Micro Persuasion

BBC Radio Experiments with Podcasting

ExtremeiPod reports that the BBC Radio has begun a trial podcasting service, allowing users to subscribe to an RSS feed to receive regular MP3 audio updates. The BCC is starting with an experimental podcast RSS feed for their popular BBC Radio 4 history program "In Our Time." More information can be found here. The one gripe I have is that they're distributing the program only for seven days. Grrrr. Still, it's another sign that citizen's media and professional media are merging and the impact bottom-up technologies are having on the larger players.

Jeff Jarvis on Blogging After the Election

Jeff Jarvis makes a strong argument in the Philadelphia Inquirer today that news, like marketing, is now a conversation and that blogging/citizen journalism remains very relevant after the election. Obviously, I agree.

But bloggers will not replace big media. It's a symbiotic relationship. Bloggers will dog news media and shame them into covering stories. They will demand transparency from journalists. And they will speed up the news (after the election, blogs quickly spread, and then just as swiftly started debating and debunking, reports of voting irregularities). But bloggers also feed on the news that journalists gather. As Tom Curley, president of the Associated Press, said to the Online News Association this month: "The expanding blogosphere is indeed huge, but the bloggers need a baseline of facts and professional analysis on which to base their work... . Imagine Drudge without somebody to link to, or wonkette without somebody to poke fun at."

Citizen Journalism Meets Mainstream News

Steve Outing: "Citizen journalism" is a hot buzzword in (the media) industry right now, and it's likely not going away. Indeed, it could help journalists to rebuild some credibility and trust by letting the public in. (Via Leonard Witt)

Google Dabbles in Citizen Journalism

Leonard Witt notes that Google's orkut project, an online social networking site for meeting friends and maybe finding love, has now added a participatory media portal that is open to anyone to view and for members to contribute. It's called orkut media and described as "a weekly collection of writings and photos by our very own orkut members."

Moblog Citizen Journalists Aiding Reporters

The BBC reports that on-the-spot citizen snappers are helping newspapers add immediacy to their breaking news stories headlines, where professional photographers only arrive in time for the aftermath.

"Celebrities might not welcome such a change because they may never be free of a new breed of mobile phone paparazzi making their lives a bit more difficult.

Already one tabloid newspaper in LA is issuing photographers with camera phones to help them catch celebrities at play.

It could be the start of a trend that only increases as higher resolution phone cameras become more widespread; as video phones catch on and millions of people start carrying the gadgets around.

[...] But this is not just about traditional media lending immediacy to their stories with content from ordinary people, it is also about first-hand journalism in the form of online diaries or weblogs.

It has been called "open source news" or even "moblog journalism" and it has flourished in the recent US election campaign. "

(Via Picturephoning)

The Symbiotic Relationship Between Bloggers and Journalists

Tom Curley, the head of the Associated Press, said in an interview that the future of news is online. More importantly, he also discussed the rising importance of weblogs. Indirectly citing Technorati's recent estimate that there are 4 million bloggers creating 400,000 posts per day, Curley said...

"That works out to roughly 16,000 posts an hour, or about as many stories as the AP sends out in an entire day," he said. "It will get even tougher to be heard above the roar of the Internet crowd, and the business bets will have to be for greater stakes."

Still, Curley predicted current news giants will survive...

"The bloggers need a baseline of facts and professional analysis on which to base their work," he said. "Imagine Drudge without somebody to link to, or Wonkette without somebody to poke fun at. It's a new community that's forming in the news and information space. The "neighbors" may not all like each other, but we're all part of the same network, like it or not."

The relationship between bloggers and journalists is indeed becoming a symbiotic one. For more, read the Bird's Eye View and this OJR article.

Jeff's Visions

The brilliant Jeff Jarvis shares his vision for The Future of Digital Media. A must-read article for anyone interested in studying citizen journalism.

The "Long Tail" of the Blogosphere

The following is a reprint of the first installment of a monthly column I will be writing for iMedia Conection. A disclaimer - please note that it does mention PubSub, a client of CooperKatz.

The "Long Tail" of the Blogosphere

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

By Steve Rubel, CooperKatz/Micro Persuasion

Blogs have already started to change the news media: Now it's time for marketers to adjust their strategies.       

Marketers and media types are joined at the hip, thanks to a shared economic bond. Both are in the eyeball business. The marketers want to reach 'em and the media's got 'em. Through its ups and downs, the laws of supply and demand have kept this dynamic, well-oiled economic machine humming along, generating profits on both sides of the fence. Until now.

Seemingly overnight, the fundamental underpinnings of the basic media/marketing economic model are on the verge of collapsing because of an explosion in user-generated content. Blogs have flooded the media space with so much content that the marketer and media species -- who depend on the old dynamic to feed them -- need to adapt quickly. So far, the media seem to have the upper hand.

It's no secret that blogs are all the rage right now. They have democratized media by empowering anyone with a passion or voice to develop an audience. According to Google News, last month alone there were 5,240 articles that mentioned blogs -- nearly double the number of press stories that mentioned Britney Spears! PubSub, a service that monitors blogs, is tracking 3.75 million of them. And over the last several months, particularly during the campaign, we witnessed a number of landmark events like Rathergate that have only helped blogs move further into the mainstream.

Still, despite the noise, many of the marketers and media execs whom I talk with still pooh-pooh blogs. They view blogs as media-driven hype and question the value of their small, niche audiences. Some even call it a fad and observe that many bloggers are only talking about blogging. Very few marketers are willing to sponsor or have their PR agencies invest significant time generating earned media coverage on blogs. But this will all change soon -- at least I hope so.

Are the criticisms valid? Sure, but they are short-lived and colored by the supply/demand economic model that has kept us all well-fed since the dawn of marketing. But here's the rub: The reason blogs are so important is because they are influential. They're establishing a new media economic system that is akin to the one that has decimated giants in other industries. It's called the law of "the long tail."

In a landmark article published in Wired magazine last month, Chris Anderson described in detail how the long tail of ecommerce has disrupted the music and bookselling industries. His thesis: The pure online stores like Amazon and Netflix offer unlimited choices that enable consumers to dig deeper into catalogs, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what's available at Blockbuster Video, Tower Records and Barnes & Noble. The more they find, the more they like. And as they wander further from the beaten path, they discover their tastes are not as mainstream as they thought (or, as they had been led to believe by the marketing that generally presents a lack of alternatives and a hit-driven culture). The result is fewer hits and more dollars flowing evenly across thousands of niche choices.

A similar long tail effect is now forming in the media content sphere. As blogging becomes more popular, it is now easier for news consumers to find specific niche blog sites that adequately meet their information needs. It doesn't matter if you're interested in knitting, gadgets, cars, sports, politics or music, there's a blogger out there who's covering it well who can serve as your information filter.

In addition, really simple syndication (RSS) is starting to move mainstream as a tool that empowers consumers to TiVo the Web and assimilate all the content they care about onto a single Web page. In a recent report, Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley noted that Yahoo!'s recent adoption of RSS content on its My Yahoo! customized page will drive blog readership and usage. In a nutshell, RSS has lowered the barrier to entry, making it even easier for the small fries to compete with the big fish.

Taken in all together, the result is that big media will increasingly adapt and embrace blogging in order to maintain their dominance. As a result, marketers too will need to adjust their strategies -- everything from where they elect to place their PR messages to where they allocate their media budgets. Here are several short-term ways the long tail is already causing the media to adapt:

• Publishers and advertisers are experimenting with unique custom blog sponsorships. The Art of Speed -- Nike's experiment with Gawker Media -- is one such collaboration.
• Some media outlets are openly embracing bloggers -- either by buying them out entirely or by signing them to joint operating ventures that include revenue sharing. Mediabistro, for example, recently purchased CableNewser -- a popular TV industry blog, rather than launch its own competing effort.
• The media will turn themselves into blog-like online aggregators that link readers to all relevant content in their area of focus, whether it's a blog or a news site. CNET's News.context, for example, already takes this approach.
• Media Web sites will morph into social sites, employing comments, trackbacks, RSS feeds and other blog-like structures in order to create community. CNET and Variety are already pioneers experimenting here.

If the media are buying into the long tail, then the marketers should follow, right? I sure hope so, because those who ignore it may be forced to catch the tiger by the tail rather than by the teeth.

Steve Rubel evangelizes the application of blogs and RSS in traditional public relations campaigns. He is Vice President of CooperKatz & Company, a New York City public relations firm, and author of the Micro Persuasion blog.

Speed vs. Accuracy

Owen Youngman, a Chicago Tribune Co. vice president, writes he is shaking his head in disappointment at how, in taking advantage of the Web's freedom to post a perspective, many bloggers during the election failed even to aspire to the pursuit of perspicacity.

That is, they publish because they hear "something" from "someone" who is "reliable." Sorry, not good enough.

(Tribune registration required)

Citizen Journalists Catch Netscape/CNN Gaffe

The ever salty Register reports that several citizen journalists uncovered a shocking photo naming policy on a shared Netscape/CNN site.

Journalism by the People for the People

An fascinating article out of British Columbia demonstrates how open media sites like Wikipedia may represent the future of citizen journalism...

On the morning of September 1, 2004, a small armed force captured a school in western Russian town of Beslan, taking hundreds of students hostage. One day later, a small article describing the event appeared on Wikipedia.org, an open-source encyclopedia. Over the next 24 hours, Wikipedia users compiled the information from other news reports together into one article, revising and expanding it 46 times.

People coming to the article from Wikipedia's "Current Events" page could read a concise summary of the event, with links to the history of the region and the ongoing war. This was old school, just-the-facts reporting.

The 5th Estate

The Financial Times says there is a new player in the media business. It is staffed by millions of people all round the world, creates mountains of varied content, is highly trusted by its readership, is growing exponentially and has a zero overhead. It's called Citizen's Media or Consumer Generated Media and is the result of cheap, accessible digital publishing tools being available to a mass market for the first time.

They can be thought of as the '5th estate'. And if there is a story to tell they will publish and be damned.

Here Comes Cronkitegate

It's hard to put the puck passed the bloggers. Here's another example of the sound bite that won't go away. It's reminiscent of the watershed Trent Lott incident.

Apparently on CNN the other night former CBS Newsman Walter Cronkite told Larry King that he believes Bush adviser Karl Rove is possibly behind the new Bin Laden tape. Cronkite said he is "inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing."

That's quite a statement, no? Yet as of this writing the press has largely ignored it, but not the bloggers. Just check out how many of them are linking to the official transcript!

I don't personally believe what Cronkite said, but I do think this is worth noting because it's a potential blog scandal in the making. David Sifry may soon need to add another link to his blogs and politics wiki.

Bloggers Drive the News Agenda

Independent.co.uk: This was the year when the mainstream media outlets unexpectedly found themselves looking over their shoulders at the internet and, perhaps most surprisingly, at the new armies of political bloggers.

Power to the People!

MetroWest Daily News Columnist Peter Reuell writes that for maybe the first time in history, the media, which for so long seemed to be inscrutable institutions cloistered in monolithic high-rise skyscrapers, are finally within the grasp of the average guy on the street. And he's quite happy about it too!

Rivalry Forms Between Bloggers and Pros

The New York Times reports that journalists covering the campaign believe that bloggers are trying to bully them into caving to a particular point of view. They insist the efforts have not swayed them in any significant way, though others worry the criticism could eventually have a chilling effect.

MSNBC's Participatory Journalism Experiment

Ben McConnell writes that MSNBC and MSNBC.com will experiment with open-source journalism during the Nov. 2 election. Calling the effort "citizen journalism," the news service is asking readers and viewers to report on activity at polling places by contributing written reports and digital photos. MSNBC will funnel the open-source journalism reports to its election-special blogs and, conceivably, its news site and cable channel.

Is Citizen Journalism Sustainable?

OJR: From Bakersfield, Calif. to Columbia, Mo. to Skokie, Ill. and to small-town New Jersey, community news sites are springing up with a bottom-up "open source" approach, written and photographed by citizens and overseen by journalists. But is it sustainable?

All the News That's Fit to Wiki

A potentially huge development for the PR community is in the works. Dan Gillmor reports the Wikipedia community is debating whether to create Wikinews - a Wikipedia for news.

