Billy, we didn’t invent this world, we just teach students how to get along with it. Many “old media” journalists long to put the genie back in, but that ain’t happening. I want my students to have the best possible information, and sharpest skills, to make a living in the highly competitive online publishing world as it now exists, and will in the future. UGC is a huge, and very useful, part of that world.

User generated content sites are driving down advertising rates and the pay the very students you train can expect to earn and yet the “professors” at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism continue to promote the very thing that will put all of you out of work. Your very students are entering into a job market that competes with free– how hard is that to figure out?

I guess there’s something to the old saying, “Those that can do, those that can’t teach.”

I would strongly argue that once you publish your content to the web, you are relinquishing a large degree of control. The question is, in releasing that story, how do you maximize that story’s benefit to you? Putting the cat back in the bag doesn’t work with digital media, and there’s little solution to being able to manage content, say, across blogs to propagate updates or corrections.

To crib an example from Benkler (who used it to argue how there were obstacles in addition to copyright in earlier years): newspapers used to be delivered daily, and their wide distribution and timely availability meant that their being copied wouldn’t be profitable. By contrast, in the current age, that copying can happen instantaneously. Once you release a story into the wilds of the Internet, for better or worse, it’s out there.

You’re right, there are a multitude of possible working relationships between amateur and professional content producers. I didn’t mean to simplify the situation, but to provide one example of a clear benefit to “giving away” content.

Better integration of bloggers and newspapers is a difficult goal for reasons of power, as well. Much as we’re sitting here with Robin asking, “why should I give newspapers my content?” the publishers are asking, “why should we have open forums?” There’s a power struggle afoot, and publishers feel threatened. They would probably have a very strong negative reaction to their publication being essentially an aggregator for blog content. Bloggers, on the other hand, are more open to the idea of free flow of information and ideas, because it’s more the world they live in.

Still, why isn’t there a better discussion about how to integrate–not co-opt, not impress into service, not control–local blog content via an aggregation model? Why does the option always have to be for the content to go directly into a newspaper provided CMS rather than co-operating with the local blogosphere? Honestly, when bloggers band together, link to one another, they begin to become a force and a community on their own and increase one another’s visibility without the ageis of the newspaper. It’s not unheard of…

Andrew, you might want to step back for a moment on your “open mind” comment re dissent in a community–think about how blogging for a newspaper might actually work to filter or perhaps even completely halt open dialog on particular regional issues (I live in what could be called “small-town America” and see some of this.) IMO, the independent placeblogger can add far more to community dialog, and perhaps even hold a newspaper accountable, then might someone whose blog is part of the local paper.

So, perhaps the discussion shouldn’t be about compelling people to blog on your site because you’ll deliver readers to them. Rather, the discussion should be about how the newspaper can gather up and aggregate the local blogosphere so that both newspapers and bloggers retain their independence and increase community dialogue. Separation of “church and state” may be the better paradigm.

This shift of monetizing content (your words/audio/video) directly to monetizing and growing services that deliver content (your site) takes a leap of faith.

That said, the McClatchy example you provide doesn’t sound promising; no response to emails or phone calls is never a good sign. Also, if this site has a low readership, you’re not going to get new converts out of the relationship. You may be better off propagating certain content to a more widely-viewed site like YouTube.

My suggestion would be to keep an open mind about creating unpaid content for other sites, and not be too precious with your content, but perhaps pass on this particular opportunity.

Now tell me why I should contribute free content to McClatchy, the publisher of my local paper. Sure, I posted some videos to their site (and won supposedly $500 in prize money, of which they’ve only paid $250), and other videos I’ve posted there linked to my InternetVideoPromotion.com side business, but now they don’t seem to post videos I send them at all, and calling or emailing the Bradenton Herald typically does *not* get a response, so I don’t know why. So now I have no incentive at all to send them my material.

Now, if they or one of the other local print media want to *pay* me to blog (or make videos) for them, sure.

But work for them for free? Why?