The Winipeg Free Press, a newspaper in Canada, is moving some of their employees out of the newsroom and out into the world. They’ve opened a cafe called the News Cafe that in addition to serving coffee, the cafe hosts events, but also offers the public an opportunity to interact with journalists and editors who rotate in and out of the cafe weekly.
The Nieman Journalism Lab has more:
So, how do the journalists get any work done? “People ask me that a lot, actually,†said Wiebe.
“Social media is actually work that is well-suited to this type of environment. It’s a lot of small tasks,†she said. “Social media is about connecting with people, and if I’m going to be doing that, it makes sense to be doing that in a public way.â€
She adds that chatting with people is part of her journalistic function — not a impediment to it. “It helps a lot that I have editors who are pretty supportive of the idea that talking to the public is my job,†she said. “That’s not time-wasting and taking away from my duties. That’s part of what we’re doing here.â€