On Point Web 2.0

If you landed at onpointradio.org and wondered what had happened — well, don't worry, you've got the right address. We've just replaced the old edifice with something a little more, shall we say, architecturally ambitious. Call it our own small version of Web 2.0...

When we set out to redesign On Point's website, roughly six months ago, we quickly realized that we were actually talking about re-launching our whole web presence. Our whole way of being online.

You hear that phrase a lot: "Web presence." And for good reason. Being present on the web is no longer an afterthought for any enterprise. Especially a journalistic one. If you're not present — fully present — on the web, you might as well not exist.

But present in what way? What does it mean to be fully present on the web if you're a radio show like On Point?

I thought about this question a lot over the past year, since I arrived here at On Point (by way of print and web jobs at The Atlantic, PBS Frontline, and The Boston Globe), and it led me to a couple of Big Thoughts (sorry!): first, that the website and the show are one and the same; and second, that they’re all about You.

We hear so much these days about new media overtaking the old media of print, radio, and television, it's easy to forget that the old and the new co-exist and co-mingle in our daily lives. It’s not an either/or proposition. It never has been. It’s a question of synthesis, symbiosis — of what each can learn and acquire from the other as the distinctions between our media become less obvious and less relevant. For all of you who experience On Point here online, the website is the show, and the show is the website.

Which brings me, again, to you. The most important thing we’ve added to our web presence as we launch this new site is, in fact, nothing other than you. That is to say, your thoughts, your words, your online voice. Every show page and blog post we publish on this site invites your comments. We want you to be a living, breathing part of the conversation here. And as we go forward, we want to start bringing your comments from the site into the conversation on the air.

There are lots of other things we've added or changed on the site, and we hope you’ll let us know what you think of the whole thing — where we can still make improvements, and where we (hopefully, just maybe) got it right. And as always, we want to know what you think of the shows we’re producing, what topics you think we should be covering, what questions we should be asking. After all, you’re the reason we’re doing this.

Cheers,

Wen Stephenson
Senior Producer, On Point