A newspaper for tomorrow's world

Some will probably argue that this is long overdue, but I was heartened to read about how The Bakersfield Californian has "transformed itself into a new media showcase" according to The Guardian's Roy Greenslade. The paper boasts an impressive range of social media features including staff blogs, podcasts, vodcasts and three citizen-journalism fed community papers with online counterparts.

"It's really about participation, and participatory media. Participation is at the heart of the Internet. The Internet is a social medium, primarily... It's not really a question of whether newspapers can figure out citizen journalism, it's more that newspapers have to learn how to participate, because people on the Internet already know how to do that," Mary Lou Fulton, the Californian's Vice President of Audience Development, told The Online Journalism Review.