Jack Driscoll, citizen journalist

Henry Jenkins of MIT interviews retired Boston Globe editor Jack Driscoll, who’s been editor-in-residence at the MIT Media Lab since 1995. When it comes to technology and change, Driscoll is an early adopter. I recall his being a significant presence at a digital-media seminar I attended at Columbia University during the early 1990s.

So what’s Driscoll up to now? He’s a founder of Rye Reflections, a citizen-journalism site in his adopted community of Rye, N.H. (check out his story on a leash-law proposal), and the author of “Couch Potatoes Sprout: The Rise of Online Community Journalism.” Here’s what he tells Jenkins about the impetus behind projects such Rye Reflections and similar sites:

[T]here seems to be a feeling that their communities are not being covered in the media. Newspaper staff cutbacks have exacerbated the problem. It’s not just the institutional news, but the stories about the fabric of the community, the personalities, the achievements of groups of individuals, the problems, the culture.

Sounds like Driscoll has done more during his retirement than most of us manage to do during our careers.