Old Media, New Media Need to Learn from Each Other - Where Do Bloggers Fit in?
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Bloggers are a product of new media. Call it user-generated content, or citizen journalism, but many newspapers and other old media companies see blogs as a way to give them what new media companies have and they lack. Frankly, they aren't -- unless you approach adding bloggers in the right way.
First of all, if you do use staff-written blogs, make sure that whoever is writing understands the blogging culture. Learn from the problems the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times had with their staff bloggers last year. At the former, Ben Domenech resigned when outside bloggers turned up many examples of plagiarism in his work. At the latter, Michael Hiltzik -- a Pulitzer Prize winner -- posted comments under false identities in his and other blogs, causing the LA Times to suspend his blog when it was discovered.
Second, don't launch a blog without a purpose. Here's a hint: seeing that lots of people are searching for particular terms is not a good reason to start a blog on that topic. You want advertising income? Make sure whatever blogs you add fit into your site's purpose and content as a whole -- and please make sure you get in a blogger who knows how to blog and knows the topic material.
This leads to a third tip: give your bloggers some guidance. Lisa Stone from BlogHer.org offers this advice to newspapers trying to introduce bloggers: "Call in a blog expert with a journalism background and have this outside person walk you through community scenarios to test what your newsroom (and management) can tolerate and what you cannot. If nudie pictures on your wiki are a no-no, you have a choice to make: (a) Don't publish the wiki, and/or (b) Don't publish the wiki without human and/or technical filters." Similarly, if you want to make sure your bloggers don't violate fair use, you must make sure they know what fair use is, tell them you don't want them to violate it, and get them to sign an agreement that they won't.
Finally, be prepared to learn from your bloggers. If you're old media, don't automatically assume that bloggers are clueless -- they aren't. And if you're a blogger, understand that old media's standards are there for a reason; you might even raise the profile and respect accorded to your own blog. Keith W. Jenkins, writing for the Washington Post, observed that many of the decision-makers in the newsroom "have never built a web page by hand, watched Rocketboom, or listened to a pod cast. They don't 'get' YouTube and have never heard of Flickr or del.icio.us or Boing Boing. They think viewing a 30-inch story on a cell phone is cutting edge and don't understand that I would rather spend 10 minutes downloading...videos or hanging out in Second Life, than reading their newspapers -- even the online version." It's a whole new world out there, and if old media wants to remain relevant, it will have to be prepared to learn how to fit itself to the new model -- to work and even think like new media.
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