Moving ahead online

Font Size:

By David Burke | Monday, March 26, 2007 10:31 AM CDT | () comments

I was asked to speak to area arts journalists a few weeks ago in Galesburg, Ill., as a prelude to the Sandburg Days Festival For the Mind, which takes place next month, on a topic that ol’ Carl never would have even imagined.

I talked about the Internet and online work related to arts journalism, armed with knowledge and facts and figures from the National Endowment For the Arts Institute in Theatre and Musical Theatre.

The audience ran the spectrum, from the woman who asked “What is a blog, anyway?” to a journalist who had seemingly already mapped out the Internet and a timetable for the demise of the printed newspaper.

The Q&A was so pointed and direct that I felt like I needed to wear a cup.

How can you put everything online without losing print readers? How can online and print play off each other, instead of one or the other? How do you fit online endeavors into an already-busy work schedule? Would Daytrotter.com — the acclaimed indie music Web site created by Quad-City Times sportswriter and music writer Sean Moeller — have gotten off the ground if he had done it through the newspaper?

I tried to have answers but felt at times like I was contradicting myself. Yes, Internet innovations are mandatory in the newspaper’s future, but I feel like there will always be a place for the printed product.

Our Web site, www.qctimes.com, has made incredible bounds in the past year thanks to online editor Jim Gale and his staff. And the potential is limitless.

We want to expand where we’re going, particularly in the entertainment portion of the site.

On the topics of both national entertainment and local entertainment, what would you like to see on the site?

Would you like to see trailers of upcoming movies? Video interviews with directors in local theater? More national entertainment stories that couldn’t find their way into print? Audio previews of what you might be able to expect from a symphony concert? Podcasts of interviews with big-name performers coming through the area?

We want to be the online source for entertainment information in the Quad-Cities. And that begins by finding out what you want. Let me know at dburke@qctimes.com.