The project will aim to collaboratively report and summarize news on all subjects from a neutral point of view. You can view the full proposal here. The site describes the project's goals and outlines five basic requirements. This passage is perhaps the most interesting of all...

While Wikinews aims to be a useful resource of its own, it will also provide an alternative to proprietary news agencies like the Associated Press or Reuters; that is, it will allow independent media outfits to get a high quality feed of news free of charge to complement their own reporting. Thanks to copyleft, anyone can create their own free news source - even a non-neutral one - on the basis of our work. Even if our articles will initially be few, they will be free, permanently available and not require registration before reading.

I bet this wiki will form, if not here, then somewhere.

Amazon Jumps Into Consumer Generated Media

Amazon.com has started to enable consumers to share their photos right alongside product descriptions. Here's the FAQ. If you're logged into an Amazon account you can read more here.

St. Journo's Fire

What is it like to spend a year in a modern American journalism school preparing to be the next generation to enter the nation's newsrooms? How important is RSS, Wikis, citizen journalism to J-students? Well, more than two-dozen students at the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications are trying to provide some answers through a new Web log project, called "A J-School Year." Damn, this makes me long for my days as a journalism student. And here I was thinking I was hip becaused I learned PageMaker in school.

Rex Looks Over the Ridge

Yesterday I had the opportunity to dine with the great Rex Hammock just minutes after he met with Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge. When we said our goodbyes I had asked Rex if he was going to blog his meeting, which was an editorial briefing for his business. He said he wasn't going to since it was a business meeting, but today apparently he changed his mind.

Presentation on the Impact of Blogs on PR

Recently, ClickZ editor Pamela Parker and I participated in a webinar on the impact of blogs and participatory journalism on PR. The event, attended by over 300 professionals, was organized by the technology chapter of the PRSA and graciously sponsored by Microsoft Live Meeting.

Since then I have received several requests for copies of my presentation, so I thought it would easier if I just made it available online here with the full narration. Pamela’s presentation is also online here. Be sure to download it to gain a journalist’s perspective on how blogs help them do their jobs. The full Webinar with audio is archived here.

Welcome! Thanks for having me here. This is an exciting time. The dawn is breaking. The public relations industry is entering the second major wave of change of the Internet era. I applaud you for taking the time to learn more. Please ask as many questions as time allows or email me anytime if I don’t get to your query.

# # #

[Solemnly] Before I begin I'd like to ask everyone to bow their heads in a moment of silence as we remember “Ye Olde Mass Media Ecoystem.” May she rest in peace. Yes, the old media ecosystem – the one we know and love; the one that feeds us; the one that dates back to the days of Gutenberg – is dead!

In the Golden Age, “Ye Olde Media Ecosystem” was incredibly powerful. Outlets consolidated into Big Media behemoths that essentially would tell audiences: "Hey, consume this! We’re the big gatekeepers. We know what’s best for you.”

# # #

Here’s a look at what this ecosystem looked like until fairly recently. The media provided the consumers with a constant flow of high value news and information and we gladly lapped it up. Yum-my!

Unfortunately, as you can see from the schematic above, until recently there were limited feedback opportunities for us to talk back when we wanted to say "Waiter, there’s a fly in my media!" Letters to the editor and editorial advisory boards were a start. Eventually these mutated into emails to the editor and threaded discussions, but they still remained fairly tucked away behind the curtain.

# # #

As Big Media flourished, it was a grand time for public relations industry. PR consultants who figured out how to crack the code and get passed the gatekeepers became very successful. These skills are still invaluable, but now there are changes afoot and PR pros need to add new ones.

# # #

A tectonic shift is now underway. The consumers of news - the folks who for years had very few ways to talk back to the press – now are generating news of their own! This was driven by a spiraling decrease in costs for bandwidth and storage as well as an array of cheap, new social media tools and wireless devices. The impact on PR here is significant. The whole definition of media has changed. We need to adapt – as we have in the past – or risk disintermediation.

# # #

In the New Media Ecosystem there are now two spheres of influence – the mediasphere and the blogosphere – and frequent conversations taking place between them!

# # #

Here’s a look at the new world we live in. There’s a constant flow of feedback between all of these groups. Blogs influence audiences and the media. The media feed the bloggers and continue to remain very powerful with audiences. Finally, audiences now have the means to provide feedback to the media and the bloggers. Oy, what a mess!

# # #

Bloggers are the leading force of change here. A blog is basically a web site owned by an individual or group that’s written with a human voice. They are easily discovered, usually organized chronologically, and written by people you can reach out and touch. It’s this last point – the social nature of blogs – that differentiates them from more staid corporate web sites.

# # #

So you’re probably saying “that’s all really nice Mr. Steve, but how big is blogging really?” Well, Technorati is tracking 4 million of them. What’s more notable than the sheer numbers is the landmark news events that were born in blogosphere. Bill Clinton, Dan Rather, Trent Lott and the Kryptonite bike lock company all learned not to dismiss the bloggers. The nut here is that bloggers may not have massive audiences right now, but they certainly do shape opinions! Even if you feel the blog audiences are too small to bother with, I suggest you reconsider merely because the media are reading them. That should be all you need to evangelize this in your companies/agencies.

# # #

So who’s blogging? Well, who isn’t! As you call tell from this list there are folks from all walks of life who are using their weblogs to not just blog about their cats but to actually write thoughtfully on issues they care about. I assure you they break news and shape opinions.

# # #

Blogs are also giving rise to something called “participatory journalism.” Ordinary citizens – whether on their own or as part of a larger community – are now amateur “reporters.” Take OhMyNews for example. The open source Korean news site – which is entirely written/edited by citizens sans gatekeepers - is extremely popular and influential. When the new president of South Korea was elected, OhMyNews snagged the first interview with him. Similar efforts are sprouting up in the US, such as Metafilter.

What’s even more interesting is that big media is getting into the game here as well. For example, many of the 30 newspaper web sites that make up the Advance Internet group are recruiting vocal local yokels to blog right on the newspaper sites. They’re saying, “Hey, we can’t be at every school board meeting. Help us help you!” That’s very smart thinking coming from a genius named Jeff Jarvis. Just think about the potential impact on PR. It’s not conceivable that in the near future we may begin pitching our next door neighbors to write about our clients!

# # #

I realize there’s a lot to take in here. The key thing is to get started. Before you run to launch blog, first take the time to listen and study. Begin with tools like PubSub that will help you monitor in real-time what the bloggers are saying about your clients/products/brands. (Disclaimer – PubSub is has engaged my employer, CooperKatz & Company, as their agency of record.)

# # #

The next step is to reach out to the bloggers that look important. (See yesterday’s post on how to find these folks.) Talk to them, but not at them – resist the urge to pitch them. Treat them like humans and engage them in a conversation. Show them you’re listening and that you care. Show them that you want to have a relationship, not just another clip to pile onto your report. Treat them like the pros – except keep in mind they may not have the same standards. Any email you send them can be turned around and published in minutes. Be nice, even if they’re hostile. (On this frame is a review of WeatherBug, my client, that was written by a blogger my team got to know.)

# # #

The final step is to participate. Become part of the conversation. Put your clients/staff at eye level with audiences by launching blogs championed by real humans. Have these people engage the broader world in a transparent conversation that’s available for anyone to read. Also, carefully post comments on other blogs – but do it as you. Keep it real. Here’s a screen grab of a blog CooperKatz launched for WeatherBug earlier this year. We’ve had several successful blogging projects since.

# # #

Before I conclude I thought I would give you a real example of all of this in action. Another CK client is the Association of National Advertisers, a major trade association. We helped their President and CEO, Bob Liodice, launch a weblog that is a venue for him to have a voice on key issues. We sent the link to reporters and they began to subscribe to the site’s feed. Once in awhile they publish entire stories based on what Bob posts on the blog. No pitches, press releases or interviews were utilized in the making of this film.

# # #

Like I said before, there’s a lot to learn here, but it’s worth it. My suggestion: read what some of the old-timers who have been out there long before me are saying; people like what Jeff Jarvis, Steve Outing, Chris Willis/Shayne Bowman, Tom Murphy, Dave Winer and Robert Scoble. Read Dan Gillmor’s We the Media, which is available free online. Of course, I’d be very appreciative if you check out the archives over on my blog, Micro Persuasion. I have lots of stuff you can read, but don’t feel obligated!

Thank you for your time. Again, if you have any questions about what’s here or anything that isn’t, please email me.

Podcasting Invades Newsprint

The LA Times and Seattle Times today both have good stories on Podcasting. According to a Google News search, the personal broadcasting craze has fully evolved beyond just buzz on blogs and in the tech trades into something that now the newspapers are fully taking notice of. The rapid growth of Podcasting makes me believe that audio, not text-based news, will perhaps play the biggest role in bringing RSS to the masses.

The LA Times notes that just a month ago the only podcast was ''Trade Secrets,'' a daily news-and-technology talk show co-hosted by podcasting's pioneers: former MTV VJ Adam Curry and software developer Dave Winer. In the four weeks since then, the number of podcasts has jumped to at least six dozen, while "Trade Secrets" has attracted 6,000 subscribers.

The story also has a good quote from Podcast evangelist, Doc Searls:

''One of the reasons that blogging succeeded was it didn't just lower the threshold of publication to zero, it made it as easy as e-mail. Earlier, you could construct a Web site, but construction was complicated. You had to hire a designer. Blogging software eliminated that need.''

Meanwhile, Seattle Times columnist Paul Andrews looks at the bigger changes that are reverberating through the radio industry right now. He also notes that geeks are going nuts over Podcasting, holding "podcasting parties" and exchanging all sorts of content.

Finally, Dan Gillmor (of course) was one of the first out with a podcasting column, which ran over the weekend.

My PR Predictions: Podcasting will land in the New York Times Circuits section by Election Day, CNN will feature it by mid-November, and others will race to cover it faster than you can say Steven Levy.

CNET's $70M Experiment in Participatory Journalism

Why did CNET pay $70M back in July to acquire Webshots, an online photo sharing/wallaper site? The answer may lie in participatory journalism. CNET News.com has started integrating user-uploaded photos from Webshots right into its news stories. Case in point - this story on Dell's new MP3 player includes links to this photo gallery of iPod Mini Users. Note the photo credits.

Does the Press Over Rely on Online Flash Polls?

A student at the University of Michigan sees potential problems with participatory journalism. In particular, he notes that during the recent debates the cable TV news networks all regularly referred to their Web flash polls in trying to measure which way public opinion is heading.

If a group of online users wants to impact national news through a coordinated effort, it seems as if they can easily do it, through online polls, blogs, etc. News outlets should be careful to not become too participatory.

News Tip$

Sheila Ann Manuel Coggins at About.com today is pointing to a new blogging network called Creative Weblogging that recently introduced something called the "News Spotter Network." The concept is that bloggers and readers are invited to send in news items for a small honorarium of $5 per accepted story.

Uncle Om, Tell Us a Story

Journalist Om Malik breaks another story on his blog that's probably too small for Business 2.0 but certainly big for the blogosphere. Six Apart, the company behind TypePad, just snagged more funding.

Anchors Fight Back at Bloggers

Tom Brokaw on citizen journalists: "What I think is highly inappropriate is what's going on across the Internet, a kind of political jihad...It is certainly an attempt to demonize CBS News, and it goes well beyond any factual information a lot of them has, the kind of demagoguery that is unleashed out there."

If Mt. St. Helens Erupts How Will the Bloggers Cover It?

AP reports that Mt. St. Helens may soon erupt. How will citizen journalists cover it? Microsoft - home to 1000+ employee bloggers - is a mere 100 or so miles away. Perhaps a bit too close for one blogger. If I ran the Seattle PI, Seattle Times or Portland Oregonian, I would be organizing blogger meetups and loaning out laptops and PDAs. Are any Northwest bloggers organizing? Is anyone out there gearing up to lava moblog? What ideas can we contribute? I have six free Gmail account invites for the best ideas.

I SMSed the News Today

Poynter reports that when a popular Dutch singer died last week, many heard the news via SMS wireless text messages as citizens spread it themselves.

