Blogs and Journalism

“The invention of the Weblog has shoved journalism into a reformation, perhaps a revolution,” wrote Joseph Rago, an assistant editorial features editor at the Wall Street Journal[1].

The majority of blogs on the Internet are simply personal web sites — sites that exist because blogging software is free, readily available, and automates much of the HTML coding needed for web publication[2]. But for many of these “bloggers,” the motivation to use these tools is frustration with the traditional media. Now that the publishing tools are at the people’s disposal, blogs are “giving voice to those who, in the pre-Internet era, may have felt voiceless” [3].

So mainstream journalists and their traditional news organizations can hardly ignore the exponential proliferation of blogs. Blogs are challenging the news industry to embrace new ways of practicing journalism, one that places value on collaboration as a way to re-establish credibility with readers.

There is a line to be drawn between the short-form, diary-type information presented in the average blog and “journalism.” Most weblogs do not provide verifiable sources or original reporting. Most weblogs do not present news of interest to the broader public or adhere to an ideal of objectivity and fairness. Rather, the typical blog is personal, laced with a tone of informality, aimed at a niche audience and deeply opinionated.

“We rarely encounter sustained or systematic blog thought – instead panics and manias, endless rehearsings of arguments put forward elsewhere; and a tendencies to substitute ideology for cognition,” criticized Rago of Wall Street Journal[1].

But despite the news industry’s displeasure with blogs and typical bloggers, almost all major news organizations now feature professional journalist-driven blogs of their own. Seasoned journalists are using blogs to expand their own writing repertoire in the days of shrinking news hole. Others use the self-serve publication software to expand on their regular news stories, provide live ‘breaking news’ updates or eyewitness accounts, to express opinions, start conversations, and, for those who know how to blog well, build community.

Blogs are able to break down many of the existing barriers between journalists and the public because they propel journalists into a larger community where “a posting is picked up and passed from one blogger to the next, each adding community and expanding the discussion”[4]. Instead of following the highly-structured narrative of print journalism, blog writing style is more informal and approachable, inviting the reader to participate [5].

Hyperlinking is a fundamental aspect of blogging, and it is being done by journalist bloggers. Good journalists weave together information from many sources to make a bigger whole and to provide perspective. Hyperlinking allows journalist bloggers to directly link to online resources. Linking to numerous primary sources allows writers to give context to complex stories. Hyperlinking provides a level of transparency that is impossible with a printed news story. Willing readers can determine for themselves whether the subject matter has been accurately represented[6].

According to Rebecca Blood, author of “The Weblog Handbook,” “Bloggers who reference, but do not link material that might, in its entirety, undermine their conclusions, are intellectually dishonest.” Not surprisingly, blogs serve as a corrective mechanism for bad journalism. Sloppy reporting and mistakes are likely to be quickly publicized and passed around the blogosphere. The ever-watchful eye of the blogosphere is nudging the print media to pursue more balanced sourcing outside the traditional halls of government and corporations[7].

“By widening the disclosure circle through information sharing, Weblogs along with other Internet mechanism, have contributed to the truth-finding process,” observed Paul Andrews, a columnist and blogger at the Seattle Times[8].

Journalist bloggers are also taking on the role of “conversation leaders.” A blog entry is a “stub for conversation,” according to Vincent J. Maher, lecturer in new media studies at Rhodes Univ., S. Africa. News reports, generally, also start a lot of conversations. Blogging allows that conversation leader role to become more explicit. Because they offer instant interactivity, blogs engendering dialogue and exchanges[9]. Journalist bloggers can guide their conversations by being active in the dialog, linking to additional sources, sifting through new information, aggregating, encouraging good contributions, discouraging bad ones, and highlighting smart ideas from the public. What the public has to say about what’s being written on a blog is regarded as just as important as what the professional journalist wrote. Readers opinions, posted publicly, add value to the blog as a whole.

“Journalists bloggers can essentially work with citizen journalists to enrich news stories with the perspectives of “everyday Joes and Janes, who offer more voices, more texture to public debate,” wrote Jose Vargas in a Nov. 2007 article in the Washington Post.

Some mainstream journalists have even used blogs to “float” story ideas before the public and get reader input on how to pursue them[10]. Andrews, the Seattle Times blogger, observed that “in the sense that many minds contribute to greater understanding, blogs are helping journalism expand from a centralized, top-down, one-way publication processes to the many-hands, perpetual feedback loop of online communications”[11].

Journalistic blogging is taking on new forms, too, such as microblogging. Some mainstream news organizations are now using a social networking website called Twitter to text message 140-character-maximum reporting ‘updates’ from the field.

“One of the things were are supposed to do a journalists is take people where they can’t go,” John Dickerson, chief political correspondent for the online magazine Slate, told the New York Times[12]. “[Microblogging] is much more authentic, because it is really from inside the room.”

Microblogging often amounts to about two sentences of information, presented with typos and incomplete sentences. But it has been called “genuine” and at times “enlightening” because it takes advantage of the immediacy of the web and mobile information and communications technology (ICT), and taps into the curiosity and impatience of modern information consumers [13].

