I just sat in on a round-table about Social Networking at our annual Tanner Conference, and I left it still thinking about a number of issues, including questions about where people source their news from and whether they trust their sources. I passed by some copies of the Wellesley News and realized that I never read the Wellesley News, even though I’m quite interested in journalism. I never read the News because I assume that I’ll hear about anything newsworthy on Community, our online forum for general discussion, debate, and advertising spam. I’d like to talk about this issue more with people on campus, perhaps people that are in my major or that are interested in the same questions.

My first thought was to post my epiphany on Twitter, as I often do these days. But I don’t think I could fit the thought into 140 characters, and I don’t think it would elicit any discussion. I could, alternatively, post about it here (which I am doing right now, technically…) but that won’t prompt any discussion, either.

I could bring the topic up in a classroom, but I’m not studying anything in class right now that relates directly to this question of news access on campus.

I could go all old-school and just talk to someone face to face, but even that is improbable.

The one thing I could do that would probably elicit the response I’m looking for is post to Community itself to talk about Community, which is a little redundant, but it’s a conclusion I find interesting. I suppose I’m still not quite sure where I’m going with this, but at least I know this – we need a better forum for conversation about issues, and the forum needs to connect us with the audience we’re looking for. I want to talk to a specific subset of people about specific issues, but I don’t want to just send them an email, for that would be too direct. What other options are there?

But wouldn’t it be better to change the tone of that information completely? What if instead of being bombarded by insta-updates about things that don’t really matter, we could tune in to real conversations about the issues that need to be discussed? Everything I’m reading about journalism points to the responsibility journalists have to bring issues and information to the public and to help create an informed democracy. Even more, everything I’m reading about social media points to the intelligence and power of a crowd. Can’t we funnel our collective interest in the world and the internet into a more powerful and important conversation?

It also seems as if people wouldn’t be interested in a such a conversation. We are drawn to information that directly concerns us: updates from our friends or about our distinct interests. (And to celebrities, but that’s another story.) With the changes in commenting structures and social commenting/networking for news articles, however, it seems possible to build a model for greater conversations of issues with members of our social network in a way that could actually interest people.

It just seems logical and helpful to replace some of the quickfire (and useless) second-by-second updates about nothing with quickfire responses to a greater conversation, if it could hold our attention.