An American Idol Hopeful Blogs

The New York Times reports (see second item) that Marisa Olson is blogging about her efforts to prepare for her upcoming audition for the television show "American Idol." The Times reports Olson said she was "thrilled" when she learned the show increased its cutoff age for prospective contestants to 28 from 26. (She is 27.) She plans to attend an open audition on Oct. 5 in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives. If she advances I wonder if she will leak out news before the show airs.

Could the Feds Stymie Citizen Journalism?

Picturephoning.com notes that the US House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a measure to to make it a crime to secretly photograph or videotape people, often for lascivious purposes.

AP reports:

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the issue of surreptitious videotaping has become "a huge privacy concern" with the miniaturization of technology and the proliferation of cell phone cameras.

On the surface, this, as Martha says, appears to be "a good thing," right? Everyone has a right to privacy. We should have the freedom to use a health club locker room without worrying if someone will come in and secretly shoot a less than flattering image and post it on the Internet. However, on the other hand, I wonder how broad this measure is. Could it slow citizen/participatory journalism? If the measure is strict, some might be afraid to shoot and moblog any image that might be possibly deemed "questionable" for fear they'll get busted. There's often a fine line between free speech and privacy. Hopefully this bill defines this very clearly.

Rathergate, a Watershed Moment for Citzen Journalism

Internet bloggers have drawn blood and American journalism may never be the same, Reuters reports.

Chronicling Blogs' Political Impact

David Sifry from Technorati has started a wiki-enabled timeline that chronicles real, concrete events where blogging had a significant effect on political events. For now it includes Trent Lott (December, 2003), Ed Schrock (August, 2004) and Dan Rather (September, 2004).

Andrew Sullivan Writes in Time: Thank the Pajama Guys

Journalist turned blogger Andrew Sullivan breaks down the real impact bloggers had in Rathergate in an op-ed published this week in Time magazine. Andrew writes...

Does this mean the old media is dead? Not at all. Blogs depend on the journalistic resources of big media to do the bulk of reporting and analysis. What blogs do is provide the best scrutiny of big media imaginable—ratcheting up the standards of the professionals, adding new voices, new perspectives and new facts every minute. The genius lies not so much in the bloggers themselves but in the transparent system they have created. In an era of polarized debate, the truth has never been more available. Thank the guys in the pajamas. And read them.

In the immortal words of Hulk Hogan: "Amen brother."

Big Media RIP?

ABCNews.com columnist and former Forbes ASAP magazine editor-at-large Michael S. Malone writes that the mainstream media may be dying as the blogosphere thrives. Perhaps what's most notable is the disclaimer ABCNews.com slapped right at the top of the column:

This work is the opinion of the columnist and in no way reflects the opinion of ABC News.

I give ABC credit for even running such a heretical article!

Kryptonite Lock's Blog Crisis Leaps into the Press

Kryptonite, one of the leading manufacturers of bicycle locks, is in the PR fight of its life thanks to some enterprising bloggers who figured out how to pick the locks using just a ballpoint pen. You can track the blog buzz here.

As Jup analyst Gary Stein notes, this is a living breathing crisis communications PR case study that is worth watching closely. The story, which has been blogged up all week by Engadget, Boing Boing and others, is now swimming "upstream" into the press. Both The New York Times and The Seattle Times covered it today. According to Google News, the story is spreading like wildfire.

The takeaway is simple - pay attention. Stay on top of everything that's being said about your client, their competition and their industries. Those who fail to listen will eventually struggle to be heard. Judging by Kryptonite's official response, it sure sounds like the company failed to take the blogosphere seriously. I bet they are sorry now.

CNN Reviews Dan Gillmor's We the Media

CNN Headline News has posted a review of Dan Gillmor's new book, We the Media, and comments extensively on participatory journalism. Key quote:

Gillmor could be anticipating the power of citizen journalists, rather than noting their arrival. I believe we are still deep in the power struggle between top-down message control and interactive reader/journalists getting to know their political candidates the way kids get to know the backwoods.

I'm still not sure which side is winning.

Blogs and Trade Mags: Friends or Foes?

Sean Callahan at B2B Magazine's Media Business has written an excellent feature looking at the potential threat/opportunity weblogs pose for B2B trade media outlets. According to the piece, "few media executives appear threatened by blogs, although they do disagree on the degree of influence this form of publishing may have." It's a must-read for PR pros studying this new world.

Sean covers all the right bases, interviewing Alan Meckler, Pat McGovern, Rafat Ali, Stowe Boyd, Rex Hammock, Mary Jo Foley, and Jim Spanfeller. He also captures the essence of the introduction to Dan Gillmor's book, which I have excerpted below. It's this anecdote, perhaps more than any other, as well as my follow up conversations with Buzz Bruggeman that made me a believer that we are living in a new journalistic era where the readers run the show.

In his online book, "We the Media," Dan Gillmor, who is a blog proponent and practitioner, contends blogging changes journalism from a "lecture" to a "conversation." In his first chapter Gillmor relates a vignette demonstrating this change.

He was blogging in the audience of a conference listening to Joe Nacchio, then the head of Qwest, speak. In his blog, Gillmor described Nacchio as whining about his problems in raising capital and remarked that the CEO was getting rich while his company was losing market value.

Within minutes a reader of the blog, Buzz Bruggeman, e-mailed a link noting that Nacchio had sold millions in stock as Qwest's share price fell. Gillmor, who said others in the conference hall must have been reading his blog, felt a sudden chill of hostility in the room rise toward Nacchio. Esther Dyson, whose company, Edventure Holdings, held the conference, said Gillmor's blog probably had something to do with it.

Gillmor also noted that this vignette demonstrated the communal nature of blogging. "Bruggeman was no longer just a consumer," Gillmor wrote. "He was a producer. He was making the news."

LA Times: Bloggers Are Major Players

The LA Times reports today that citizen journalists/bloggers are having a major influence on the campaign (free registration or BugMeNot required.

These days, CBS News anchor Dan Rather and his colleagues at the network's magazine program "60 Minutes II" are enduring an unusual wave of second-guessing by some of the public and fellow journalists.

For that, they can thank "Buckhead."

It was a late-night blog posting by this mystery Netizen that first questioned the validity of documents Rather cited Wednesday as proof that George W. Bush did not fulfill his National Guard duty more than 30 years ago.

Blogger Scoops the Pros on Jeopardy Champ's Loss

Jason Kottke broke the news this morning before anyone else, thanks to a tipster who was in the audience.

Citizen Exposé or Cheap 9/11 Stunt? You Decide

Metafilter points to a consipiracist Flash movie (keep your volume low) that tries to raise doubt over whether it was a 757 or something else instead that hit the Pentagon on 9/11. Is this citizen journalism at work or just a cheap 9/11 anniversary eve stunt? Time will tell if it influences opinions in any way. It is getting a fair amount of blog buzz, however. I haven't checked the facts, but it's timing alone seems very suspicious to me.

Open Source Newspapers

eContent examines Northwest Voice - an "open source" publishing model that represents the future of newspapers.

RNC Blogging TV Style

PRWeek.com reports that Konscious Media, a non-profit group that provides content on the internet and for television stations, is demonstrating with its Republican National Convention coverage how participatory journalism might work on the small screen - television that is, not 'puters. Following the blogger ethos, Konscious welcomes participants into the newsgathering process. People at home can log onto Konscious.tv and use the chat application to communicate with other readers and potentially have their messages reach the interviewer and the television screen.

Did Bloggers Bring Down Another Congressman?

On Monday, U.S. Rep. Edward L. Schrock announced he would not seek a third term in Congress, citing unspecified allegations that questioned his ability to serve. He did not provide details, but according to Hugh Lessig from the Daily Press in Hampton Roads, VA, his decision came after an Aug. 19 posting on a blog that claimed Schrock was secretly gay. The site, Blogactive.com, has targeted politicians who it says are gay, yet support anti-gay laws.

Lessig also uses this event to make a key point. Namely, that it used to be that someone with a hot tip or a scandalous rumor picked up a telephone and called a news reporter. Nowadays though, the same tipster has a far more widespread and powerful medium to get out the word - weblogs.

Backyard Blogging

The Seattle Times has started a participatory journalism blog where a dozen voters under-35 from across the region and across the political spectrum will share their election-season experiences. More details here.

Did Fan Sites Spoil Apple's Party?

Apple is expected to unveil its next iMac as soon as next week and Mac fan sites are buzzing with speculation over the design, CNET reports. Meanwhile it looks like at least one such site may have posted photos that spoil Apple's party.

(Post updated to reflect these are fan sites, not blogs. Thanks commenter.)

UPDATE - Engadget says this was all a hoax.

PubSub Monitors the Elephants on Parade

iMedia Connection profiles the bloggers who are covering the Republican National Convention next week. PubSub also launched a cool add-on for IE that lets you monitor what blogs are saying about the convention in real-time.

"We the Media" for Marketers

MediaPost reviews Dan Gillmor's awesome book, We the Media, from a marketer POV.

Hey Bloggers, Clean Up After Yourselves!

The Raw Story, "an alternative news directory to provide interesting and relevant news stories of interest to the left-leaning market," says...

"For every under cover Washington Post writer on the web, there are about 2,500 failed novelists desperate for attention from a Reality TV world obsessed with undeserved fame. Even the worst bloggers are going to demand their share of attention. For them, I offer a few simple tips for cleaning up the blogosphere."

The writer's advice for all personal journalists includes "Get the whole story before you shoot your keyboard off."

Exclusives are "The New Normal"

Matthew Podboy wrote that Om Malik's decision yesterday to break the Technorati financing news on his blog rather than on his employer's web site represents an important change for the PR industry because he "spoiled the launch" …

PR consultants out there should take this into consideration. If you're preparing a traditional launch - long leads, analysts, short leads, wires, onlines, etc. - you better factor blogs into the mix and calculate the chance that someone gets tipped off and posts a story about the news they've uncovered.

I'd like to take this discussion one step further. I too believe that weblogs are changing the PR game. Remember ye olde days? The days when you could "soft launch" a product and hold back the release for the "hard launch?" Those days are gone, folks. If your product is out there, it will be discovered by a blogger. Therefore, exclusives are the new normal.

Weblogs have fragmented the media world into millions of tiny little pieces. "The bigs" (perhaps with the help of personal journalists) and the more elite blogs are now competing for scoops on the same battle field. As a result, PR pros will begin relying even more on doling out exclusives (i.e. giving one outlet an opportunity to "break" a story before anyone else). PR people will play off the media's competitive fears to ensure their internal/external client's messages break through the clutter.

Om's feat yesterday - "The Post Heard Round the World" – is yet another sign that the PR game is changing.

Journalist Says the Best Bloggers Will Become Skeptics

Tech journalism vet and former CMP colleague David Strom writes that for all the hype on blogs, it all comes down to reader trust and that some bloggers are not doing a good job walking the white line...

The bloggers themselves are beginning to see where having the training of journalists (or those of us who pretend to be) helps. They need the experience to make judgment calls about the information that they present to their devoted public.

He goes on to say that he thinks eventually the better bloggers will develop the same discrimination and skepticism skills that the better journalists have, just as a matter of self-preservation. The article touches on CEO blogging as well as PR ethics in this new world of open-source journalism.

Medill Students Post Findings of Citizens Media Experiment

Remember the 1987 classic B-movie Police Academy 4 - Citizens on Patrol? What, you missed that one? Well, in the movie the local police academy recruits a group of civilian volunteers to take to the streets and the skies to fight crime. Believe it or not, the movie might serve as a model for the future participatory journalism. Don't take my word for it, however. Just look at what Medill University did recently.

Last spring, six Medill graduate students tried to address a growing problem faced by metro newspapers - the impact of suburban sprawl and audience fragmentation. They created a a geographically focused Web site for Skokie, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. Their theory was that "hyperlocal citizens' media" on the Internet can provide a new model for residents of a town or neighborhood to engage with each other, with their community, and, potentially, with journalists and the companies that employ them.

The Medill team recently posted their recommendations (PDF). They list six core findings ...

