NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME

HypergeneMedia.com has A Tale of Two Blogs that suggests mainstream media may not be ready for blogs quite yet.

The report tracks blogs published by CNN and Florida Today during the historic flight of SpaceShipOne. CNN's reports were filed every 20 minutes, until the actual launch, at which point the blogging stopped as reporter Miles O'Brien turned to his TV duties. Florida Today did better: the rate of blogging increased during the flight.

Implicit in the HypergeneMedia report is a message: there's no point in mainstream media merely adding blogs if they aren't going to be used to their full potential.

So what's the takeaway? We don't think that mainstream media can't blog. Florida Today and CNN both had some bright spots, but it's not their priority. Good bloggers are obsessed. They live, breath and blog in the moment. They are also beholden to no producer, editor or advertiser — only their community.

What will it take for big media to blog effectively?

Indeed.

10:30:41 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

HOORAY BLOG WORLD

There's something wrong with mainstream political journalism when news outlets set up special "fact checking" units to cover such events as tonight's vice-presidential debate in the U.S.

CBC did the same during the last several elections, with special "Reality Check" segments where they poked and prodded at claims made by various candidates.

It bugs me this is considered special coverage and is not, seemingly, the job of every journalist covering the campaign: not merely to jot down what the candidates do and say, but to scrutinize and challenge them.

Fortunately, this time around in the U.S. (and, I hope, in the next Canadian election), we have Blog World hard at work. A couple of instances from tonight are instructional.

Within minutes of Dick Cheney claiming he had never linked Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks, a blogger posted recent press clippings reporting Cheney said just that. That wasn't mentioned in the post-debate conversation on any of the TV networks I watched.

It will be interesting, too, to see if any mainstream media pick up on the "scoop" posted at Daily Kos within an hour of the end of the debate. It's a screen shot from C-Span that shows Cheney and John Edwards virtually shoulder to shoulder, which knocks a whole lot of air out of one of Cheney's "big lines" of the night: that he had never met Edwards before the debate.

Consider and discuss: Without rapid response political blogs, how many of the misstatements, misdirections and outright lies from tonight's debate would have been exposed?

9:56:13 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

A DISSENTING VIEW

I've written about Korea's OhMyNews with some enthusiasm, but the citizen journalism-driven publication and web site isn't universally acclaimed. Leonard Witt at PJNet has an interview with a Korean journalist, who says OhMyNews should be called OhMyOpinion.

Jae-Hoon Ryu, a senior staff writer for The Hankyoreh newspaper, told Witt:

...it's a propogranda tool and is taking away from what pure news should be. However, he says, of the average citizen, "They like it. They read it." In fact so much so it is taking away his paper's readership and making times tough for a liberal newspaper like his own.

He says it is worse than Drudge, adding there is nothing factual about it. You can't check the sources. He said, people who write get carried away and build on an issue and fire people up by spreading rumors.

Witt credits Ryu's objections as being something than more than "old media's" innate kneejerk response to change.

Witt's bottom line?

Back in April I wrote...: I have read a lot about OhmyNews and written about it too. Now it's time for one of our scholars to take a deep look at it. Is it living up to all the touting it has received? Each time I write about it I get a bit of a cringe because I ask: Are we sure?

Let's get some researcher or reporter out there. Let's find out how well it is working. Does it improve democracy or detract from it?

It is a precursor for what might be happening in the USA, and we can learn from its growth and influence.

Hard to argue with that, although I doubt any amount of study is going to slow down the drive to bring citizens and professionals together to try and produce better journalism.

9:18:54 PM  LINK TO THIS POST