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The five stages of new media acceptance

The blog Lost Remote has published what the bloggers consider to be the five stages of new media acceptance. You can probably look back at your own experience with anything from the Web to Twitter and find yourself on the list. Here they are:

1. Denial: You believe the new app is useless, doesn’t apply to community journalism, or definitely won’t make any money for your newspaper.
2. Disbelief: You read about the app’s use at other newspapers and can’t believe people are wasting their time. And even if it IS working for them, you know it won’t work in your town or at your newspaper.
3. Trial: OK, you decide you’ll give it a brief trial since so many others are doing it. But you are pretty sure nothing will come of it.
4. Acceptance: It works! Readers are following you on Twitter. Your website is getting hits from your Facebook page!
5. Piousness: You run into your friends at TPA meetings and tell them that anyone who doesn’t have a Facebook page is hopelessly behind the times. You call the Center’s Andrew Chavez and ask if he wants you to “give a testimony” on the success of your website at the next workshop.

By Kathryn Jones Malone

Kathryn Jones Malone is co-director of the Texas Center for Community Journalism. She began her career as a staff writer at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, then worked as a staff writer for the Dallas Times Herald and The Dallas Morning News; as a contract writer for The New York Times; as a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly magazine; as editor of the Glen Rose Reporter; and as a freelance writer for numerous state, regional and national magazines. She teaches journalism at Tarleton State University.