* Audiences are no longer passive and the roles of journalists and audiences are interchanging
* Citizens' media sites are sprouting across the country
* These sites are easy to launch and inexpensive to maintain
* Many people initially have trouble understanding what a site like this can do, and why they might want to contribute to it
* It is easier to get people to visit an HLCM site than to get them to become contributors
* Many citizens need guidance in how to use the tools provided on an hyper local citizens' media site
* These sites have the potential to generate ad revenue

There's lots of good information in this living case study on the future of participatory journalism that marketers, journalists and PR pros should gobble up.

The Influence of Consumer Generated Media

MediaPost has a good story today on an Intelliseek Webinar on how consumer-generated media, such as blogs, are influencing public opinion and even creep into the mainstream press.

Should News Sites Link to Blogs?

ClickZ's Pamela Parker tackles this question and, guess what Rafat, she references your gripes and is linking to your blog and others!

Pamela writes...

Naturally, like any reputable publication, we have editorial policies in place and cite sources all the time. But our policies differ from those of the blogosphere.

What's at stake here? Money, for one thing, whether its ad dollars or more indirect rewards: new jobs, client wins, consulting gigs, and so on. With citations and links come more credibility, more traffic, and better search engine rankings (which in turn lead to more credibility and traffic).

Pamela also addresses Om Malik's recent proposal.

This Guy Gets It, PR is a Dialogue Now

In a letter to the editor published in the Mercury News, Luca Penati, General manager, Edelman, Mountain View, writes...

"Public relations has gone from being a 'push' communications dynamic to a two-way dialogue business. The days of one-way paid communications as a singular method of building brands and credibility are over. Consumers, investors, media and influencers need and want much more.

We're in a time of democratization of media and informed, skeptical consumers. With 800,000 bloggers out there, it's more important than ever to allow for continual, fact-based channels of communication with various publics.

Hype is dead. Long live reality."

Luca's letter is in response to a recent op-ed by Jonathan Weber. My only nit with it is his 800,000 metric, but otherwise he's right on track. It's nice to see the big agencies are on board.

Friends in High Places

Susan Mernit tells me that Shop Etc., her consulting project for Hearst, is now live. The Shop Etc. site is a companion to the new Hearst shop-aholic mag that goes by the same name. It includes some innovative touches such as a daily blog and RSS feeds.

Meanwhile, Buzz Bruggeman is showing the world with his Hurricane Charley blogging that individuals also do a nice job covering disasters.

Om Malik: Where's Our Love?

Om Malik says it's high time that bloggers are credited for their scoops by the major online news outlets. He notes that this lack of love is a throwback to the early days of the Internet when some of these same sites couldn't get the time of day from "old media." Om writes...

In words of great Yogi Berra, its like déjà vu all over again. An old editor of mine used to say, you have to give credit where it is due. I think one needs to have the same rules for the weblogs as well. Being someone who is fortunate enough to work for a magazine that indulged my blogging habits, it is fairly clear to me that weblogs are not going away.

For more, check out the reaction from Doc Searls, John Battelle, Tom Biro and others. For a similar example of this in the wild, read what Ed Oswald has to say about the WaPo's lack of link love.

Are Bloggers Too Big for Their Britches?

"Recovering publicist" Shel Israel is concerned that too many prominent bloggers are contending that the new medium is superior to and more honest than traditional journalism. He also says that journalists also hurling epitaphs at bloggers that fall short of the mark and miss the point. He has thought this all through and sees two possibilities...

Possibility #1—Traditional media companies develop newsblog advertising and subscription-based models that work.

Possibility #2—Bloggers start reporting events everywhere as they seem them happen. New forms of news companies evolve, with new ethic sets.

Why We Need a Blogger Hall of Fame

Blogging is growing. And let's face facts. As a result there are some webloggers who have been at it a long time and are truly outstanding. They write better than the rest of us. They break the news. They define what blogging is and then smash the rules. These bloggers deserve special recognition. They have graduated from the ranks and are superstars. They're Hall of Famers.

So who are these folks? Ask 100 people and you'll get 100 different answers. We need to institutionalize a way to publicly recognize the cream of the blogging crop. We need a Blogger Hall of Fame to help us define the Joe Dimaggios and Ty Cobbs of the blogging world, just as the Baseball Hall of Fame has defined the true greats of America’s Pastime.

I propose that professional journalists who cover media/technology are in the best position to nominate/elect members to the Blogging Hall of Fame, just as they do in the sports world. If enough bloggers and others feel this is a worthwhile idea, I would like to recruit some volunteers to help me draft this. Specifically we need…

* A Blogger Hall of Fame weblog
* A wiki where the community can discuss/determine the specific criteria required to become a member of the Blogging Hall of Fame
* A committee of respected folks who will over see the Hall of Fame and help shape its direction

Any volunteers? Any suggestions?

Blogger Seeks Reviewers

Rick Bruner is willing to pay a small commission for freelance-written reviews of some of the larger blog publishing systems.

Wired News Interviews Dan Gillmor

Wired News this morning features an interview with Dan Gillmor conducted by Xeni Jardin. Gillmor argues in his new book We the Media that journalism is stronger than ever because of the Web.

Are Blogs Hype or the Real Deal?

CNET News.com has posted a comprehensive editorial feature with enough great links to help readers to answer the question: Will blogs truly revolutionize the way people consume media?

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

Rafat Ali thinks its time the press start crediting bloggers for their scoops.

Participatory Journalism Conference Highlights

The Public Journalism Network today organized a great conference on participatory journalism up in Toronto. I couldn't make it this year, but you will find great round-ups on the following blogs...

Jeff Jarvis
Leonard Witt
Rebecca MacKinnon

Yo Dudes, YPulse Rocks!

So like I was checking my email and chewing my gum at the same time. And then I got this really coolio email from one of my peeps who I met at BlogOn, Anastasia Goodstein (hollerin' a word at ya 'Stasi!). And then all of a sudden my Mom came in the room. Gawd, she's such an interuptasaurus to my email readin'. (Ugh, parents!) But back to Anastasia. She emailed me about her Gen Y marketing blog YPulse and how it's rockin' everyone's world. Can you feel her now? No, then what's up with dat? Consider these factoids ...

* Since launching YPulse in May the site has grown to over 250 unique visitors a day and now has its first paid advertiser (Alt Terrain)

* 'Stasi entered YPulse in the commentary category for the Online Journalism Awards this November

* YPulse is adding original content (interviews with teen/youth media makers) soon and welcomes comments and suggestions

* Anastasia is selling out, I mean "getting married" in December and is seeking a guest blogger to help fill in during that time. (Note, I too will need one or more of these as well in December since I am getting married in Oct.)

YPulse is a terrific a micro media success story. Be sure to check out the site or subscribe to her RSS feed. The site's a little slow right now, but be patient with it.

Peace. Out.

Columnist Says Bloggers are Opinionists

MediaPost columnist George Simpson today wrote about the responsibilities bloggers now have as they are increasingly credentialed like journalists. Simpson wrote ...

Having spent nearly my entire adult life working in and around journalism, I find what I am about to say contrary to my observations of how the craft is often practiced. BUT, just having the means to produce copy does not a journalist make. For those who didn't sleep through most of journalism school, there is a good deal to be learned about fairness, accuracy, and the power of words.

~~ Snip ~~

You could argue that bloggers are not journalists, they are what I call, "opinionists" and that their copy should not be subjected to the same ethical standards as major news organizations. But the Internet (and the general degradation of mainstream news) has spawned a dangerous new world where readers have a hard time separating the wheat from the chaff.

Mercury News Reviews "We the Media"

Dan Gillmor's employer, The San Jose Mercury News, has published a freelance-written review of his new book, We the Media.

It's Time for a .Blogs Domain

It's no secret that weblogs are becoming powerful source of information. However, if you need proof, check out this stat.

According to Google News, since July 2 there have been more than 3,470 online news articles that have mentioned either blogs, weblogs, blog or weblog! This by far eclipses the number of articles that have mentioned Britney Spears in the same period (2,820).

Despite the huge buzz, however, the vast majority of Americans still probably do not know what blogs are. The Pew Internet and American Life Project says that 11% of Internet users read weblogs. My theory is that this number is actually far higher because many news consumers can’t differentiate blogs from professional sites because of their high-quality design and content.

Compare and contrast the following sites, for example …

Gawker vs. New York Magazine

PaidContent.org vs. MediaWeek

Not much difference right?

There is a solution, however, to this problem - a ".blogs" top-level domain name. This will immediately make it easy for everyone right off the bat to differentiate a weblog from a professional news site. Alternately, there also could be a special graphical identifier – perhaps an icon that says “This is a Blog” – that bloggers can integrate into their site template to make this distinction even more clear.

Regardless, such a move I feel is critical to help blogs gain awareness as a new medium.

Om My God! Press Silent as Influencers Report iPod Glitches

One of these days I am going to write an Ode to Om… Om Malik of Business 2.0 that is. On his blog today Om points out a nifty story that the press has largely ignored.

Malik notes that there is a significant glitch in Apple's latest iPod software updater. Three heavy hitter influencers - Om,
Jeff Jarvis and Fred Wilson - all reported that their iPods are D-O-A thanks to this B-U-G.

Here's the amazing part, however. As of this writing, no one in the press is reporting the Apple glitch. Is CNET's slogan still Tech News First? Maybe that's why one of their columnists today dissed bloggers.

A Conversation with Convention Blogger Matt Stoller

Matthew Stoller is one of the 30+ webloggers who are blogging this week's Democratic National Convention. He is the producer and cocreator of the Blogging of the President web project, an interactive media series on the ongoing digital transformation of politics and media.

Matt has worked in software product management, holds a BA from Harvard University.

MP: You're a blogger, but are you also in part an organizer helping the DNC manage the bloggers? What is your exact role here? Are you working for the DNC yourself, etc?

STOLLER: Funny you should ask that question. The National Journal just did a story on the DNCC supposedly 'firing' me because my name was removed from the blog. Of course, the story isn't true, but it is a reflection of the ambiguous role that I played and the conflict between organizations and the media cycle that so distorts effective descriptions of democracy.

As unpaid advisor to the DNCC, I put a lot of work into the convention to make sure the bloggers had a good time. And they are being treated wonderfully. I used the Democratic National Convention Committee blog to help coordinate this group. But I am also blogging on my own blog, BOPnews.

MP: Does the fact you are working at the DNCC mean you have more responsibility than others?

STOLLER: Great question. When the Convention came around, we had to figure out what to do, which speaks to the essential question - when I blog on my own site, am I me Matt Stoller or a representative of the Convention? And what are the consequences of this being misrepresented one way or the other?

Well, I think that it is possible for media outlets to misconstrue what I say on my blog and confuse it with the DNCC blog, especially those with partisanized agendas. In an environment with such an immature media culture, this can become controversy very quickly. How could someone want to help the Democratic National Convention and not love every single thing that's going on?!?! Zut alors!

The determination was that if I was speaking for myself publicly in an online forum, I was speaking for me and not the Convention.

People have conversations all the time about what's going on. Once conversation moves online, however, it goes 'on the record'. I happen to have some of my conversations online, but the political media hasn't caught up with the fact that most normal people act like normal people and have normal conversations. They curse. They have opinions. These are normal things. But putting this normality online challenges the structures of our cultural institutions, which tend to rely on images of perfection rather than authenticity.

MP: What, generally, has the reaction been like by the press to the presence of the bloggers? Are any of them resentful?

STOLLER: Oh, I don't know. Most of the ones I talked to are like 'oh, neat'. Some say that they love blogs and read them all the time.

MP: Do they feel competitive at all to break news?

STOLLER: Perhaps. I think the bloggers here have different agendas. Some just want to watch the Convention.

MP: Are the bloggers getting special treatment? There was a blogger breakfast this week attended by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.

STOLLER: Some are journalists looking to break news. Some are consultants looking to broaden their understanding of political issues and races. We are starting to see that 'bloggers' doesn't mean anything anymore. Because blogging is just a tool. The people that used it were initially in one community. But no longer.

MP: But are bloggers getting white-glove treatment the press does not get?

STOLLER: Yes. They don't have to pay for their space in the Fleet Center.

MP: Why should they if blogging is just a tool?

