Feeling blogged down?


Blogs like this one are going to increasingly form a part of the news stream
Michael Malone writes a great piece on the mainstream media feeling out some of the more prominent and respectable bloggers.

It is officially entitled "The Oxford & York Media, Communications & Technology Summit" — but it really is the first annual summit meeting between Mainstream Media and the blogosphere. For that reason, the panelists range from senior executives at Reuters, the Financial Times, Forbes and Sony BMG Music to, on the other end, folks from Yahoo!, Odeo and AdventuresofChester.com. The audience, largely composed of CEOs and advertising executives, is equally diverse. The goal is not to throw spitballs at each other (which has largely characterized relations between the MSM and blogosphere in the past) but to see if there is some common ground where the two can work together.

Frankly, they have to — each has something the other needs to survive. The MSM has the money and the infrastructure. Over the centuries, it has perfected the art of converting print into dollars. But the MSM is also in trouble, losing both customers and legitimacy at a shocking rate. The recent circulation scandals among the nation's leading newspapers, the Dan Rather/"60 Minutes" fiasco, and now the astonishing self-destruction of The New York Times, show just how desperate and troubled the MSM has become.

What the MSM lacks, the blogosphere has in spades: energy, momentum, and a growing audience. But what bloggers lack is money — bloggers have yet to find an efficient way to turn their hard work into revenue … and until they do, blogging will always be a lonely sidelight, vulnerable to dying with the next missed mortgage check.

Natural antagonists, the mainstream media and the blogosphere now need to find a way to work together — or both the news and publishing professions will find themselves in an even worse crisis than they are in now, and all of us will be the worse for it. That's why this summit is over-subscribed, and last minute sign-ups were still taking place even as I got on the plane yesterday.

Hat tip to Tammy Bruce.

I do think blogs will form a major portion of the news in the future. Yes, some of it is going to be on growing roses, but there we can expect more detailed information on more subjects as time goes on. Not all of it will be good, but expect the average quality to rise.

As a side effect, maybe the blog revolution will help turn around the declining literacy rate,

I remember the first thing that convinced me that maybe weblogs could be useful. It was during the 2004 campaign, and there was some very interesting information about John Kerry's service. I had no idea how accurate the information was, but I definitely was fascinated.

And evidently I am not the only one. According to Poynteronline, Adveristing Age reports that U.S. workers spend about three and a half hours a week reading and responding to blogs. AA calls it waste but I am not so sure. Some of the most successful companies I know encouraged their employees to read everything from trade journals to news weeklies to general interest magazines.

Hat to Juliaki for that last one.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - October 27, 2005 at 05:20 PM  Tag


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