As the 21st century dawns and the blogosphere takes over, journalists at print newspapers aren't the only professionals who are worrying.
Public and media relations journalists don't quite know how to handle the new phenomenon either. Gone are the days when a standard, canned news release sent out to the same e-mail list day and and day out suffices as "public relations". Because blogging is all about injecting personal opinion and using filters to skip to what you really want to read about, public relations has to be about personalization too. As PR expert and blogger Steve Rubel put it, "For the first time, public relations means relating with the public."
Unfortunately, anyone who's been in the PR industry for more than five years probably doesn't have formal training in blog-speak. They're used to the standard news-style press release; how do they approach bloggers and customize their response for each and every one of them? How, some might think, is it possible to cultivate a relationship with someone whose face they'll never see and whose voice they'll never hear?
PR professionals have to resign themselves to the fact that connecting with people in the blogospohere is simply more difficult than typing up a few paragraphs and hitting the "send" button. They also have to get used to the fact that their role is no more significant than the perhaps thousands of other commentators of a blog, and their carefully-crafted messages might get lost in a sea of comment threads. A white paper released by the PR firm Edelman shows how these new obstacles can actually be used to a PR company's advantage.
The white paper points out that bloggers don't want to hear things that don't obviously interest them, so strategic communicators can't simply send a them press release that's "scattershot" because it's designed to interest everybody at once. Sending the kind of information that might pull a blogger in requires research--reading the blog--and selection--picking the elements of a general release the communicator thinks will be most valuable to the blogger.
Suddenly, with the advent of blogs, strategic communications has just gotten a lot more strategic, and I believe that's the way it should be. After all, public relations journalists have always striven to connect with their contacts and build a relationship of trust, and what better way than to do it through blogging? Whereas in a traditional PR situation communicators might not know much about the convictions of their clients, in the blogosphere it's increasingly more possible to intimately get to know your target audience. Companies should take advantage of online buzz by using it to direct the buzz in their favor.
The same applies to communicators of the future, even if they're not strategic communicators and even if they don't plan a future in PR. Every journalist should understand not just the power a blogger holds, but the power anyone who comments on a blog can hold. Were I to pick three blogs where I commented on a post and left a link to my blog, I may be able to double my traffic level in a matter of days depending on the popularity and audience of the blogs. (Now that's power journalism!) I myself am not a strategic communicator, but in blogging, all communicators have to think strategically.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Blogs: What Works and Why
There's no accounting for taste. My dad loves primitive, crackling old recordings of bluegrass singers that bore most people (my mom, for one) to death. My uncle loves the kind of jazz where anything goes, all improvisation and squealing saxophones and pounding piano keys. Some 80-year-olds can't get enough of P. Diddy. Some 20-year-olds are hooked on the sounds of the 17th century.
(OK, so "some 20-year-olds" is actually code for "me.")
Luckily, there's a blog out there for every taste. For my dad, there's www.bluegrassblog.com, a place where he can hook up with his vinyl-loving brethren. For my uncle, there's Free Jazz, where a girl named Stef regularly reviews new jazz CDs and groups; he can even filter the blog to only display entries that discuss modern jazz. For me, there's a whole myriad of blogs, and I visit them regularly. Author Alex Ross, who wrote a book on 20th century classical music called The Rest is Noise, keeps a blog of the same name where he discusses classical goings-on and muses about the future of the genre. I can filter The New York Times' ArtsBeat blog to only show entries about classical music. Best of all, I can see what's going on musically in my own backyard with David Stabler's almost daily updated classical music blog on The Oregonian's web site.
Why do all these blogs work? For one, because they're all regularly updated. People who keep a blog with the intention of gathering a steady readership must give their following something to read about at least every few days. For another, all these blogs--with the possible exception of Free Jazz--are kept by professional writers who are diligent fact-checkers and grammar Nazis. The better you write and the more authoritative you are on the subject you're writing about, it seems, the more readers trust you as a news source and appreciate what you have to say on subjects they care about.