But blogging by professional journalists does not come without problems, and risks. Bloggers can’t help but thrive on their opinions and the medium is fast and furious. Less rigorous editing, if any at all, is the norm because of the web’s immediacy. Readers will not perceive a difference between a news organization’s online blog post and a story that is printed. Weblogs maintained and written by professional journalists at traditional news organizations will be judged as “journalism” if they uphold the same standards as the entire organization[14].

‘Behaving in a manner that safeguards the integrity of the news institution and avoids real or perceived conflicts of interest is central to the compact between a journalist and his employer,” wrote Brian Toolan, former editor of The Hartford Courant[15]. “Journalists should operate in ways that don’t display bias or predisposition. These are ethical considerations, not legal ones, but they are central to the conduct of journalism.”

References:

1. Rago, Joseph. The Blog Mob. Wall Street Journal, (December 20, 2006). Eastern Edition.

2. Andrews, Paul. Is Blogging Journalism? Nieman Reports. Vol. 57. No. 3 (Fall 2003): 63-64.

3. Vargas, Jose Antonio. Storming the News Gatekeepers; On the Internet, Citizen Journalists Raise Their Voices. The Washington Post. (November 27, 2007).

4, 5, 10. Grabowicz, Paul. Weblogs Bring Journalists Into A Larger Community. Nieman Reports. Vol. 57. No. 3: 74-76.

6. Blood, Rebecca. Weblogs and Journalism: Do They Connect? Nieman Reports. Vol. 57. No. 3 (Fall 2003): 61-63.

7. 8, 9, 11. Andrews, Paul. Is Blogging Journalism? Nieman Reports. Vol. 57. No. 3 (Fall 2003): 63-64.

12, 13. Cohen, Noam. Campaign Reporting in Under 140 Taps. New York Times. Jan. 21, 2008, Late Edition. C3.

14. Howell, Deborah. A Blog’s Blast Damage. The Washington Post, (February 11, 2007). Final Edition. http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed February 2, 2008).

15. Toolan, Brian. An Editor Acts to Limit a Staffer’s Weblog. Nieman Reports. .Vol. 57. No. 3 (Fall 2003): 92-93

*Note: This essay was written by Marie K. Shanahan for a graduate level course at Quinnipiac University in Spring 2008. A collaboratively-edited version of this essay is included in a Wiki called “The New Communication Professional” at http://newcompro.halavais.net.

State of the News Media 2008

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

“The state of the American news media in 2008 is more troubled than a year ago.

And the problems, increasingly, appear to be different than many experts have predicted.

Critics have tended to see technology democratizing the media and traditional journalism in decline. Audiences, they say, are fragmenting across new information sources, breaking the grip of media elites. Some people even advocate the notion of “The Long Tail,” the idea that, with the Web’s infinite potential for depth, millions of niche markets could be bigger than the old mass market dominated by large companies and producers.1

The reality, increasingly, appears more complex….”

– http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org

History of Propaganda in America

Fascinating. This is part one of six.

Watch the rest here.

Marketing to the Long Tail

A powerful new model has emerged within the economics of e-commerce, observed Chris Anderson in his 2004 Wired magazine article, “The Long Tail.” [1] Today’s consumers have highly-individualized tastes that include more than just mainstream fare. With the help of foresighted, all-inclusive online retailers, people are getting what they want: offbeat movie rentals from Netflix, obscure books from Amazon.com, indie music downloads from iTunes, and outrageously specific auctions from eBay.

The long tail theory asserts that consumers are willing to seek out those niche products that appeal to their innermost sense of self. [2] Long tail retailers are first attracting people with their prominent mainstream offerings, and then keeping them clicking and buying with the obscure. These online purveyors combine infinite shelf space and unlimited selection with real-time information about buying trends and public opinion. Recommendations – generated by either human editors or genre databases – drive demand deeper into vast catalogs of choices.

“Everyone’s taste departs from mainstream somewhere, and the more we explore alternatives, the more we’re drawn to them,” Anderson wrote.

Niche markets have become big business. Where marketers once ignored the “tail” because they did not have the means to make obscure products available to their audiences, the internet is allowing companies to reach well-defined micro-markets. The limitations of distribution costs and shelf space have ceased to exist. Successful online retailers are now making just as much money from “esoteric” purchases as they are from mainstream “hits” [3].

Make everything available. “Almost anything is worth offering on the off chance it will find a buyer,” Anderson recommended.

But the more products retailers make available, the harder it can become for consumers to sift though the choices to find the product they want. People will be overwhelmed and less likely to buy if the catalog is poorly organized. So it is imperative that long tail retailers create user-friendly web sites with interfaces that are easily navigable and provide intiutive search tools to facilitate ’self-discovery’ of products [4].

There are three other long tail forces that have become prevalent. First, the tools of production have been open-sourced, giving the masses the ability to make their own products and media. Second, The tools of distribution have also been ‘democratized.’ EBay, for example, allows any user to reach millions of potential customers by listing a product on its web site. And third, supply and demand have been connected. Consumers can be introduced to new products and drive demand for them through recommendations, electronic word-of-mouth, blogs or customer reviews. [5]

Long tail success seems to boil down to a finely-tuned “open network of more.” So as consumer attitudes and expectations shift, so must marketing strategies. Marketers are dealing with a networked public. As such, the principles of the long tail must also be applied to the marketing of the long tail.

