If All The Cool Bloggers Can Wiki, How About A Major Newspaper?

from the um.--no. dept

You know those times when someone who obviously shouldn't, tries out a new style of clothing or a bit of slang to try to seem cooler/younger/more "in" than they really are and it backfires really badly? Yeah, well, it seems like that's what's about to happen with the LA Times. Michael Kinsley has only been on the job for a little while and he's already trying to shake things up and make the LA Times seem a little more with-it when it comes to the digital crowd. However, his latest move just sounds bizarre. He's going to be adding editable "wikitorials" -- editorials that anyone will be able to go in and edit themselves. While you have to think it's nice that a newspaper recognizes what a wiki is, you have to wonder if the folks at the LA Times recognize that this isn't actually what a wiki is useful for. Wikis work in collaborative environments for brainstorming in building up an idea or a concept -- not in taking a fully formed opinion piece and then letting everyone mess around with it. This makes even less sense than asking a few readers to blog about articles in the paper. At least that has the potential to be interesting. The wikitorial concept just seems like the newspaper trying to jump on the wiki bandwagon without ever understanding what a wiki is useful for or why anyone would want to go in and edit an editorial.

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