Newspaper or Social Networking site: You decide

Our newspaper launched it's redesign this week. Included with the new look of the paper is the addition of Pluck, a social networking site no where near as intuitive to use as MySpace, et al. This is because Gannett is cheap and buys things that don't work quite right to a few cents.

All of its properties are now all Plucked up. (Just a hint of the jokes flying around the office.) This means, in addition to my editor, columnist, and payroll duties, I now how to help manage this social networking site - because I work nights and weekends - and keep my profile page interesting and up-to-date. So I'm blogging in two sites - there and here - uploading photo galleries of whatever I can think of to photograph, leaving messages on other people's profiles and all around trying to spur people on to using our site a social gathering place.

We had to go to training for this. So of the choicest Office Space-like moments where when we were told, "People used to visit our Web sites, now we want them to live there."

You'll be glad to know that we've gone from calling our customers, "readers" - which denotes a monologue - to "audience" - which denotes a dialogue - and now to "communities" - which denotes a polylogue. You're guess is as good as mine as to what that means.

Finally we learned this little gem, a variation on the Customer Is Always Right: The Reader Is The Expert. That is Gannett's new philosophy for all its news products. Nevermind that our readers all seem to be crazy, racist, losers who live at home with their mothers. They are all experts. No need for any other sources. Just listen to the readers. They'll tell you all you need to know.

I couldn't make this stuff up, if I tried.