There's an interesting debate going on among some newspaper industry watchers, concerning how newspapers should approach the question of "community." Paul Gillin has written that the concept of newspapers building communities is a fallacy and that newspapers shouldn't even try. He notes that the idea of a community around newspaper content usually just doesn't make much sense, and newspapers are simply hopping on the buzzword bandwagon in yelling "community" without any real sense of how to build one. As he notes, a newspaper's strength isn't in building community, but in creating content.

Steve Yelvington blasts back that Gillin is quite mistaken and that community is the most important thing that newspapers should be focusing on: "Failure to build community is one of the many reasons so many newspapers are in so much trouble right now."