The growing array of online tools and services which enable new forms of communication leads to increased demand for interaction from the audiences. This means that the media increasingly need to operate within the context of a collaborative culture. In the light of this, some media producers encourage audience participation and take advantage of user-generated content, whereas others adopt a more inflexible stance. Most media are expected to try to find a stable position somewhere between the two extremes, attempting to establish a new relationship with their audiences. This article can be read as a dialogue in which, on the one hand, we provide specific examples to explain that the trend towards the creation of true participatory communities for creating content is unstoppable and, on the other, we provide a series of reflections from the journalistic perspective as to how to manage the demand for interaction and boost audience participation.