But in blogging, what's even more important than writing skill and frequent updates is niche appeal. All the blogs above have those in spades. It almost seems that the more specific the subject of a blog, the more zealous the followers. I once interviewed a Palo Alto couple who started a blog about the accordion, and they told me that when they changed the title of the blog from "Let's Polka" to "Let's Banjo" for April Fool's Day, one outraged follower left the most negative comment the couple has ever seen on their blog thus far.
In an article printed in the December 2006/January 2007 American Journalism Review, Dana Hull describes how "the Fourth Estate has fallen fast and furiously in love with blogs, from news-driven ones about professional sports teams, real estate, crime, Hurricane Katrina, immigration and local and national politics to zanier ones that dive deep into niche subcultures." Newspaper staffers have found that blogs are a nice place to put pieces of information that are interesting but don't fit into the print edition and may not appeal to a wide public audience.
Since the Internet took over the world of news, increasingly more online newspaper subscrubers have demanded the world of their hometown newspapers and have even customized the main page so that they see articles about subjects they prefer to read up on at the top of the page. Because the possbilities the Internet offers know no bounds, people have come to expect a myriad of information on their specific interests in their newspapers as well as their Google search engines. I, for one, am glad newspapers have wholeheartedly accepted the challenge set by their readers; ten years ago, I couldn't find a classical music article in the news to save my life. Now, thanks to cyberspace, classical news is all over the place.
On the dark side, Hull mentions in her article that newspaper-affiliated blogging has raised questions about how true to news style blogs must stay while maintaining their casual, breezy and sometimes snarky style popular with readers. Just how honest and opinionated can reporters be in their blogs without losing credibility as a neutral source in their regular news stories?
I say, don't touch the sensitive issues--religion, politics, going bald--and utilize the blog as a way to divulge information that either wasn't important enough to make it into the paper or wasn't interesting enough to the general masses. People will appreciate a more casual, behind-the-scenes personal touch to news they didn't get in print.
(OK, so "some 20-year-olds" is actually code for "me.")
Luckily, there's a blog out there for every taste. For my dad, there's www.bluegrassblog.com, a place where he can hook up with his vinyl-loving brethren. For my uncle, there's Free Jazz, where a girl named Stef regularly reviews new jazz CDs and groups; he can even filter the blog to only display entries that discuss modern jazz. For me, there's a whole myriad of blogs, and I visit them regularly. Author Alex Ross, who wrote a book on 20th century classical music called The Rest is Noise, keeps a blog of the same name where he discusses classical goings-on and muses about the future of the genre. I can filter The New York Times' ArtsBeat blog to only show entries about classical music. Best of all, I can see what's going on musically in my own backyard with David Stabler's almost daily updated classical music blog on The Oregonian's web site.
Why do all these blogs work? For one, because they're all regularly updated. People who keep a blog with the intention of gathering a steady readership must give their following something to read about at least every few days. For another, all these blogs--with the possible exception of Free Jazz--are kept by professional writers who are diligent fact-checkers and grammar Nazis. The better you write and the more authoritative you are on the subject you're writing about, it seems, the more readers trust you as a news source and appreciate what you have to say on subjects they care about.
But in blogging, what's even more important than writing skill and frequent updates is niche appeal. All the blogs above have those in spades. It almost seems that the more specific the subject of a blog, the more zealous the followers. I once interviewed a Palo Alto couple who started a blog about the accordion, and they told me that when they changed the title of the blog from "Let's Polka" to "Let's Banjo" for April Fool's Day, one outraged follower left the most negative comment the couple has ever seen on their blog thus far.
In an article printed in the December 2006/January 2007 American Journalism Review, Dana Hull describes how "the Fourth Estate has fallen fast and furiously in love with blogs, from news-driven ones about professional sports teams, real estate, crime, Hurricane Katrina, immigration and local and national politics to zanier ones that dive deep into niche subcultures." Newspaper staffers have found that blogs are a nice place to put pieces of information that are interesting but don't fit into the print edition and may not appeal to a wide public audience.