STOLLER: Because this is a special moment.

MP: Do they get greater/lesser access than journalists do?

STOLLER: I bet that bloggers could get better access if they wanted it.

MP: Some say the bloggers are the news at this convention. Are the bloggers stealing the spotlight? How does the DNC and the Kerry campaign feel about this?

STOLLER: You'd have to ask them. But my interactions with them have been quite positive. I think, and I think they think, that blogging and participation will be very good for the Democratic Party, and great for democracy. Anything that distributes power downward, as Joe Trippi or Seth Godin might say, is good for populism.

MP: Jay Rosen told the New York Times this week: "Whomever they decide to let through the gate is now the press. What the credential means to me is that someone just expanded the idea of the press a little bit." Is blogging journalism? Are these bloggers closer to journalists than folks like me? What’s the relationship between blogging and journalism?

STOLLER: Well the whole edifice of journalism is built on the idea that ethics in speech are important. But why must this be? Well, because if there are a limited number of printing presses, the people in charge of them have special responsibilities and special power.

Now, anyone with a computer, an Internet connection, and some degree of literacy can have their own printing press. The challenge is to figure out a set of institutional arrangements that maximizes the credibility of the content that is displayed to the largest number of people. And I'm not convinced that our current system of commercially organized media does this. In fact, I think it doesn't. Individual blogs don't do this either, but the blogosphere as a whole presents good quality content very efficiently.

We are used to a system where if you work in commercial media, the content you create will be edited and honed, but it will be consumed The blogosphere doesn't work that way. Neither do people. We don't remember most of the conversations we have - we only remember a few key moments in them. 99% of the content is ignored, but the 1% that isn't becomes very meaningful. And the bad 99% is critical to the creation of the good 1%.

So even though the blogosphere creates a lot of innuendo - in fact most of it is terrible - the content that the blogosphere presents to most people who participate in it is great. Why? Because the blogosphere is one institutional arrangement that has figured out how to allow people to mostly ignore crap, and pay attention to stuff they are interested in.

MP: But does this mean that gatekeepers - by limiting access to a select few of these individuals - risk setting this system backward?

STOLLER: Gatekeeping, which is intrinsic to the system of media and PR that we have right now, creates corruption. And that's what our public discourse is right now - corrupt. And so the question of 'is blogging journalism' is really an attempt to redefine the notion of journalism when its institutional arrangements don't make sense any more.

How do you find a business model for Seymour Hersh, in other words? But this crisis is everywhere. A lot of corporations are trying to figure out how to sell what they want to sell, rather than restructuring their businesses to encourage risk-taking. The whole 99% of crap produces the 1% of greatness.

Anyway, no, I don't think that credentialing a few bloggers will set this back at all.

MP: What impact do you think this seminal event will have on politics, journalism and (most importantly) PR?

STOLLER: Well, it legitimizes blogging as a medium that the press is now allowed to pay attention to. So that's a shift in media culture. Over the long-term, this will alter the media ecosystem to allow for more boutique journalists - and 'beats' will become 'communities'.

Politically, we are in the midst of an enormously significant change, perhaps as large a political realignment as the American Revolution. The anger we see between the parties and within the parties, and within organizations generally, is over how much information to share and how much power to distribute downwards - classic populism rocket fuel.

In terms of PR, the industry will become a lot happier. Authenticity is a great thing, and authenticity sells. The need to portray perfection when all is not perfect is inherently anxiety producing. PR will become about managing conversations among stakeholders in a product or service line. It will grow to encompasses CRM and some elements of product design and marketing.

It's fairly obvious once you drink the kool aid. The thing is, people don't want to believe that cynicism doesn't work. They are used to assuming that manipulating fear and imagery can get you everything you want.

If I sell you a bad product, and I know you can't talk about it, I'm not going to care what you think. So my PR strategy will be about convincing other people that they need this product. Obviously, this is an oversimplification.

But without strong word of mouth, the tool set available shrinks to information delivery and emotional manipulation. It's hard to convince people that just by making a good product and being honest with your customers, you can do well. They just don't believe that 'word gets around'. And so they are skeptical about substance, because without word of mouth or community, style is all that matters.

Will Blogs One Day Replace Consumer Reports?

If this guy has anything to do with it, then yes!

(Via Gary Stein)

Amateur Bloggers Giving "The Pros" a Run

The Seattle P-I reports that some of the DNC delegates have been posting content on their blogs from the convention floor, challenging the credentialled bloggers.

Credentials Then vs. Now

Kaye Trammel posted this Doug Marlette cartoon and I couldn't resist...

ABCNews.com Says Blogs are a Form of Media

ABCNews.com has a six-part article on how blogging is now basically a form of media.

"People are recognizing that there is a shift in the way consumers consume media. It's an indication that the parties believe these people will be listened to," said Gaby Darbyshire, director of business development for Gawker Media, which publishes five of the most widely read blogs in the United States.

DNC Highlights Blog/Journalism Chasm

USA Today: The arrival of the bloggers is perhaps the most overcovered media story of the convention so far.

Convention Bloggers Second-Guessing Journalists

The Hollywood Reporter has an interesting look at the convention bloggers and their overall impact on how the media is covering the convention.

NYT: 2004 is the Year of the Blog

The New York Times today has one of the better articles about the bloggers covering the convention (registration required).

Boston Globe Engages Citizen Reporters

Mark Tosczak notes that the Boston Globe is soliciting readers to submit their Convention photos.

Is it All Matt Drudge's Fault?

Freelance journalist Scott C Smith says Matt Drudge's gossip reporting and blog-style journalism are a major reason why Internet journalists have problems with credibility. He describes Drudge as 'a dumpster diver of internet news, looking for the news scraps the legitimate media throws away'.

Is there really a credibility issue with online journalism? This seems like such a 1995 argument.

We the Unmediated?

Dan Gillmor notes that the accompanying Weblog for his forthcoming book We the Media is now live. The here irony is the news leaked out early via Joi Ito.

Paul Holmes: PR People, Take Blogs Seriously

The following very lengthy article ran today in The Holmes Report, an influential PR industry newsletter, and is reprinted with the full permission of Paul himself. Thanks Paul!

It’s Time to Take Blogs Seriously—and Maybe to Develop One of Your Own

Since the earliest days of the Internet, its evangelists have been predicting that the new medium had the power to transform the nature of journalism. A decade ago, the late John Scanlon stood in front of an audience of Edelman clients and told them they had the power to become “content providers,” to publish their own versions of news stories, to reach consumers directly.

For those who expected the Internet to change everything, and to do so overnight, the big shock must be how little things have changed. Yes, every newspaper now has its own website, and the pressure to break news in real time has led to some lowering of standards. But new, Internet-only media have been slow to evolve. Online magazines like Slate and Salon don’t differ dramatically from their offline counterparts (not surprising, given that Slate is owned in part by Microsoft) and the Internet has produced precisely one big-name reporter: Matt Drudge.

So PR people can be forgiven if they react to one more story about the emergence of new, more participatory form of journalism with a skeptical shrug. But there are signs that the long-awaited revolution is finally upon us. This week saw the celebration of Global PR Blog Week 1.0, an online forum about PR and blogs launched by Australian blogger Trevor Cook and supported by a small army of public relations bloggers. It also saw the announcement that both major political parties would be welcoming bloggers to cover their conventions—an announcement that drew considerably more mainstream media attention.

Says Steve Rubel, vice president of client services at New York PR firm CooperKatz & Company and author of the MicroPersuasion blog, “Blogs are changing the way the media world works. They are creating an environment of participatory journalism, in which anyone can become a journalist. I’m a journalist. I break some news. I have had people pitch me exclusives. And I’m a PR person. That’s crazy, but it shows how much things have changed.”

The announcement that the Democratic Party would supply media credentials to selected bloggers for the upcoming national convention in Boston generated a mixed reaction. Some hailed it as evidence that the new medium had arrived: “It’s like we’ve finally been invited to sit at the grown-ups table at Thanksgiving,” says Ana Marie Cox, who runs the political blog wonkette.com.

Some worried that encouraging bloggers would simply lower journalistic standards even further. Says Tom McPhail, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri, “They’re certainly not committed to being objective. They thrive on rumor and innuendo. Bloggers should be put in a different category, like ‘pretend’ journalists.”

And some merely expressed confusion—after the Washington Post reported on the admission of bloggers into the media tent, several readers wrote to ask what a blogger was.

For PR people who share that confision, the term weblog was coined by Jorn Barger in 1997. According to Barger, a weblog is “a web page where a weblogger (sometimes called a blogger) ‘logs’ all the other webpages she finds interesting.” Back then, there were only a few hundred bloggers, but as new software came on the market, it became possible for people with no technology skills or knowledge of HTML to create their own web pages and update them on a daily basis.

Today, there are at least a half a million blogs, and blogging has evolved beyond the aggregation of interesting articles to include comment and analysis.

“Blogs are usually written by one person and in a style that is candid, authentic, even raw,” says Debbie Weil, who runs her own blog and also manages Internet conferences on blogging. “The voice of a blog is sometimes edgy; usually opinionated; often smart. Bloggers are not journalists but they comment, analyze and report in real-time on politics, culture and all things Internet. The coolness quotient of a blog is based on how many other Weblogs link to it. And what kind of buzz it stirs up in the blogosphere.”

From the Democratic Party perspective, the presence of bloggers presents a risk—many of them are considerably more liberal than the presumed presidential nominee, John Kerry—but also an opportunity to reach the grassroots of the party more directly.

“We want to treat them just the same as other reporters,” said Mike Liddell, the convention’s director of online communications. “We’re even planning to do a breakfast for them the first day of the convention.” Lina Garcia, a spokeswoman for the convention, said she hopes the bloggers will help the party reach young people. “A lot of young people blog now, and they’re important to us,” she says.

The blog-reading audience should be equally important to public relations people, experts say. But many PR people don’t seem to know they exist.

It used to be that blogs were for technophiles only. Then they expanded to include the political realm. But today, “blogs have expanded well beyond tech and political space,” says Sarah McAuley, resident expert on the blogging phenomenon at Greenough Communications Group in Boston, “reaching into all aspects of life: serious social commentary, entertainment, sports, books, and music.”

According to Weber Shandwick Web Relations executive vice president Mike Spataro, virtually every topic under the sun is being blogged about. “Even though most companies and corporate and PR pros remain largely unaware of this expanding ‘blogshere,’ some leading-edge marketers are definitely getting into the act and working within the blogging community to deliver messages and interact with customers.”

“Blogs have clearly expanded to all reaches of the global community,” says Todd Defren, a principal at Shift Communications and a blogger himself. “Today you can read blogs from Iraq, posted by U.S. soldiers and Iraqi housewives. You can read about the adventures of happy-go-lucky Brazilian teens, entrepreneurial Czechs, Hollywood stars and Chinese dissidents.”

It’s difficult to know how many people are reading these blogs, and easy to dismiss the numbers as relatively small, but they are being read by people who matter.

“The people who read blogs are the opinion leaders and the early adopters,” says Rubel. “They are people who pass on what they learn to other people. And these sites are being read every day by the journalists who cover your industry. It’s amazing how many stories start on the Internet and then make into the mainstream media.”

As an not particularly representative example, the news that John Kerry had chosen John Edwards as his running mate was broken by an aviation industry blogger who noted the new decals on the candidate’s plane. (Meanwhile, the mainstream New York Daily News was reporting erroneously that Dick Gephardt would be on the ticket.)

“While I think marketing executives are aware of blogs, I think very few really grasp what role they should play in the corporate communication effort,” says McAuley.

When corporations think about blogs, they tend to think first about the potential threat they pose. Blogs are entirely unedited, and to a certain extent unaccountable. Skeptics point to Gregg Easterbrook, a respected mainstream journalist whose blog review of Kill Bill included the words “Jewish executive” and “worship of money” in uncomfortably close proximity to one another. The presence of an editor would surely have caught the faux pas before it made it into print and cost Easterbrook his credibility and his lucrative weekly column at ESPN.com.

