Newsrooms need crazy new job roles

Tribes chief Seth Godin reccommended these job titles for any company that works online and media consultant Terry Heaton says "that to the extent that media companies are attempting to reinvent themselves, these certainly apply to them as well:"

  1. COMMUNITY ORGANIZER. Find and connect and lead a tribe of dedicated users that contribute to and benefit from the work you do.
  2. STATS FIEND. Measure everything that can be measured. Do it efficiently and consistently. Find out what metrics are important and cycle until they improve.
  3.  MANAGER OF FREELANCERS. Find and hire and manage the best outside talent in the world. If it can be defined as a project, and if great work defeats good, seriously consider having the MOF get it done.
Do you have any of these in your news organization? Do you see a need for people to play these roles? What's the most non-traditional title in your organization?

Trace Sharp suggest a good job role/title would be "Blog Jockey."

"Just like the early VJ's of MTV, I think mainstream media outlets need to add media positions of blog jockeys for lack of a better term. In the day of the internet just like the days of early radio, having a personality that connects with the community, giving that person time to cultivate and grow the audience (something WKRN didn't get to do) is a sign of success in every major city and for the good of the state as a whole."
Mathew Ingram was recently named the "communities editor" of the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Kurt Greenbaum is the "director of social media" at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Whether named or not, these are roles for newsrooms embracing the future.