Participants:
Lorraine Branham, Director, School of Journalism, The University of Texas (moderator)
Hal Straus, Editor, Newsroom Technology & Site Tools, The Washington Post
Fred Zipp, Managing Editor, The Austin American Statesman
Brian Oberkirch, author of Slidell Hurricane Blog and Principal, Weblogs Work, Inc.
John Lebkowsky, author of Weblosky weblog and CEO, Polycot Consulting
* Straus from the WaPo takes issue with my earlier “moment of silence” for the big media ecosystem. Says “We pretty much ignored blogs for a number of years.” Said their eureka moment came in 2004 with the fundraising successes of Howard Dean. They've launched 18 blogs. The newspaper has an initiative where it is encouraging bloggers in the high school community to blog on their platform. “We don't consider ourselves old media.”
* Zipp says Statesman started with blogging two years ago. The blog that has taken off for them was put together by the sports staff about the U of Texas football team. “The staff blogs are not a conversation for the most part. The editor's blog is more of a conversation than any of the others.” Partnering with Pluck to empower readers to blog. They are aiming to find the sweet spot for conversation.
* Oberkirch wows the crowd. He runs a blog for a town that's near New Orleans and was impacted by Hurricane Katrina. Says there was little mainstream media reporting on the town right after the storm. Out of desperation, he started the Slidell Hurricane Blog. CNN producer called within 45 minutes amazed by how they were able to compile information. Big media and small media began to collaborate. He says he was careful in confirming rumors about structures in the town. They had 85,000 readers within the first few weeks. The entire town had 25,000 residents. Spread visibility through Fred Wilson and David Parmet.
* Lebowsky's up next. He says that bloggers are not journalists. We're changing from a scarce number of channels to a real abundance, he says. This is not the same media we grew up with. “There were three channels and they all went off at media...We can now read all day long just from the blogs that are in our aggregators and we're never going to reach the end of it.”
* Branham asks the panel about accuracy when content does not go through the editing/verification response. Lebowsky answers that other bloggers are the fact checkers. Zipp says (the blog content) not good enough for publication in the newspaper or the part of the news site that they package as journalism. Straus from the Post says it's important to label content as edited vs. unedited. Oberkirch says there's an expectation that bloggers can go back and edit a story.
* Branham asks will citizen journalists would have done a better job on covering Iraq? Straus says that “Bloggers didn't do a good job at poking at the weapons of mass destruction.” Branham notes that the Post circ is down 3% - the size of OhMyNews' readership. Straus says that Post is committed to getting people in the Washington area contributing. “I am not 100% convinced that community journalism is going to sweep away professional journalists.”
* Audience q - will pro-Am journalist collaborations hurt the credibility of the MSM? Oberkirch says it might help them. Cites Kevin Sites' presence on Yahoo.
Technorati Tags: Austin American Statesman, Blogging Enterprise, BloggingEnterprise, newspapers, Journalism, Washington Post