“The biggest potential threat is that there’s no mandate for politeness in blogs,” says McAuley. “If a blogger doesn’t like something, there’s no editor encouraging the writer to tone it down or offer a more balanced view. In many ways, bloggers write to be sensational, to get a reaction, and to start a dialogue—which of course presents an opportunity.

“But if I put a product in the hands of a blogger for a review, I have to be very confident that the product is going to live up to or surpass expectations; otherwise, I would brace for impact and get ready for a negative review the likes of which would probably be off-limits in most print media.”

But if a blogger is interested in a product, he or she is probably going to find a way to get hold of it, or to get hold of a reader who has gotten hold of it—which suggests that PR people can either embrace the inevitable or resist it.

“To those people who still think that blogs are ‘loose cannons,’ I’d say that they should embrace the revolution— or become cannon fodder,” says Defren.

And those who dismiss weblogs as untrustworthy just don’t understand the nature of trust, says Lance Knobel, author of a recent white paper on participatory journalism for Edelman, who points to the agency’s Trust barometer surveys. “In most of the countries in the survey, doctors and healthcare specialists come top. But close behind comes ‘average person, like yourself.’ The average person is more the twice as credible as a CEO or broadcaster. Effective weblogs are written by an ‘average person, like yourself.’”

In other words trust is conferred by having a big corporate name behind a site, or even about adhering to time honored journalist standards. It is earned by forging a relationship with your readers. “When you read a weblog for a while, you develop a relationship with the author. If, day after day, the information or analysis seems good, you develop trust in that weblog, just as readers develop a hard-to-break relationship with their daily newspaper. What’s different about weblogs, however, is they are open and connected. So one trusting relationship leads to another.”

For example, Knobel says he read Berkeley economics professor Brad DeLong’s weblog daily for his economic insight and “because I’ve found his political commentary to my taste. When Brad links to someone I haven’t heard of before, I follow that link and more often than not subscribe to the site. Many weblogs also have so-called blogrolls, lists of weblogs the author reads or recommends. Many specialist weblogs maintain a blogroll on their specialty so that readers can find other weblogs that deal with, say, social policy, intellectual property law or diabetes.”

Blogs, in other words, are tapping into the word-of-mouth phenomenon, providing consumers (and employees, and investors) with sources of information that lack traditional authority but provide something even more important: authenticity.

Of course, some blogs are more important than others. To figure out which blogs really matter to your company, Rubel suggests starting with a Google search—enter the industry or company name along with the word blog—but then checking the site for tone and for frequency of updates. Finally, he says, PR people should check resources such as Technorati, which ranks blogs according to how many other sites link to them, a system similar to Google’s credibility algorithm.

“Blogs are more of an opportunity than a threat,” says Spataro. “Blogs are among the best ways today for companies to speak directly to consumers—an increasingly important strategy in this age of participatory citizen journalism. With media fragmentation at an all-time high and its continuing loss of credibility to the average American consumer, blogs can be tremendous buzz generators for a company. And nowadays, brands can’t afford to turn down any opportunity to create a greater sense of connection with their target audiences.”

(At the very least, public relations people need to be creating RSS feeds so they can monitor what is being said about their companies, their products and their competitors in the blogosphere.)

In addition to dealing with independent bloggers, some companies have already created their own corporate blogs. “A few savvy businesses have caught on to the fact blogs essentially present an opportunity to build communities where like-minded people gather to establish interactive dialogues on issues of their choice,” says online marketing columnist Kathleen Goodwin. “And in the business world, large communities gather. Business-blogs offer organizations a platform where information, data, and opinion can be shared and traded among employees, customers, partners, and prospects in a way previously impossible: a two-way, open exchange.”

“People don’t want messages anymore, they want conversations,” says Knobel. “They want to be able to engage with an organization, to be listened to, to feel they are dealing with an individual, rather than something faceless. This sense of engagement does not only arise when people are angry, concerned with a poor product or against a particular policy. It also applies when people are thrilled with a product, or are enthusiastic about a political candidate.”

Weil agrees: “No one listens anymore to sanitized marketing messages. If you find the right person in your organization to blog about your products or services you’ll brand your company as authentic and knowledgeable….Think of a blog as an always-on e-newsletter with more interactivity built into it. There is an immediacy and realness to the interaction between blog writer and blog reader that you don’t get with an e-newsletter. Readers can add comments to any blog post for all to see. Anyone who reads a blog can see what everyone else is commenting about it.”

In some cases, the CEO himself can be the blogger. McAuley is particularly impressed with Dallas Mavericks
owner Mark Cuban, who runs a blog: “He writes really candidly about the state of his business, the rationale behind some of the decisions he makes, and he’s honest about when he thinks he’s made a mistake.”

But in other cases, rank-and-file employees may be the best bloggers. “You need someone who’s dedicated enough to update it daily or at least a few times a week,” says McAuley. “Alter-natively—and the model I favor— you can have a blog that has a few authors and integrates a couple of different perspectives on various topics, lightens the individual load for contributing, and keeps content fresh.”

McAuley cites Robert Scoble’s pioneering Microsoft blog as another example of a corporate blog that works. “But the very reason for its popularity is that it isn’t the mouthpiece of an organization filtered through the marketing department.”

Indeed, Scoble was a blogger before he joined Microsoft in 2003, as an evangelist for Longhorn, the newest version of Windows. With the encouragement of his employers, he continued his blog after he joined the company.

He is quite upfront about where he works, and he is an advocate for the company and its products, but he has earned the trust of his readers with an even-handed approach: he links to several critics of the company, and acknowledges when he feels the company has made a mistake, following the blogging manifesto he drew up before he joined the software company.

Some of the rules he suggests in his manifesto should be followed by anyone who wants to run a corporate weblog:
* Tell the truth
* Post fast on good news or bad
* Use a human voice
* Have a thick skin
* If you screw up, acknowledge it
* If you don’t have the answers, say so
* Never lie
* Never hide information
* Link to your competitors and be nice to them

Scoble’s work, and the work of others at Microsoft, have earned the company high marks from the blogging
community.

“The company doing the most in this new environment is Microsoft,” says Knobel. By some estimates, there are now over 300 webloggers within Microsoft. Some of the weblogs are explicitly used for what Microsoft terms evangelism, others engage in highly technical debates, while still others offer personal reflections on life inside one of the world’s most watched companies.

“What possible difference could these weblogs make to a company like Microsoft? In terms of selling more copies of Windows or Office, I suspect very little. But in communities that matter deeply to Microsoft, the difference can be great. For example, Microsoft relies on outside developers and other computing professionals to support its customers, and to create new products that work well with Microsoft.

“Unsurprisingly, Microsoft pays a lot of attention to these professionals, running an elaborate MVP (most valuable professional) program to give them the information they need and to make them feel part of the Microsoft world. But the network of Microsoft weblogs has organically extended that program beyond the MVPs. Given the hostility engendered by Microsoft in some technology circles, weblogs also provide a very different picture of the corporation to the one imagined by those who mutter about the evil empire in Redmond.”

Still, Knobel acknowledges that Scoble’s approach probably cannot be duplicated in every corporate culture. Says Knobel, “One of Scoble’s rules will perhaps be the hardest to bear for
most organizations: link to your competitors and be nice to them. What’s the point of that? Linking to
people you disagree with—or to competitors— is one of the ways to build trust with your readers. If
it’s clear that your blog will ignore rivals, it becomes very hard for readers to trust it to present a full picture.”

Another benefit to embracing other, competing voices, is that it adds to the authority of a site.

“Successful bloggers are big readers of other blogs,” says McAuley. “Much of the value that you offer readers is showcasing your own expertise but also pointing them in the direction of other sources for information.” A good example, she says, is a personal blog by Evan Williams, the founder of Blogger (which is now owned by Google).

“I haven’t seen a corporate blog that does this really well yet. For a corporate blogger to be successful
on this front, you would have to be familiar with other experts in your industry, and leverage your blog as a tool for dialogue, either by commenting on other’s sites or expounding on their ideas on your own site.”

Clearly, companies thinking about starting their own blogs need to understand the medium before taking the plunge.

“Start slow and learn the game first,” says Spataro. “Even though blogging has been around for some time, corporate blogging as a marketing discipline is relatively new. The ground rules are very different than any other form of previous marketing and communications. In fact, it’s not about marketing and PR. It’s about establishing a direct line of communication to your customers.”

Companies need to be prepared to sacrifice some control over the corporate communications process.

“The first loss of control,” says Knobel, “is the very act of allowing individual weblogs from within the organization. That requires trust, but it also requires recognizing that there will be occasions when people write things you don’t like. Further loss of control will occur if you allow comments to be posted on a weblog.”

In addition, Defren suggests that anyone assigned to blogging should be familiar with financial disclosure regulations.

“A sanctioned blogger within a public company might be required to undergo a class in investor relations,” he says. “Even if you forbid Mary the customer service rep blogger to talk about financials, she could slip up and the company would have a poor defense for allowing Mary to act as an official spokesperson, without proper training.”

The bottom line: “Only start a blog if it really adds value for your audience,” says McAuley. “Don’t blog for the sake of being part of the larger trend—it’s transparent, time consuming, and boring.”

Of course, companies should be aware that blogs may happen whether they encourage them or not.

“The empowering nature of the Internet will allow users to blog with or without corporate permission,” Defren says. “The blogger who is encouraged with tools, freedom, and a few simple rules-of-the-road becomes a valuable advocate for the company. The blogger whose ambitions are repudiated simply sets up shop at home and spends their free time gossiping about the company’s embarrassing hiccups.”

How much will this change the way the media—and public relations people—work?

There are skeptics. “I don’t think enough people are doing it well enough yet to see how big the participatory model is going to get,” says McAuley. “If I had to guess, I would project that a few companies are going to do it really well and benefit greatly from it, more companies will throw their hat into the ring and do it wrong, therefore diluting the validity of the model as a whole, and then it’s going to become another function of marketing and PR that still adds value, but not to the extent that it’s a really fresh and innovative way to get your company messages out there.”

But others believe the changes will be more profound. “Meta-sites, blogs, wikis, and the proliferation of RSS and related site syndication technologies, have all rapidly given a voice to people who previously had no way of expressing their opinions,” says Elizabeth Albrycht, who runs the Corporate PR weblog. “The Internet is no longer a closed-medium where knowledge does not affect or crossover into the offline, ‘real’ world.”

In such an environment, companies will need to learn to listen, and they will need to earn credibility the same way everyone else does: by delivering accurate, actionable information.

Rubel agrees: “There used to be two spheres—the media and the audience—and information would flow from the former to the latter. The media’s attitude was, ‘We will tell your what is news.’ The audience had very limited feedback channels. They could write a letter to the editor. But essentially it was one-way communication.

“Today there are three spheres—the media, the blogosphere, and the audience—and they are all interacting with each other all the time. Bloggers are talking to their audience, and the audience is talking back to the bloggers, and the media are listening in and sometimes participating in those conversations.”

Companies can ignore those conversations (at their peril) or they can participate in them, in which case they will need to do so in a spirit of openness and transparency or risk mockery and vituperation. What they cannot do is make them go away.

Paul A. Holmes

Participatory Journalism Up Close

Cyberjournalist looks at The Northwest Voice, one of the most ambitious participatory journalism efforts to date in the United States. It includes a community newspaper and Web site in which nearly all the articles and pictures are contributed for free by people in the community.

NYT Publishes Editorial on Blogging!

Big news from the Old Grey Lady! The New York Times today ran an editorial (registration required) saying the Dems' decision to open their convention to bloggers "may lace the proceedings with fresh insight and even some Menckenian impertinence." Excerpt...

Beyond its power as a source of news and commentary, the Internet has proved itself to be the ultimate fund-raising tool. Bloggers can be crass and biased, but politicians no longer scoff at their rich online realm. Hence the red carpet at the conventions — at least for some of them.

A Conversation with Dan Gillmor

I just posted a must-read email interview I conducted with Dan Gillmor for Global PR Blog Week 1.0. The interview focuses on how weblogs and participatory journalism are changing how PR people manage crises. Here's one of the more poignant excerpts...

RUBEL: Weblogs and personal/amateur journalism mean greater transparency. Does this mean PR pros will lose complete control of their company's reputation? What opportunity is there here for PR pros to shape reputations?

