Distributed media has given us all a voice. You know longer need to own a printing press to enjoy the freedom of reaching a wide audience. But those same tools are also in the hands of big media, and when employed, they can also expose crank readers to a little ridicule. Here’s the original Chron podcast, and the hilarious YouTube mash up that resulted.

This is conversational media. It’s not always pretty.

UPDATE: Poynter tackles the podcast and asks, … “what does it actually do to further the mission of the newspaper?”

Well, it reflects concerns of real readers about coverage in the paper, whether right or wrong; it provides one more entry point into a conversation between the paper and the community; it gives people with complaints a wider audience to air their grievances; it removes one more brick in the wall between editorial decision making and community input — notice all of these things that I list are about conversation, which should have always been the mission of the newspaper, but is now the imperative of the newspaper.