Thursday, December 2, 2004
VIVE LE BLOGThe French daily Le Monde has become one of first major newspapers to not only offer branded blogs to their readers, but to put those blogs on the same footing as Le Monde's journalists' blogs. According to the web site Loic Le Meur Blog:
They have also published a ranking of the 10 top blogs, mixing their journalists blogs and their readers blogs, showing them at the same level, based on blog readers recommendations. After only two days after launch, 4 reader blogs make it in the top ten.... Amazing. Readers as writers. A major publication building loyalty by inviting readers inside the tent. Conversation. I love it.
SOURCE: Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion. |
WHY EDITORS MATTERGoogle News' automated "editing" system — where stories are selected and ranked by computer — occasionally throws up a clunker, but none worse than this:
Earlier this week the top story on Google News was "Canadians Authorities Arrest U.S. President Bush on War Charges," from a parody article on a site called Axis of Logic. Here's the screengrab, courtesy of OpinionJournal.com" Yikes.
SOURCE: Dozens of sites referred to this. The report above is from CyberJournalist.net. |
TITILLATING TITLESXeni Jardin at Boing Boing took on the automated "censors" at the new Microsoft blogging service and posts the amusing results. An attempt to create a blog called "Pornography and the Law" failed, while "Butt Sex is Awesome" was approved. My pointer to the post came from Dan Gillmor at We, the Media. Gillmor wrote:
This will make Microsoft an object of derision in the blogosphere. Better to do it right, and let people say what they want to say. Also on the new Microsoft blog space, J.D. Lasica calls the deep links between the blogging space and other Microsoft only services the Achilles heel of the new offering.
Blogging is about citizens media, not corporate media. It's about the rest of us having a voice, having a platform or soapbox, taking our media back. It's not an AOL-like walled garden with proprietary services.
Lasica writes that blogging is one medium that Microsoft will never dominate and he's right: blogging is about distributed knowledge, interlinked conversation and dispersed media. In short, everything Microsoft isn't. |
THREE HUNCHESSimon Waldman, Director of Digital Publishing for Guardian Newspapers, takes a look at the citizen journalism movement (is it too early to call it a movement?) and suggests three conditions for success. This first:
I don't think anyone needs to argue that the whole blogging phenomena has legs. And then some. However, I find the whole concept of communally created projects such as OhMy and NWVoice much more challenging. For a start, there are so few examples. The fact that these two — along with Wikipedia (more of that in a second) — always come up doesn't take anything away from their achievement, but it does make you wonder whether we are looking at a sustainable phenomena or a few wonderful freak incidents that happened to have worked because they were just the right project in the right place at the right time. Then Waldman lays out his three hunches:
First: there needs to be a clear vision that people can rally behind. If it's just come out of a corporate development department saying 'we want one of those' I doubt it'll work. This doesn't need to be world changing (although I sense OhMy and Wikipedia were), but you need a spark of excitement if you're going to get things going. Second: it has to fulfill some missing need — both for those using it, and those creating it. In other words, there has to be a practical reason to 'Why bother?' as well as the idealistic one above. Third: people will not behave the way you want them to. You will have to learn to adapt to them, rather than trying to get them to adapt to you. The third one really turned a light on for me. We seemed poised on the edge of a new (to steal a phrase) mediascape that is as driven by readers. Anyone can provide a platform/publication/process that has vision and that meets a need, but it is ultimately those who use it who will determine not just whether it "works" but how it works.
This fits with what's happening at PressThink, launched by Mark Glaser essay, The Media Company I Want to Work For. I've been trying to absorb the essay and the substantial reaction to it for a couple of days. More to come on that later, but I suspect it's going to a piece we look back on as seminal in the remaking of media. |
Last update: 12/26/04; 7:03:28 AM .
