Last night something terrible happened. A young woman was struck and killed crossing Front St. shortly before the Raptors game ended. There were little to no people around at the time. Today, the local newspaper has an article describing what happened and it mentions that the “street was full of traffic”. This is inaccurate.

I know it’s inaccurate because I was there, three cars removed from the intersection where it happened, no more than 10-20 minutes after it happened. EMS arrived shortly later. The police began blocking the street. Liz, in the passenger seat, was exclaiming she could see a body in the street. I couldn’t see one (my view was obstructed) but tragically, she was right. And, there was no traffic. We left the game early. I was still listening to the closing remarks on the local sports radio station. Except for a few people hoping to beat the impending post-game traffic rush, the traffic was light to non-existent.

Today over email Liz, questioning the inaccuracy of the article’s details, had this to say:

…What I don’t get is why there were 3 people on the story’s byline. It took 3 employees to write a short and inaccurate story that except for the age of the girl, you probably could have written on your iPhone if I had let you out to go talk to people sitting in the Tims.

Talk about a microcosm of the dying newspaper industry. Things happen so fast in this world, and despite 3 people staffed to cover it, they can’t get it right? On the flip side, with so many citizen journalists at the ready to report and disseminate information how can a newspaper, built on a model that hasn’t changed in over a 100 years, keep up in this economy? The short answer is: They can’t…right away. (CNN has a great article I recommend to get up to speed on what’s happening in the newspaper market. It’s not pretty.).

So what’s a newspaper to do? Well, the answer lies in the context. User-generated content and citizen journalism, like reality TV, can only take you so far. There is still a desperate need for great writing in this world. After all, who will provide the informed commentary and context that will spark conversation and debate? Not the guy down the street. Not me. It’s got to be the newspapers.

The challenge is, can new journalism be participatory? Can it be more responsive? Can it secede mundane tasks like beat reporting to crowdsourcing?

These are the questions that we’re asking of a current client at work. Hopefully if we do our job right, we can just get back to accurate, trusted news and not everyone will have to lose their job.