GILLMOR: Not at all. The PR mission evolves. But it's important for people to understand that a) they never had complete control in the first place; and b) "control" is a mistaken notion. Think in terms of managing, not controlling, what clients say and what is said about them.

The risks are growing on one level. Bloggers and other grassroots media -including the increasingly ubiquitous digital camera - are uncovering information many companies might prefer to keep secret and then spreading what they learn to anyone else who cares. Customers help each other "hack" products today in ways companies might not like. And some of the information that gets spread is false.

The opportunities are also growing. Using the same tools, companies can communicate better with their various constituencies: customers, suppliers, employees, community. With a more human than PR-laden voice, they can explain what is happening and why. They can have a conversation with these constituencies, via comments, bulletin boards, etc. They can enjoy the value that comes from listening to people's ideas.

PR folks also can use RSS to distribute routine news, instead of clogging up the e-mail inboxes of journalists who are already overwhelmed. And they can be careful to pitch the right people at any given organization, rather than blasting messages widely.

Blogger Turns the Table on Wedding Announcements

The New York Post reports that a 29year-old is mimicking wedding announcements on his blog by reporting break-ups instead.

There are few rules here - announcements are kept as brief and to the point as their happier counterparts, but the writers are otherwise free to give their version of events. (Breakups that are not recent but still haunt the jilted are welcome, too.)

Micro Persuasion Remaindered Links

Here's a collection of interesting tidbits I culled from over the past few days on blogs, participatory journalism and RSS.

• Search Engine Journal offers 15 Ways to Read an RSS Feed


• Gen Kanai talks about Sam Whitmore's recent experiment in collaborative journalism


• PR Week reports on how political parties will allow bloggers at the conventions


• Ross Mayfield is guest blogging over at The Industry Standard Web site.


• Cameron Reilly is using his blog to float the potential launch a new conference on IT innovation.


• The Chicago Tribune reports that some bloggers are making a enough money to earn a real living.


• Last but not least, The New York Times on two occassions Sunday referred to blogs as "media." Andrew Kohut touched on blogs in a column on how the public reacts to too much news, while William Saffire did so in discussing how we define media.

An Interview with Jay Rosen

This morning I posted an in-depth interview on PR in the age of participatory journalism with Jay Rosen, chair of the New York University Department of Journalism and author of the Pressthink weblog. The interview is part of Global PR Blog Week1.0 . Here's the interview's key excerpt...

Does disintermediation threaten PR? How should the profession react to the changes in how consumers get news?

ROSEN: I think public relations should first understand that to the extent that its art is a form of "spin"--whether it's reasonable spin, accepted spin, good spin, bad spin, terrible spin--it is selling a service for which there is less and less value, and less mind is paid to it. Spin was possible in the era of few-to-many media, and a small number of gatekeepers who could be spun.

There are fewer who listen (or have to listen) and more who hear only dull propaganda, witless repetition, one of the many forms of mindlessness to which citizens are subjected. Spin is also comedy to Americans, and John Stewart speaks with authority on it. PR does not because it believes, on the whole, in some right to spin-- all exceptions cheerfully granted. Plus, there what Doc Searls says to all the "pound the message home" pros, in any field: there is no demand for messages. Factor that in if you want a bright future in any media field.

Today many knowledge monopolies are breaking up, and this corresponds with what the British media scholar Anthony Smith once identified as a shift "in the locus of sovereignty over text," a shift toward the public. We could say "toward consumers," but what Smith meant is that more power has fallen into the hands of the people who were mere receivers before. They are more sovereign-- as consumers, yes. But also as producers of their own media. Pickers and choosers.

My advice to PR people is to help citizens become more so-- more sovereign over information goods. Spin is not a good. Neither is a brick wall, or a blatantly one-sided story that cleverly coheres because it leaves out every single inconvenient fact. Public relations, if it wants to do good, should stand for real transparency in organizations, and genuine interactivity with publics. Want an issue in corporate PR? Freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, freedom of interaction for company bloggers: how do we make it a practical reality?

Study Shows Millions Influenced by Alternative Online Media

Millions of Americans are increasingly using the Internet as a source of news and images that are not available in the mainstream media, according to a report released last week by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

"In certain circumstances for certain populations, the Internet has its appeal because it is seen as a more abundant source of information, and in some sense a source of information that you can't get in the mainstream news," said Lee Rainie, director of the project.

UPI has more details.

Yahoo! Buys Oddpost and Bloggers Scoop the Pros

Oddpost, an award-winning email application/news aggregator, today announced they were acquired by Yahoo. The blogosphere is all over the news. The news media (as of this writing) is not.

Aviation Blogger Scoops Media on Kerry/Edwards

As media outlets jockey for bragging rights, Salon reports an aviation blogger scooped everyone on the John Kerry-John Edwards announcement.

Web Marginalizes the Textbook Industry

CNET reports that a professor rebuffed by Cisco decided to offer his own networking textbook free of charge. The solution, the tech news site says, highlights powerful new publishing techniques that promise to shake up the textbook industry, offering cheaper alternatives to cash-strapped students.

Bloggers Influencing the Election

AFP reports that bloggers are gaining influence in the US presidential race and are breaking stories to boot. The story also notes that the Republicans are also in the process of arranging convention credentials for bloggers.

I Want to Blog the Conventions

I am interested in blogging either the Democratic or Republican conventions this summer. My intent is to study it from a PR perspective. I want to ideally compare/contrast how both parties are/are not accommodating bloggers at such large-scale media events. If anyone can hook me up or help facilitate, please email me.

CMPea Culpa

This week, as Sam Whitmore hints, I failed you. I re-blogged a report from a reliable source - Jonathan Dube - without first checking the facts myself.

He writes:

If Cyberjournalist.net says it saw CMP blocking Google News, then it did, as far as we're concerned. But no one else did. Did anyone from Cyberjournalist.net call CMP to ask why it was blocking Google News? You'll have to ask them. All we know is that Cyberjournalist.net filed the blog item and others picked it up.

In old-school journalism, publications "beaten" on a breaking story have to rely on their own reporting when following up. At least that's been the tradition. And those who break stories need to pick up the phone at least once to interview whom they're writing about, if not a few times, or several.

To earn the credibility and prestige so many of them deserve, bloggers need to be more than birds on a wire.

Sam is right. Before I rushed to link to Jonathan's report that CMP was blocking links from Google News (it ended up being an accident) and posting my "insiderish" commentary, I should have invested 15 minutes to: 1) verify the accusation with my own tests and 2) contacted Mike Azzara and/or one of the other CMP execs (who I know for many years). At a bare minimum I should called my former supervisor, who is still with CMP's PR department.

I want you to know that I learned a lesson in personal journalism this week and next week I will make it up to you. I have a call scheduled with Mike Azzara to get his complete side of this story. I will ask him about:

• Who CMP is blocking and why


• CMP's plans to roll out blogs and RSS feeds


• CMP's reaction to IDG's Pat Kenealy recent call to ABM member companies to block Google and other search engines from crawling their sites


• TechWeb's plans for its upcoming 10th anniversary

If you think there's anything else I should cover with Mike, please email me or comment on this post. Again, please accept my apologies. Dan, I especially owe you an apology. Let me buy you dinner at BlogOn.

Chris Nolan's "Stand-Alone Journalism" Call to Action

Political blogger and former biz journalist Chris Nolan says the media business is changing. Readers are getting news from many more sources, especially weblogs. This makes Chris happy since she's a lone gun. However, she is very dissatisfied with the term "web logging" because it focuses on the technology and not the content. So, she is calling for everyone to label personal journalism and blogging with a new term - "Stand-Alone Journalism."

She writes:

Why Stand-Alone Journalism? Well, it’s accurate. A journalist – or a small group of reporters – can work on the web to produce what they want as they find it appropriate. And readers are equally free to read the work of individual journalist as they see fit, on their time, not on schedules set by TV networks or the newspapers.

Chris is asking new readers and regulars to contribute via her PayPal tip jar. As a loyal reader for years, I have given her a small donation (although not the $25 she asks - I think this is a bit steep).

While I fully endorse Chris' call to action, I have only two concerns about this noble effort. First, Chris doesn't clearly delineate who has earned the right to be called a stand-alone journalist and who is just a blogger. For example, am I one? I don't feel I am. In my view, a stand-alone journalist is exactly what it says - someone who has quit writing professionally for an established media outlet to earn their living almost exclusively from blogging/personal journalism via ads and subscription. Rafit Ali at PaidContent.org is the perfect example of a stand-alone journalist. Robert Scoble is not. Also, she does not open her site to trackbacks and comments. Stand-alone journalists should promote two-way discussions if they want readers to ante up.

Photojournalist Trashes Blogs, Participatory Journalism

Ron Steinman, an award-winning television journalist and TV documentary producer, trashes weblogs in the latest issue of The Digital Journalist, a multimedia magazine for photojournalism in the digital age. He has some choice words for blogs and participatory media sites like OhMyNews, saying they only create more noise and anarchy. In sum, he views these changes as a threat and not an opportunity.

Dan Gillmor in his forthcoming book, We the Media, writes that some journalists are quite nervous about consumers reporting/breaking news. This story really opens their kimono and exposes these doubts. Unfortunately, Steinman missed an opportunity to show that this group is keeping an open mind. He instead he elected to trash blogs and reveal the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) that's clearly out there.

In the spirit of presenting different views on this topic, I point you to the article and cite excerpts...

Despite what these journalists and media critics are advocating, Web logs are not the answer to journalism's future. Usually written without a shred of control or third party involvement, they are proliferating like control rabbits and filling the air with gas. Many bloggers are terrible writers. A few have real talent. Because someone can write does not make him or her a journalist. Usually those who cannot write need the most supervision. Their thoughts run helter-skelter over the page, disorganized in a race to lay everything they think, not necessarily know on the page. I am not assailing legitimate news websites who have parents in print or in broadcasting. These usually hold to standards that are timeless and usually under the scrutiny of their peers. I subscribe to the old-fashioned theory of gatekeepers, those who control the locks on a canal and open and then close them to best serve everyone on the way to his destination. Without the gatekeeper, meaning the editor, the person with the keys to the lock, all the boats might try to come through when they want or worse, try to get through at the same time without anything to stop them. We all know the result: chaos.

~~Snip~~

Journalism, in all its forms, needs discipline to survive. An informed public is our best defense against anything that threatens democracy and our delicately held freedom. If journalism follows the path of everyone for his or her self, anarchy will result. The free state we revere, now threatened by terrorism from outside, will face threats from within. We must somehow create a firewall between good information and bad information if we do not want to suffer from the constant silt-filled flood of data arising from our crazy-quilt world. If we do not, we may become prisoners of misguided thoughts, others' and our own, which thunder untouched across a once nearly beautiful, but now battered and cluttered plain, stuck in a desert of empty minds trying to fill their own void with senseless chatter finally run out of control.

Oh My, Newsweek!

Newsweek.com has takes a gander at South Korea's OhMyNews, an "open source" news site.

But unlike many startups, Oh’s OhmyNews.com not only survived but thrived, based on the simple notion that “every citizen is a reporter.” And now Oh’s Internet creation has attracted the attention of media giants around the world who wonder: is this Korean start-up the future of journalism?

Does Participatory Journalism Go Too Far?

Trudy Schuett: Did Denver Big3 Deliberately Endanger Citizen Journalists?

Because I have a satellite dish, I happened to be watching an evening newscast of a Denver station, KCNC Channel Four. Early this week, the Denver area experienced a spate of tornadoes. They included in their coverage a number of photos taken by citizens with digital cameras or cell phones. As you can imagine, many of these were very well done, close up and quite dramatic.

The newscasters also encouraged viewers to send in their pictures of the event, which is where this kind of citizen journalism stopped being a positive thing.
I can’t imagine what they were thinking. They were actually suggesting their viewers go out, put themselves in harm’s way, and take pictures of tornadoes.

Mother May I?

I received an email today with this great "mother may I" line in the signature...

this email is: [ ] bloggable [x] ask first [ ] private

By checking the appropriate box, the emailer can signal to the blogger recipient whether he/she is sharing information that is private, public or in between. It's a simple marker that gives bloggers the ok to break news. I wish we could use this same tactic with journalists!

