Installing a new RSS aggregator has flooded my desktop with "old news" -- things I skipped over earlier this month, including Barry Parr's Media Savvy six-part series on newspapers, RSS and weblogs (headline above), and a piece by Digital Deliverance's
Vin Crosbie marking 1998 as "the turning point for newspapers" --
turning in a wrong direction, away from the creative potential of the
Web and new media business prospects.
Parr admits his series title is deliberately provocative, but he uses
it to draw readers into thinking about lessons newspapers should have
learned in a decade online. For one thing, he says (some) newspapers
are afraid that headline-aggregating sites will treat them as wire
services instead of exposing audiences to a new entry points to their
news. More provocations:
Publishers are anxious because they can no longer get you to pay to
have them deliver a package on your doorstep that you feel compelled to
read because you paid for it and because you'd feel guilty to toss it
out unread. Publishers want you to read their sites because it's a habit and not because they're producing must-read journalism.
Some of the blog-based lessons
Barry mentions involve comment systems, searchable archives, and
community focus. (His full series is linked to the right column of each
of his pages if you want the details.) In the weeks to come, I'll
have my eye open for professional news sites that suggest they really have learned some of those lessons. For example, I didn't notice when the New York Times added "discuss this..." links to items on its editorial page, and I've barely glanced at the Public Editor's forum. It's not quite the free-for-all of a blog comment thread, but it's something.
More for the reading list: A University of Minnesota project called Into the Blogosphere has a Mass Communication section as part of its exploration of blogs in "rhetoric, community and culture." I
suspect many bloggers are as likely as journalists to run from
something that bills itself as "the first scholarly collection focused
on blog as rhetorical artifact." However, there are some good
observations, very few Greek words, and even a touch of irony in the
article on the culture clash
between blogs and professional journalism. Another article in the set
put a bad taste in my mouth by using the word "palate" for
"palette," but that example will come in handy in a writing or editing
class.
12:43:06 AM 
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