Marketers should use all possible venues to get a message in front of the intended audience. Marketing is being made “viral” with the diffusion of information about a product and its adoption over the network.[6] Companies can find new opportunities for “customer retention” and “lifetime value” by applying the concepts of dialogue marketing and network-building. Traditionally, most companies have believed that 80 percent of their business came from 20 percent of their customers. However, by applying long tail relationship-building principles, companies can do a better job of retaining all customers, specifically those customers who are not in the top 20 percent of revenue-producers. [7]

Word-of-mouth marketing is especially notable in a long tail world. Word-of-mouth exchanges are no longer restricted to small-group interactions between individuals. Consumers are using the internet as a personal publishing tool and sharing their experiences and opinions regarding products and/or services with anyone and everyone through emails, message boards, reader recommendations and/or blogs.

Blogs are able to quickly spread information at the grassroots level. They are open to frequent widespread observation, and “offer an inexpensive opportunity to capture large volumes of information flows at the individual level.” And within the blogosphere, sharing discussion of a new and interesting topic with others in one’s immediate social circle may bring pleasure or even increased status to that individual. [8]

Marketing strategies for products and services can incorporate the all-inclusive nature of the long tail. Marketers are continuing to use traditional public relations methods, such as press releases and media kits sent to mainstream media journalists, as well as garnering the attention of influential people within a community who can really help boost the exposure of a product. Marketers should not abandon paid advertising in mainstream media – newspapers, radio, television, billboards, as well as in online media such as Google ads and banner ads on target-audience and genre-specific web sites. Any product or organization should also have its own web site, serving as its public face to the world.

But to tap the long tail audience, marketers have to expand upon what they’ve done in the past. Consumers are showing increasing resistance to traditional forms of advertising such as TV or newspaper ads. When it comes to niche products, using a traditional advertising approach is impractical and probably not very effective. Long tail marketing is more feasible because it exploits existing social networks by personalizing the experience for customers and encouraging them to share niche product information with their friends and the world-at-large. Targeted marketing at networked virtual communities is more advantageous both to the merchant and the consumer, who will benefit from learning about new products.[9]

Movies, for example, take advantage of this type of marketing. Movie trailers and film photo galleries are made available on the official movie web sites. The same marketing assets are also distributed to mainstream media groups such as newspapers, niche web sites such as IMDB.com, and social networking sites such as YouTube and MySpace. Fan web sites, particularly fan bloggers, also play a big part in the marketing. Marketers are tapping into a highly-captive audiences and allowing the network of fans to play a part in the development and release of films. This niche audience — a networked community — can build even more momentum and resonance for a product.

References:

Chris Anderson, “The Long Tail,” Wired Magazine 12, no. 10 (October, 2004).

Rick Ferguson, Kelly Hlavinka. “The long tail of loyalty: how personalized dialogue and customized rewards will change marketing forever.” The Journal of Consumer Marketing 23, no. 6 (September 20, 2006): 357-361. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0736-3761.htm

David Meerman Scott. “Chase the Long Tail to the Next Frontier.” EContent, September 1, 2006, 48. http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed February 28, 2008).

Erik Brynjolfsson, Yu Jeffrey Hu, Michael D. Smith “From Niches to Riches: Anatomy of the Long Tail.” MIT Sloan Management Review 47, no. 4 (July 1, 2006): 67-71. .

“PROFILE: What is the ‘long tail’?” Brand Strategy, March 12, 2007, 19.

Jure Leskovec , Lada A. Adamic , Bernardo A. Huberman, The dynamics of viral marketing, Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Electronic commerce, p.228-237, June 11-15, 2006, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Also, ACM Transactions on the Web, 1, 1 (May 2007). http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ladamic/papers/viral/viralTWeb.pdf (accessed February 28, 2008).

Rick Ferguson, Kelly Hlavinka. “The long tail of loyalty: how personalized dialogue and customized rewards will change marketing forever.” The Journal of Consumer Marketing 23, no. 6 (September 20, 2006): 357-361. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0736-3761.htm

Gruhl, D., Guha, R., Liben-Nowell, D., and Tomkins, A. “Information Diffusion Through Blogspace.” In Proceedings of the 13th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW’04), May 2004, pp. 491–501. http://people.csail.mit.edu/dln/papers/blogs/idib.pdf (accessed February 28, 2008).

Jure Leskovec , Lada A. Adamic , Bernardo A. Huberman, The dynamics of viral marketing, Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Electronic commerce, p.228-237, June 11-15, 2006, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA . Also, ACM Transactions on the Web, 1, 1 (May 2007). http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ladamic/papers/viral/viralTWeb.pdf (accessed February 28, 2008).

*Note: This essay was written by Marie K. Shanahan for a graduate level course at Quinnipiac University in Spring 2008. A collaboratively-edited version of this essay is included in a Wiki called “The New Communication Professional” at http://newcompro.halavais.net.