Newspapers See Success in Moving to Blogs

New data indicates that blogging is paying off for newspapers. According to Nielsen/NetRatings blogs accounted for 13 percent of overall visits to newspaper sites in December. This is up from four percent in December 2005. Unique visitors to newspapers blogs climbed to 3.8 million.

A few years ago Internet pioneer Dave Winer predicted the New York Times would become one big blog. That may not seem so far-fetched. The Times launched dozens of them. One of their newest is a Question and Answers blog. This is just one newspaper that's getting a lot of mileage out of becoming more conversational.

The media's rush to adopt new technologies like blogs, widgets and others should be applauded. It validates the entire bottom-up movement. None of these technologies were invented by the media. The press simply is a fast follower.

Now, as journalism moves to a two-way modality it's going to force a lot of PR professionals to change their game plan. Stories won't be written and "put to bed." They will be co-written and re-written by journalists and readers together. This will either take place within a journalist's blog or over the ether as a conversation that travels across many of them.

There's a lot of upside in this if PR pros are helpful in pointing out interesting and truthful dialogue and then get out of the way. The key thing to remember is that the primary conversations that shape what the media covers will first and foremost take place between readers and journalists - and not always who we represent. Our job is to connect. Isn't that how it's supposed to be?

Comments

[Valeria Maltoni]

Connecting is part of it; maybe it's worth considering that it's not all of it. Otherwise why are we getting paid?

We get paid to make sense of the context in which our information lives, filter it in some fashion given our experience and skills (note to readers: I wrote filter, not manipulate), and present a perspective and facilitation that can be conducive to a productive conversation.

Maybe a PR professional's new job will be to be attuned more into the conversation and act as participant on behalf of a client. And that raises the possibility that sometimes the roles may become multiple, as the PR professional is also a person with personal opinions, etc. That would involve some type of disclosure when we speak from our own perspective.

Are we then all peers in this transaction? Not necessarily. So how are we going to help shape the conversation? Now that is where things get interesting.

[Amanda Chapel]

"Now, as journalism moves to a two-way modality it's going to force a lot of PR professionals to change their game plan. Stories won't be written and "put to bed." They will be co-written and re-written by journalists and readers together. This will either take place within a journalist's blog or over the ether as a conversation that travels across many of them."

I don’t know whether that statement is based on pharmacy or extensive familiarity and comfort with public washrooms. Maybe both.

- Amanda

[flash devs]

They have to act fast nowdays because they are hurting in the industry. Take a look at most newspaper sites (not the big ones) and they look like something from the 90s and the usability is way down also.

[Russell Page]

What?

this can't be. nobody reads newspapers anymore. :-)

oh wait, that's that web 2.0 nonsense speaking.

[Stuart Roy]

The journalism-blog world is moving to all AP. I've always like Wire stories since you don't have to wait until the next day to see what the paper says, react or try to redirect. With the Wire, you could see the story faster, insert additional quotes throughout the day and get new information into each additional write-through of the story.

The new blogging conversation moves along the same path of immediacy, conversation (although more of it) and ever changing. All that old is new again.

-Stuart Roy