There’s an interesting piece from Margaret Simons at Creative Economy on the limits of mainstream media blogging. She riffs off the Jack Marx sacking, and I think the lead time for publication at CE is longer than for Crikey where she often writes, as she hasn’t noted Marx’ appearance on the Bulletin’s election blog site (where his first post is pretty tedious quite frankly). The Bulletin’s “Bullring” might be a good case study on those limits, as it’s mostly boring and predictable stuff written mainly by … surprise, surprise… Bulletin staffers, and the stories read like short articles rather than blog posts per se. It’s always a little unfair to judge these things at their inception, but on the other hand, the general track record of such “blogs” is pretty poor. Very few comments may also imply a very low readership, but hey, ain’t that the Bully? There’s another interesting analysis to be written about the News “blogs” which get very heavy comments, but that’s a tale for another day.
Incidentally, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned here that I’ve picked up a teaching gig lecturing a postgrad class at QUT’s Creative Industry Faculty. (The previous unit coordinator had to leave during semester due to unexpected outside commitments). We were talking tonight about online media strategies, and I made the point that often quite a different audience is being attracted by online news sites than the dead tree versions. This has implications for advertising strategies (and to a large degree is also driven by advertising strategies and sometimes attracting a different demographic), and there’s no doubt that while much may be written about the brave new world of online news and hyped claims that “content is king”, much of the content exists solely to draw in readers and generate pageviews and unique browser metrics to sell ads.
I contrasted the lifestyle section of The Australian online, which is reasonably cleverly pitched to a target audience (stories about string quartets, Krug champagne and Porsches) with Fairfax’ trashy effort, but as with a lot of this sort of stuff that appears in “supplements” and glossies inside papers, the Oz’ content exists also largely to attract advertisers. Still, you could make an argument that Fairfax Online, through its hits at all cost strategy, is actually undermining its “brand”. There’s got to be a crossover effect between the print and online versions of, say, The Age, even if the editorial and content decisions are made separately (which I understand to be the case). You’d have to think that all the “Paris Hilton spotted with no underwear” stories do some damage to Fairfax’ reputation for being (sometimes too) serious purveyors of serious news and analysis. It can’t be a good move in the long term.
But, anyway, in the process, I discovered the undescribable horror of the video version of the execrable Sam & the City.
Whether or not Sam Brett is a journo, I have no way of knowing, but Fairfax’ ethics must be called into question via the shameless cross-promotion with their internet dating acquisition, RSVP. Anyway, probably fortunately, there’s no direct link to Sam’s videos, but click on the link on the front page of “The Age” if you dare. It’s on the right hand side bar under “Life and Style”. Click under “Ask Sam”.
If you can’t beat em, integrate em!
Sheesh! Click through to Sam’s penultimate vidblog, where she discusses “relationship dealbreakers” (are “small boobs” one? – that’s one of the questions addressed) and interviews a “visiting American psychoanalyst”. The horror! The horror!
I have also pondered the journalist playing blogger phenomenom and came to the same conclusion, that it always comes out as a mini-article. But more than that, I think it is relationship with their audience. Many bloggers write for no one, or rather themselves. This unselfconscious style is the opposite of traditional journalism. The journalist is acutely aware of their audience and the tone can range from mock-matey to absolutely patronising. I’ve linked to Sam before in my post at LP, I find her utterly cringeworthy and the majority of those who comment on her ‘blog’ equally as bad. I just don’t know if I can contemplate looking at a vlog of her without bringing up my breakfast.
It’s become pretty obvious in my online media watching that many MSM guys and gals don’t know how, are unable and even unwilling to translate what talent they do have to good blogging, something that requires a different attitude with regard to their readers.
In a nutshell, big media talent does not appear to like interacting with their readers, something that is essential if it’s to be done at all and important if you want it to become a really effective media.
Secondly, it’s important for the talent to understand one important blogging principle, collectively your readers are smarter than you, it’s this humility that makes a good blogger. If the talent does not take this principle to heart then their blog is effectively useless as a conversational media, it just becomes more of some talking head talking to us rather than with us and the readership will be effectively useless.
Yes the talent will get lots of comments, but largely that’s a function of power of notiriety given to them by the masthead rather than any illuminating content they might provide. Put any good blogger in their shoes and they’d eventually deliver a similar result. It’s not about the comments, it’s about the conversation.
I know they talk about the newsroom time factor, but if that’s a problem for the talent then hire dedicated bloggers who can handle moderation and continued conversation on a daily basis, I think little miss Sam at the SMH does this. Maybe it is the case that you can only be one kind of online media writer and not both?
If I want straight information, I read the newspapers, op-eds or watch TV news. Blogs really are for conversation and the fleshing out of ideas and issues, and not just with other commenters but importantly the writer. Is the talent up to talking to their readers on an equal footing? At the moment it doesn’t look like it.
The question I always ask is why do they want to blog? Is it just to drive traffic? Or to develop meaningful conversations with your readers in the hopes of learning something from them? At the moment it’s looks like the former.
But what do I know, I’m just a blogger.
Blogocracy:
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/blogocracy/index.php/news/comments/pm_wont_quit_will_he#19630
So much for those who said Tim would never criticise GG columnists again.
However, much of the post does do the whole “let’s stay on the safe side” thing that you get in the MSM:
Nope. He’s in trouble in many “safe seats”. The Libs just upped the number of “marginal seats” which receive funding from head office to 40.
Bet each way anyone?
I’m loathe to criticise Tim but there has been a shift in his writing, more to the safe and probably shooting for a broader audience.
So much for filling the long tail of niches. The MSM still thinks in terms of the mass market of eyeballs looking in one direction and have no real understanding of how important the mass of eyeballs looking in a whole bunch of directions really is.
This is especially true for online because digital content is practically limitless and free to store and serve, I just don’t know why they don’t seem to get this. Instead they just shoot for the middle looking for a broad audience in everything.
By the by, folks might be interested in this You Tube of Cory Doctorow on blogging.
Yeah, I’m not dissing Tim personally, Phil, but I find the mainstreaming of his writing rather depressing. I guess that’s what Margaret was talking about in the linked article.
The audience is definitely a factor – there is a tendency when writing for broadsheets to try to tie up ends and answer your own questions which has the power to kill a bloggy style dead in its tracks.
And some of these people have simply not read enough good blogs to get some idea of what works – they only seem to have read rubbishy ones. The Fairfax blogs are incredibly bad for the most part – only Susan Wyndham seems to know what she’s doing ( and she is terrific.)
Yep, to some degree an important part of good blogging requires that the readers fill in the blanks as they see fit……as a result the discussions are always interesting and can surprise.