna.

Mr. Michnik was a prominent member of democratic opposition in the 60-80s and an advisor to Walesa during 80s. So he wrote very emotionally: “Hands off Lech Walesa!”

Although he, too, has criticised Walesa for his presidency, he cannot accept that the Polish Transformation should be dragged through the mud:

I cannot write about this from a purely political point of view. I am simply appalled, I feel bitterness and resentment. I would never have thought that Poland would do such a thing on the 25th anniversary of the Nobel Peace Prize for its national hero. Don’t say that you are uncovering things and want to reveal the truth that others (the establishment?) want to hide. You are lying.

2. Series: Seven choices of Lech Walesa

Gazeta decided to tell the full story of Mr. Walesa’s life in a series of features about his seven most dramatic choices from 1970 to today.

These stories were accompanied by archive photos, excerpts from Mr. Wales’s speeches, interviews and writings, articles of the official and underground press, and a historical column telling younger readers the background about living in the Communist Poland.

Gazeta published their work for seven consecutive days (one choice per day) in a special 4-page section in the newspaper. Look at the first section and the collection of all seven section’s front pages:

This editorial project involved a team of 26 people from editorial and marketing departments of Gazeta.
There were 9 reporters working on stories and backgrounds, 1 video reporter, 6 editors (1 responsible only for letters from readers), 3 photo editors, 4 designers and graphicians, 1 webmaster, 2 promoters.

They all produced a new biography about Mr. Walesa in less than five days! We made a ”go” decision on Wednesday evening, the first ads appeared in the newspaper on Friday and the first part of the series run in the Monday issue.

3. Letters: My Lech Walesa

Gazeta invited readers to collect their memories on Mr. Walesa and write essays for Gazeta: about their meetings, his role in their lives, their opinion on him and how these opinions changed over time.

We got hundreds of such letters and we managed to publish only small selection in print. We could put much more letters online.

4. Online features

Gazeta’s online edition – Wyborcza.pl – created a special section on the net with all the stories about Walesa and readers’ letters.

It was used as a promotional tool for the printed newspaper: the website’s layout familiarised readers with an idea of the series and introduced the next parts before they were published.

A video reporter added interviews with Mr. Walesa who commented on all the choices that Gazeta’s editors were describing in their features.