contactBlogging about blogging
Posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Earlier this month I participated in the National Writers Workshop weekend in Hartford. One of the most interesting sessions I attended was “Blogs: The Million-Man Newsroom” by Denis Horgan, who is a senior producer and writer for MSNBC’s “Countdown With Keith Obermann” and runs “The News Hole,” the show’s blog. The standing-room-only audience included two reporters who blog for washingtonpost.com, reporters from the Baltimore Sun and scores of others who wanted to learn more about either creating a blog or publicizing an existing one.
Unfortunately, there were a significant number of attendees who were disdainful of blogs. One women prefaced her question with the ridiculous statement that “Bloggers have no ethics.” Some complained about how their bylined articles had been copied and posted in whole onto someone’s site and no link included back to the original article. One questioner wanted to know if he should “sic the paper’s lawyers” on bloggers who republish his work and then intersperse their own comments throughout. Denis was able to steer the conversation in a pragmatic direction and advised how to use bloggers as a way to build your audience. Considering how many former newspaper subscribers are now reading blogs, this is sound advice.
When I was at Forbes.com, one of the audience-development strategies my team and I used was sending a weekly content update to influential bloggers and encouraging them to post a link to the article on the ForbesAutos.com site. This paid off for us in increased pageviews to such niche content as our coverage of The 2006 Bullrun: New York to Los Angeles rally, an invite-only cross-country adventure. Our Bullrun coverage was featured on the homepage of the official Bullrun site, mentioned on car blog Jalopnik.com and linked to from Hayden Christensen fan sites (the actor, who is best known for his role as Anakin Skywalker in two Star Wars films, was one of the drivers for Team Christensen) as well as dozens of other blogs.
Reporters and editors who are blog-savvy recognize this medium as a wonderful way to attract a larger audience to their newspaper and magazine.com site. Rather than attempt to shut down bloggers who aren’t familiar with copyright law, gently educate them and convince them to link to the original article rather than reproducing it in whole.
Do you have a story about how something you posted online got picked up by a blog? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
Posted in: Blog, Denis Horgan, National Writers Workshop
Comments
Dave says:
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:19 PM
I was there at the same presentation by Horgan, and this happened exactly as stated. I was surprised at the low level of understanding that many in the old media have of the new media. More importantly, what was even more amazing is that these people did not see that the Internet is self-policing: when someone makes a claim of a news event or story, it is broken down by partisans and critics alike. The blogosphere is in reality pretty close to a free market of news, where the best, most interesting and TRUE news is exposed to the rest of the world.
Dan Rather found this out the hard way, although, even so, the best that the blogosphere could come up with against his National Guard story is that it was merely inconclusive–it was not actually proven wrong.
Paul says:
May 10th, 2007 at 2:06 PM
My favorite story about self-policing on the Intertubes involves the bit about Tom Sizemore starring in a movie that scored the lowest box office ever. Chud.com broke the story and Variety later picked it up without crediting Chud. So, of course, the blogosphere’s fury descended on Variety for its bad netiquette. But it didn’t end there. Entertainment Weekly ultimately did a nice piece about the Sizemore movie and why it fetched only 30 bucks at the box office. A main element of the story was how Chud broke the story and Variety lifted it without credit. So even the MSM called out Variety.
Blogging has become so easy now with various cookie-cutter templates out there that even grandma could figure out how to blog. That’s why some bloggers are pretty ignorant about copyright law, etc. Recently, I noticed that a school board candidate who put up a blog during her campaign and continued blogging after her failed bid had posted articles from the paper I work at on her site. I told her that was a no-no, but that she was free to put links up to the stories on her site. She replied that she was unaware that she had posted any articles of ours on her site. Clearly she had either forgotten or didn’t even understand what I was trying to tell her. But that’s OK. It’s no big deal. Citizen journalists will catch on eventually and I welcome them wholeheartedly. I’m very Jeffersonian in my view of Democracy — the more involvement, the better. Wikipedia might be wrong today about something, but eventually it will get it right and it will be far more definitive than Britannica. Water finds its own level, as the old saw goes. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the process of creating Wiki largely reflects what we do as journalists. The first reports of any news are rife with errors and holes — because we don’t have all the facts yet. Eventually, as we gather more facts, we get the story right. These MSMers who bash bloggers are people who call IT every five minutes because they forgot their password or they can’t understand how to send an attachment in an e-mail. They’ll all be retired soon anyway, so I just laugh them off.
Laura says:
May 10th, 2007 at 2:28 PM
I agree that instead of censoring/prosecuting bloggers, education is the key. Blogging is the new forum for critical thinking about a whole variety of issues. In the academic world, especially in English classes, where, like journalists, we deal with copyright issues on daily basis, we make every attempt to educate our students about copyright laws and what is appropriate blogging, website material, etc. Many students come into our classes ignorant of copyright laws, flaming and internet ettiquette–we hope they come out with a new sense of appreciation of what is appropriate and what isn’t. We also want them to understand the power and usefulness of blogging as well. We encourage them to use blogs as a sounding board for their ideas, as a way to enter a community of writers, and to lend their voices to public discussion. Journalists, educators, writers, anyone blogging, the more we work together to model/ uphold online standards of conduct and to educate, the less we will have to talk about calling in the lawyers.
Laura says:
May 10th, 2007 at 2:35 PM
The writers I know police their own copyrighted material carefully and try to handle minor infringements on their own. Of course, major infractions still should be prosecuted.
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