Embrace the Blog Revolution

Ed: Blogs and reporting - any difference?

Legacy publishers write endlessly about internal processes that distinguish their output. Efforts to justify their value-add implicitly criticizes blogs. Ultimately, readers scan the headlines and vote with return visits and active participation. 

My friend Mac McCarthy says that the most loyal subscribers are often writers. Online, the fastest growing segment have been bloggers who actively write about their online experiences. Statements to belittle blogs simply create enemies among the best web citizens who are the most likely readers. 

Writers who attack blogs commit hara-kiri. Suicide is the certain path to the end of legacy journalism.

US: Greenslade to print journalists: Embrace the blog revolution

from editorsweblog

The blogosphere's interactive, communal spirit is shaking the foundations of print journalism, but traditional journalists should embrace the change, says Roy Greenslade. News, he says, is no longer "one-way traffic".

"We [print journalists] conceived it [news]. We gathered it. We published it and broadcast it," he writes. "Blogging turns that model on its head. It allows people to question the information we provide. It allows them to produce their own information. It offers them a space to air their own views."

Greenslade says he is no longer certain that his own model of the future newsroom - a core of "professional journalists" overseeing a fringe group of bloggers - is viable. The news organization, he says, is vulnerable.

"...More fundamentally, I wonder whether a news organization is as perfect a model as we might think...It is entirely conceivable that the digital revolution may, in the fullness of time, sweep the media mogul aside," he writes.

Not that this is anything to be afraid of. Greenslade is ebullient when talking about the liberating potential of the blogosphere.

"The joy of the digital revolution is that it is bloodless, and democracy is at its heart," Greenslade writes. "It is the lack of unity that makes blogging so vibrant, so critical and also so self-critical."

For traditionalists who still cling to the old model - journalists as providers, citizens as recipients - and fear relinquishing this power to bloggers, Greenslade has some advice: let go.

"There is no us and them," he writes.

Click here for more on the converging media.

US: MySpace and NBC News to enlist citizen journalists to cover party conventions

from editorsweblog

In an innovative ploy, MySpace and NBC News are recruiting citizen journalists to cover the Democratic and Republican national conventions. 

Anyone over 18 years old can apply by submitting a short video piece answering one of three reflective questions: "Why do you vote?" "Why are you the best person for this job?" Or "How will you stand out in the crowd and get the scoop no one else can?"

A panel of judges will select five finalists, and the Myspace Community will vote on the two winners. One winner will cover the Democratic National Convention; the other will cover the Republican National convention.

"In an election that has so engaged people," said Mark Lukasiewicz, vice president of digital media at NBC News, "It's right that we try to find ways to get original voices in the conversations around politics."