Old Media, New Media Need to Learn from Each Other - What New Media Companies Can Learn from Old Media
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Rosenberg mentioned a dirty little secret in his article: new media companies have "print envy." "They won't admit it, but I would guess the salespeople at TheStreet.com for example, would not mind walking into an ad agency like Mindshare and seeing a glossy representation of their content sitting on the coffee table saddled next to Fortune and Business Week." It's worth asking why that typically doesn't happen, and why a new media company might want it to happen.
Old media still garners somewhat more authority and respect than new media, though that's diminishing almost daily. But the reason they still have that authority and respect is because they have traditionally held high standards, and made their writers conform to them.
Contrast that with the much shorter "tradition" of the independent blogger. Bloggers usually write about whatever topics attract them. They have all the enthusiasm of your typical amateur, which is good, but many of them are not professional writers (let alone journalists). Anthony Moor, a writer for the Orlando Sentinel's online site, observed over a year ago that "What makes us journalists is our ability to gather facts, synthesize, and write about the world around us -- and those are not necessarily the requirements of blogging." He was answering a question put to him of whether newspapers can do blogs right, but the point is well-taken.
Bloggers don't have to be inaccurate or engage in unethical practices. They don't have to turn into journalists either. But if they tend to take a breezy approach to their blogging, it helps to be reminded that there are other ways of approaching content. Certainly, bloggers have blown the whistle when old media sources got information wrong -- and that made news because in general we don't expect bloggers to act as watchdogs over old media, or spot factual errors. Of course, incidents such as the one involving bloggers and Dan Rather make one think that perhaps both old media and new media have something to learn about fact-checking.
Next: Where Do Bloggers Fit in? >>
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