At the Future of Journalism conference Jeff Jarvis, journalism professor at City University New York, MediaGuardian contributor and BuzzMachine blogger, offered 10 questions news outlets should be asking themselves and the Guardian in particular. Here's a selection:

1 - "Who are we?"
History is "full of companies that had failed to answer this question and lost their way", said Jarvis.

He discussed how AOL could have become what Facebook is today if they hadn't been sidetracked into thinking they were a "content company." Likewise, Yahoo could have become what Google is, if it had embraced the fact that it was "really an advertising company."

In his opinion, the Guardian is "increasingly a 'community' company" but future growth could stem from thinking of the paper as a "platform" or "network". News organizations should try to "collaborate and mobilise" effectively, perhaps by including audience reports of news events.

3 - Are we generous?

This may be done by "sharing technology, supporting people with the Guardian ad network" and "allowing people to be stars in the outside world", reported the Guardian.

5 - Are we findable?

News websites should be findable and should include "distributed content, content that is open for developers to build applications (or widgets), content that is findable on social media, and content that can be consumed on mobile."

Newspaper websites should act like platforms, sharing "knowledge and promotion and traffic and advertising and branding" Jarvis said.

Other questions for newspapers to ask themselves include:

"Are we inventing new narratives?"
"Are we in data layers?"
"Are we having fun yet?"
"Are we agile?"

Source: Guardian Online

See Also:
@Future of Journalism: the benefits of Twitter
@Future of Journalism: reporting celebrity news