Blogosphere as “giant wire service”

Posted on July 1, 2008 by Steve Mays

Clyde Bentley, a Missouri School of Journalism professor whoresearches user-generated news, speaking at the Future of Journalism conference at Harvard, June 20-21:

The debate over bloggers’ influence “is over,” he said. “Blogging is a numbers game. It’s there and we’ll just have to deal with it.” Noting that 120,000 new blogs a day dwarf the country’s 1,427 dailies, he said editors should treat the blogosphere like a giant wire service. Bentley said that while consumer demand for content decreases, their demand for content navigation increases. “There will always be a place for the journalist who can craft a story better than anyone else, but there will be a bigger place for the journalist who can help media consumers find the information they want.” — Poynter: Centerpieces

Sports fan blogs

Posted on June 29, 2008 by Steve Mays

Interesting story on NPR this morning about a sports blog called The LoHud Yankees Blog. The blog seems to be a collaborative effort by Journal News beat writer Peter Abraham and a shit-load of fans. According to the NPR piece, a post can get as many as a thousand comments and readers will post to the blog form the stands, in the middle of a game.

I have a theory about blogs like this one. If the Yankees organization tried to create such a successful blog, they couldn’t. Wouldn’t matter how much money they threw at it. There is some organic quality to really successful blogs like this one that is damned hard for big institutions to foster.

Smart companies will find and encourage and support efforts like this one. Is there a risk that someone will post something unflattering about the Yankees? Of course. But get a clue… they’ll do that anyway.

Most of the pro leagues have some sort of dumb-ass policy regarding live-blogging of games by reporters so I’m a little curious how the Journal News is pulling this off. If Mr. Abraham or someone from the paper stumbles across this post, I’d love to know the answer. Could it be the Yankees are smart enough to know a really good thing when they see it?

“Scared to let our people blog”

Posted on June 26, 2008 by Steve Mays

Kevin O’Keefe points to an excellent post by Liz Strauss, an expert in corporate online communications. Whether they say the words or not, many companies are afraid to let their employees blog. Liz wonders “is the blog the problem?”

“Look to the people. Isn’t the issue one of trust and control? The employer is concerned about what employees might write on the blog. We let employees talk to customers daily — answering email, answering phone call, answering questions at exhibits, and answering letters at the office. We trust what they write on behalf of our company. We once worried in the same way about the telephone and email.

It comes down to hiring and training employees who make good decisions. If we trust our ability to choose the right employees and to let them know the values that we hold for our company and our customers, the question of whether we should let them blog falls away as an issue. A blog is a powerful, customer-facing tool. Like a computer, it’s as strong as the people we choose to use it.”

Kevin was told recently of one senior lawyer who was told by the firm that they would not be permitted to blog. ‘The firm does not allow its lawyers to blog.’

The lawyer responded with a question. ‘Why am I working at a place that does not trust me to talk about what I do – about a niche in the law I am passionate about?’

“The Beltway-Blog Battle”

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Steve Mays

Writing in Time Magazine, James Poniewozek has an interesting take (The Beltway-Blog Battle) on the passing of Tim Russert.

“…the press lost its most authoritative mass-market journalist, just as it is losing its authority and its mass market.”

The New Meida vs. Old Media argument got tiresome a long time ago, but Mr. Poniewozek offers a fresh take. A few paragraphs to wet your whistle:

“In their original division of labor, the old media broke news while the blogs dispensed opinion. But look at two of the biggest stories of the Democratic primary: Barack Obama’s comments that working-class voters are “bitter” and Bill Clinton’s rope-line rant that a reporter who profiled him was a “scumbag.” Both were broken by a volunteer for the Huffington Post website, Mayhill Fowler.

Traditional reporters were aghast at Fowler’s methods–the Obama meeting was closed to press (she got in as a donor), and Fowler did not identify herself when speaking to Clinton. But mainstream media had no problem treating the scoops as big news; if she had overheard both quotes in the same way but told them to a newspaper instead of publishing them, that would have been considered a coup.

The case against Fowler, in other words, was about process and credentials, not content. If sources stop trusting us, reporters asked, how will we do our jobs? But however sneaky her methods, Fowler’s stories prove that one reason sites like Huffington have an audience is the perception that Establishment journalism has gotten better at serving its powerful sources than its public. Fiascoes like the Iraq-WMD reporting gave many the impression that the old rules mainly protect consultant-cosseted public officials who need protection least.”

[For more on the Mayhill Fowler story, here’s a bit of audio with Arianna Huffington, speaking at Guardian News & Media’s internal Future of Journalism event on 18th June 2008.]

Mr. Poniewozik poses this rather rude question regarding MSM: “…if 3 million people read Drudge and 65,000 read the New Republic, which is mainstream?”

This blog’s reading level: Elementary School

Posted on June 20, 2008 by Steve Mays

Elementary_school I checked this a couple of years ago with the same results. The reading level of smays.com is elementary school, according to this website. The high end of the scale goes up college (maybe grad school?) and I think elementary school is the low end (do pre-schoolers read?).

I know it doesn’t sound like it, but I think it might be a good thing to write at a level that third graders can follow. I assure you, I’m not trying to write down to anyone. The words you read are the ones in hear in my head. Hmm. See smays blog. Blog smays, blog.

Writing for how people read online

Posted on June 17, 2008 by Steve Mays

Interesting little post at Slate on how people read online (and how to write for them). Readers tend to be "selfish, lazy and ruthless." When you arrive on a page, you don’t actually deign to read it. You scan. If you don’t see what you need, you’re gone.

“This blogging stuff”

Posted on June 16, 2008 by Steve Mays

Springfield Mayor Tom Carlson got all Rottweiler’y on the local press recently and among his complaints, anonymous bloggers:

“On top of that, we have this Internet thing that’s going on now, this blogging stuff. Used to be, if you wanted to say something, you had to put your name it … now, there’s this anonymous character assassination that’s encouraged, in order to sell newspapers or other media outlets.”

It’s been a while since I heard/saw “this Internet thing.” One of my favorite expressions. But His Honor and I do agree on the anonymous blogging issue. He has no way of knowing if the blogger who is ripping him a new one is his opponent. And we have know way of knowing if the blogger who supports his every action is his press secretary.

Citizen journalists

Posted on June 3, 2008 by Steve Mays

Lightning started a fire at the Magellan Petroleum factory in Kansas City, MO and uber-blogger Chuck Zimmerman share this video shot from the downtown Marriott hotel.

smays.com

"We can think of technology as our extended body." — What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly

Tag Archives: blogging