Since the Internet took over the world of news, increasingly more online newspaper subscrubers have demanded the world of their hometown newspapers and have even customized the main page so that they see articles about subjects they prefer to read up on at the top of the page. Because the possbilities the Internet offers know no bounds, people have come to expect a myriad of information on their specific interests in their newspapers as well as their Google search engines. I, for one, am glad newspapers have wholeheartedly accepted the challenge set by their readers; ten years ago, I couldn't find a classical music article in the news to save my life. Now, thanks to cyberspace, classical news is all over the place.
On the dark side, Hull mentions in her article that newspaper-affiliated blogging has raised questions about how true to news style blogs must stay while maintaining their casual, breezy and sometimes snarky style popular with readers. Just how honest and opinionated can reporters be in their blogs without losing credibility as a neutral source in their regular news stories?
I say, don't touch the sensitive issues--religion, politics, going bald--and utilize the blog as a way to divulge information that either wasn't important enough to make it into the paper or wasn't interesting enough to the general masses. People will appreciate a more casual, behind-the-scenes personal touch to news they didn't get in print.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Are bloggers "journalists"?
Over the past few months, there has been much talk of unity between the two presidential candidates and their running mates. It's been a long time since Republicans and Democrats have been as divided as they are today. Those who vote red and those who vote blue agree on fewer issues than they might have a decade ago. That's why, according to the politicians who may soon run the country, we need to make an effort to move closer together if we want to accomplish anything; otherwise, we'll never be able to collaborate and accomplish something.
The same goes for journalism, according to Steve Outing. Think of bloggers and news reporters as red states and blue states. Though they're positioned in people's minds at opposite ends of the journalistic spectrum, dependable news may vanish if they don't band together. But unlike liberals and conservatives, bloggers and print journalists have already begun to adopt each other's writing techniques and traditions to give readers what they want. However, according to Outing, each camp still has a lot to learn from the other.
Because I've freelanced and beat-reported at my school newspaper for two years, I consider myself first and foremost to be a print journalist. I take pride in the fact that I conduct background research on all my sources, ask people how to spell names and places and companies without relying on the Internet for the answer, and make the trip to the courthouse to take a look at the records myself rather than call someone up and ask them to tell me what they say. Therefore, it's sometimes frustrating to see so many widely-read blogs that can post a link to one of my stories, offer a paragraph of unstructured opinion and garner 40-odd readers' comments. What do these people have that I don't?
Well, the answer is obvious: opinion. Newspapers know the edginess and partiality of blogs is what attracts readers to Wordpress and Blogger en masse, yet they aren't willing to give up the impartiality crucial to reliable reporting. In order to jump on the bandwagon, reporters have increasingly tried to incorporate opinion in their coverage by keeping a blog on their newspaper's Web site--but these blogs still don't attract as much attention as their unaffiliated brethren. Still, keeping blogs is helpful and, some might argue, crucial to a reporter's job because it offers the audience a chance to chime in and gives a reporter feedback that helps him or her determine the public mood. Newspapers that don't know what its audiences think or talk about aren't good newspapers.
Bloggers, on the other hand, know exactly what their readers want. On the one hand, that's positive news; on the other, it may adversely affect the blogger's posted content so that it begins to reflect more on the audience's tastes than on the blogger's own. Such an outcome is dangerous both to the blogger and to the audience; while one loses his or her perspective, the other only reads what it wants to read and doesn't get diverse coverage.
It's easy to expound on the upsides and downsides of blogging and traditional journalism; it's better to focus on what both entities are doing right. Both are making an effort to start dialogues with the general public. Both are honing their reporting skills. Both are changing rapidly, and both could become so much like the other that they become one entity.
Links to Steve outing's articles:
What Bloggers Can Learn From Journalists
What Journalists Can Learn From Bloggers
The same goes for journalism, according to Steve Outing. Think of bloggers and news reporters as red states and blue states. Though they're positioned in people's minds at opposite ends of the journalistic spectrum, dependable news may vanish if they don't band together. But unlike liberals and conservatives, bloggers and print journalists have already begun to adopt each other's writing techniques and traditions to give readers what they want. However, according to Outing, each camp still has a lot to learn from the other.
