Organise your audience

This post is part of the Car­ni­val of Journ­al­ism. Latin vic­tims amongst you will recog­nise that the carnival’s root, carne vale, trans­lates as ‘meat, farewell.’

And ori­gin­ally car­ni­val was a fest­ival adap­ted to pre­pare people for the lean period that fol­lowed the exhaust­ing of the meat from anim­als slaughtered for winter.

So — as we enter a lean period for the news busi­ness — the title has a par­tic­u­lar, twis­ted resonance.

My fel­low car­ni­vallers are address­ing the small, incre­mental changes to help fuel change at your news­room. Here’s my two cents.

Stuff the plu­gins. Go organ­ise your audi­ence. The New Yorker and the Eco­nom­ist run events and debates. Britain’s Daily Tele­graph spon­sors small lit­er­ary fest­ivals across its heartland.

If the com­munity your paper serves is los­ing ways to cel­eb­rate its exist­ence, step into the gap.

There. Two cents.