Take a look sometime at the Wikipedia entry for “weekly newspaper” just to see how accurately it describes what you do.

For a general description of a general subject, I think Wikipedia’s description is pretty accurate.

Wikipedia, of course, touts itself as the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

 

In its definition explaining what it is (at least on the day I pulled it up), Wikipedia says it is a multilingual, Web-based, free content encyclopedia.

The project, operated by the non-profit Wikipedia Foundation, encompasses more than 9 million articles in 252 languages, according to stats it posted in early December.

As much readership and support as the site attracts, Wikipedia has its share of detractors, including some academics who decry its reliance on consensus rather than credentials.

Still, like it or not, we live in a wiki world and with the advent of e-readers like Amazon.com’s Kindle, access to information, however it’s created, will only get worse or better, depending on your perspective.

As Steven Levy noted in a recent Newsweek article, “All this becomes even headier when you consider that as the e-book reader is coming of age, there are huge initiatives under way to digitize entire libraries.”

This migration to a world full of digitized, fully accessible and fully interactive content has ramifications, of course, for our newspaper model.

Will the weekly and daily newspaper survive as a collaborative process? When, as Kevin Kelly wrote in New York Times magazine, “the entire works of humankind, from beginning of recorded history, in all languages, (are) available to all people, all the time.”

I think the answer is “yes.”

Because, for the most part, we don’t have that far to leap. And our information is there because we are there. We have functioned, however inefficiently, for years as the de facto gathering place for all these scraps and  “loose end” information in our individual communities and niches.

We are where the obituary resides, and the wedding announcement, as well as the high-school sports statistics and even the lunch menu at the senior center. We are where the regular citizens nag the town council about the potholes. And where readers complain that the economy has gone in the toilet as those in charge explain it is not their doing.

If we are replaced by technologies that detour around this function, it is our own fault.

It could happen if we refuse to participate.

That’s why I think newspapers need to embrace the wiki world. Use the tools. Encourage the process of collaboration.

Perhaps now is the time that parts of your newspaper become ones that anyone can edit.

Rob Carrigan is in the sales and business development group of weekly newspaper publisher Colorado Publishing Co., a Dolan Media Co. unit based in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at rob.carrigan@csmng.com.