Because I've freelanced and beat-reported at my school newspaper for two years, I consider myself first and foremost to be a print journalist. I take pride in the fact that I conduct background research on all my sources, ask people how to spell names and places and companies without relying on the Internet for the answer, and make the trip to the courthouse to take a look at the records myself rather than call someone up and ask them to tell me what they say. Therefore, it's sometimes frustrating to see so many widely-read blogs that can post a link to one of my stories, offer a paragraph of unstructured opinion and garner 40-odd readers' comments. What do these people have that I don't?
Well, the answer is obvious: opinion. Newspapers know the edginess and partiality of blogs is what attracts readers to Wordpress and Blogger en masse, yet they aren't willing to give up the impartiality crucial to reliable reporting. In order to jump on the bandwagon, reporters have increasingly tried to incorporate opinion in their coverage by keeping a blog on their newspaper's Web site--but these blogs still don't attract as much attention as their unaffiliated brethren. Still, keeping blogs is helpful and, some might argue, crucial to a reporter's job because it offers the audience a chance to chime in and gives a reporter feedback that helps him or her determine the public mood. Newspapers that don't know what its audiences think or talk about aren't good newspapers.
Bloggers, on the other hand, know exactly what their readers want. On the one hand, that's positive news; on the other, it may adversely affect the blogger's posted content so that it begins to reflect more on the audience's tastes than on the blogger's own. Such an outcome is dangerous both to the blogger and to the audience; while one loses his or her perspective, the other only reads what it wants to read and doesn't get diverse coverage.
It's easy to expound on the upsides and downsides of blogging and traditional journalism; it's better to focus on what both entities are doing right. Both are making an effort to start dialogues with the general public. Both are honing their reporting skills. Both are changing rapidly, and both could become so much like the other that they become one entity.
Links to Steve outing's articles:
What Bloggers Can Learn From Journalists
What Journalists Can Learn From Bloggers
On Blogging and the Blogosphere
What's a blog? According to UrbanDictionary.com, it's a term short for "web log", a kind of online diary where people can post their thoughts for others to read. Another definition states it's a "meandering, blatantly uninteresting online diary that gives the author the illusion that people are interested in their stupid, pathetic life." Yet another definition: "a rare opportunity to broadcast one's views to the entire world."
UrbanDictionary.com is not a real dictionary revised by editors and printed in hardbacked volumes annually, but it captures the spirit of the blog more than Merriam Webster ever could. Blogs can argue the merits of peppermint versus tutti frutti toothpaste or discuss the role foreign policy will play in the 2008 presidential election. They can be read by everyone or only by a select group of people. Each entry may have two readers' comments or 2,000.
The flexibility and the variation of blogs is part of the reason why the news industry is suffering today. Try as they might, they can't offer the myriad of perspectives on every imaginable topic that the blogosphere serves up daily. But are blogs reliable news sources? Can they replace newspapers?
I have mixed feelings about becoming a blogger myself. On the one hand, this very form of publication may dash any chance I have for becoming a newspaper reporter after I graduate from school in two years. On the other, blogging offers the unique opportunity to reach out to a niche audience that doesn't necessarily read newspapers.
For better or for worse, however, for the next couple of months I'll be blogging about journalism and its relationship with the Internet. Stay tuned.
UrbanDictionary.com is not a real dictionary revised by editors and printed in hardbacked volumes annually, but it captures the spirit of the blog more than Merriam Webster ever could. Blogs can argue the merits of peppermint versus tutti frutti toothpaste or discuss the role foreign policy will play in the 2008 presidential election. They can be read by everyone or only by a select group of people. Each entry may have two readers' comments or 2,000.
The flexibility and the variation of blogs is part of the reason why the news industry is suffering today. Try as they might, they can't offer the myriad of perspectives on every imaginable topic that the blogosphere serves up daily. But are blogs reliable news sources? Can they replace newspapers?
I have mixed feelings about becoming a blogger myself. On the one hand, this very form of publication may dash any chance I have for becoming a newspaper reporter after I graduate from school in two years. On the other, blogging offers the unique opportunity to reach out to a niche audience that doesn't necessarily read newspapers.
For better or for worse, however, for the next couple of months I'll be blogging about journalism and its relationship with the Internet. Stay tuned.
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