I love this tool and I am adding it to my signature. Hopefully other bloggers will do the same.

Magazine to Publish Blogger's Postings

AP reports that The San Diego Reader, a free newsweekly, is publishing 8,000 words from Brian Dear's blog as its cover story this week. Brian posts details here.

Lack of Media Trust to Bolster Personal Journalism

The editors weblog reports 53% of Americans don't trust the news. The data was compiled by The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

If the majority of Americans don't trust the media, we will increasingly turn more to each other as credible sources of information. I have blogged about this in the past, but the data really convinces me that personal journalism will only gain steam from here. It will really hit its stride as social networking, influence measurement tools and blogging converge and become more popular. This converging landscape will enable us to identify the most reliable and credible sources of information. Big media isn't going away, but another sphere of influence is certainly here to stay.

Seth Says We're All Journalists

Seth Godin wonders out loud: "Now that anyone who wants to be a journalist CAN be a journalist, are the ethics going to get better... or worse?" It's something PR pros should definitely ponder. We're entering a new world where many personal journalists will not follow the white line that most journalists adhere to. Some will, some won't. It could get wild and woolly.

Esther Dyson on Participatory Media

Eli Chapman has posted some recent comments by Esther Dyson on participatory media...

"...the rise of user-generated content marks a huge shift in the media business. The inclination to represent ourselves in word and image may have existed practically forever, but the tools for creating and distributing those words and images are new... The implications for businesses are broad, starting with relatively reduced demand for "asymmetrical" bandwidth, such as cable or satellite, where there's lots of communication capacity to download content but not much to upload it. People aren't just downloading music; they're uploading their own creative efforts... Lisa Gansky, chairman and president of Ofoto, says, "In Western Europe, Korea and Japan, where the cameraphone markets are most mature, we see that group or community authoring of online photo displays is a regular practice. The ability to do 'storytelling' and rapid-share or live shares is pretty compelling to many kinds of folks.""

TIME Looks at Vlogs

TIME has a piece on vloggers, such as Steve Garfield.

Garfield belongs to a small but growing group of video bloggers, or vloggers, who are turning the Web into a medium in which it's possible that someday anyone could mount original programming, bypassing the usual broadcast networks and cable outlets.

Cablenewser.com Blogger Unmasked

The New York Times has a profile today of Brian Stelter, the 18-year-old student blogger who broke a big CNN story earlier this week. It's a must-read for anyone interested in participatory journalism. Even better, The Media Drop's Tom Biro has an IM Q&A with the newly unmasked blogger.

Blog Breaks Big CNN Story

CableNewser today broke a big story that CNN is in the early stages of development on a 24-hour broadband news channel for Internet users.

paidContent.org Running RSS Banner Ads

Ironically, paidContent.org is running graphical banner ads right in its RSS feeds. This screen capture is from my FeedDemon newsreader. I haven't seen this before, so it's news to me. It only figures that Rafat Ali would find ways to make money publishing a blog. His site is a micro-publishing model worth following. It is a living case study that represents the future of media.

Pentagon Cracks Down on Camera Phones

The Pentagon has banned the use of camera phones in Iraq according to The Business newspaper (via AFP).

Cell phones fitted with digital cameras have been banned in US army installations in Iraq. According to the story, digital cameras, camcorders and cell phones with cameras have been prohibited in military compounds in Iraq and a total ban in the U.S. military is in the works.

A Petition to Commit to Proper Blog Sourcing

Glenn Fleishman today posted a detailed explanation of how he was able to scoop everyone on Cometa Networks' recent closure. He also urged the press to follow the same unwritten rules in crediting bloggers for scoops that they do in sourcing competitors.

The unfortunate reality here, however, is that many bloggers themselves often neglect to properly credit other webloggers who break hard news through real reporting. How can we expect the press to source us if we neglect to credit the other members of our own community? Many journalists have a code ethics they must abide by. We don't.

As the blogosphere increasingly is considered a medium for legitimate reporting, those of us who are serious should begin following some basic "guidelines." For starters, I suggest we commit to making an effort to properly credit the other members of our community who break legitimate news that's not already in the public domain. They deserve the PR. If you agree, I urge you to take a moment to sign this online petition to underscore your commitment to this practice. An email address is required, but please mark it as private - I have no need for your address.

Blogger Beats News Outlets to Big Scoop

Dan Gillmor notes that yesterday's news of Cometa Networks' demise was first reported by Glenn Fleishman's WI-Fi Networking News blog. Here's Glenn's initial post and the first real news story. They appear to be three hours apart.

AFP Looks at Participatory Journalism

Agence France-Presse has a story today on how cheap digital technology is revolutionizing the way news is gathered, disseminated and perceived. The article provides some historical perspective, while also touching on video blogs or vblogging.

OhMyNews Publishes in English

PR Watch reports that OhMyNews, a full-fledged participatory news site, is publishing in English.

We've reported in the past on OhMyNews! -- an innovative, Korean-language online newspaper that has transformed journalism and Korea's traditionally conservative political culture by serving as an outlet for tens of thousands of "citizen journalists" teamed up with professional reporters and editors. Now there's a English-language "international version" of OhMyNews, featuring stories ranging from a look at the controversial impeachment trial of Korea's president to a first-person report from Fallujah.

A PR Guy Becomes a Reporter for a Day

Today, if for one day only, I stepped over the border. As I kept my PR hat on, I added another that read "citizen journalist." It was an exhilarating and, at the same time, extremely educational experience. I glimpsed with my own eyes the future of the new world journalism and, with it, the future of PR.

On May 13, 2004 Micro Persuasion became a living laboratory for participatory journalism. I touched first-hand what I know is happening - tech-savvy citizens with easy-to-use publishing tools can influence public opinion.

Very early this morning I posted an email interview I conducted with Jason McCabe Calacanis. The Q&A contained a few juicy quotes detailing Jason's opinions about the future of the blogosphere. Soon, word spread thanks to a link from Jason himself, as well as from Tom Mangan at Prints the Chaff, the Blog Herald and others. My traffic began to build.

Over my morning coffee, before diving into client work, I quickly played with the new Google Groups beta. I discovered that each Usenet group now has it's own Atom XML feed. A quick Feedster search (thank you, Betsy) revealed that this had not yet been reported/blogged.

I knew this might be significant. There is an ongoing standards debate on the merits of Atom vs. RSS, with Google backing Atom. Was it huge breaking news in the scheme of American soldiers dying in Iraq? No, of course not. However, I did know that it would intrigue those who follow technology closely.

I posted a short item on my blog mid morning Eastern time. Dan Gillmor blogged it and soon did many others, led by BoingBoing and Chirs Pirillo. As of this writing (7:30 p.m. Eastern) some 1,000 visitors have passed through this Web site and read that Google now offers Usenet Atom feeds or saw what Jason had to say about celebrity blogs. That may not be much to many bloggers, but it sure was a lot to me. Behold, Micro Persuasion - at least for one day - became a news medium.

Now imagine in three years there are 5 or 10 million other Steve Rubels in the world dedicated to writing blogs. The difference is: 1) blogs are now mostly entirely ad-supported, giving authors an incentive to build traffic, and 2) blogs have gone more mainstream covering every interest under the sun, from sports and family to restaurants and local news (e.g. not just technology and politics).

Let's say on any given day 100 of them report real news that the mass media begin to link to/follow. Can you imagine the ramifications on the PR industry?

Let's say you are the PR manager for a sports team. Blog A "reports" (with uncorroborated facts) that one of your players is retiring. The news soon spreads like wildfire into the mainstream media. What's your plan to combat this falsity?

Or, let's say your client is a major fashion designer. You want to make a big splash about a new line of swim wear that makes everyone look 10 pounds thinner (remember, this is meant to be forward looking!). Do you issue the press release on PR Newswire or offer WWD an exclusive? Or, perhaps do you instead send a quick note to a fashion blogger with a super-sized Technorati profile.

This is where I sensed PR is heading and my experiences today only confirmed this feeling. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts here as well. Do you feel participatory journalism is really big or is it something that somehow will not quite be as important as I feel it will be?

Blogs Don't Challenge the Media Establishment, They Enhance It

ClickZ today features a provocative column by Vin Crosbie on how mainstream media outlets don't realize how technology has eroded many of the barriers that prevent new competition.

He highlights PaidContent.org, DPReview.com and others as upstart competitors to the big media conglomerates. Crosbie writes:

Traditional publishers and broadcasters should worry about these efforts. Entry barriers will continue to fall as new media technology evolves. New competition will further decrease the market price consumers will pay for content.

While not concluding this directly, Crosbie seems to indicate that mainstream media outlets will see their margins squeezed as nanopublishing gains steam. The one thing I think he overlooks is the power of media brands. For example, will you ever stop reading AdAge, PR Week, The Holmes Report or O'Dwyer's in favor of Micro Persuasion, PR Opinions or the Media Drop? In a word, no.

What will happen is that eventually many of us will settle in on a few favorite blogs to read regularly. We will rely on these Weblogs to aggregate - and provide perspective - on the relevant news we need and want to know on a particular micro-niche subject. So, like Robert Scoble has already said, Weblogs are not a threat to mainstream media. Rather, they will serve as important portals to higher-value content.

In other words, nanopublishing will make big media outlets more relevant by helping readers/viewers focus on what's most important to them.

A Blogger Looks at OhMyNews

Angelo Fernando takes a look at OhMyNews, a popular South Korean "open source" newspaper, and what it might mean for PR.

Blogs Colliding with Traditional Media

The Boston Globe has an in-depth look at the Democratic National Committee's efforts to credential bloggers for the upcoming convention.

Newspapers See Danger in Text Messaging

eWeek reports that international editors and publishers are growing concerned that nontraditional communications—such as cell phone text messages—are rapidly outflanking radio, television, and print media because of their immediacy and proximity to the public.

DNC Welcomes Bloggers to Convention

The Democratic National Committee is welcoming bloggers to cover the convention. I wonder how they're going to manage this. Which bloggers will get credentialed? What's to stop me from enrolling? That said, this is a very smart PR move on the DNC's part.

(Reblogged from anil's daily links)

Stanford Student Interviews Shayne Bowan

Stanford University communications grad student Daniel Kreiss has posted on his blog thoughts from an interview he conducted with Shayne Bowan, co author of WE Media (which I hope to review on this blog at some point). Bowan is a consultant on Web-design and content for media companies and also the former Chief of Development for Belo Interactive.

Kreiss' interview focuses on participatory media, the future the mainstream press, and how on-line relationships spill over into the off-line world.

Research Shows Media Increasingly Cite Wikipedia as Credible Source

A fascinating paper presented by Andrew Lih, an Assistant Professor at Hong Kong University, at the University of Texas at Austin's recent International Symposium on Online Journalism analyzes how Wikipedia's articles are increasingly cited in the media and as a credible source. Wikipedia is a popular Internet-based, user contributed encyclopedia that is collaboratively edited.

"Wikipedia as Participatory Journalism: Reliable Sources?" (PDF) is the equivalent of The Pelican Brief for the public relations industry. It's a must read for any PR pro trying - as I am - to understand the impact that participatory/citizen journalism will have on our profession. It provides clear metrics that show how Wikipedia has quickly emerged as a media influencer. During a 14 month period (Jan. 03 - Mar. 04), according to the research, 113 Wikipedia articles were referred to by various news outlets.

There are several other interesting papers on the UT's International Symposium Web site as well. They can be found here.

The Impact on PR When Reader Clicks Prioritize News Stories

I stumbled across a personalized news service called memigo, which ranks news stories based on the clicks and recommendations of registered users. They also have an RSS feed. Be sure to check out their list of rejected stories and best articles.

For PR pros, should such a news model catch on, it could be dangerous. It will make it much harder for us to sell legitimate stories that impact people's lives (ok, maybe sometimes) when the top story of the day is the guy who sold the wedding dress on eBay.

Chris Heisel over at the Missouri School of Journalism ponders the madness.

Highlights From UC Berkeley Panel on Participatory Journalism

Two Weblogs have posted highlights from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism's panel on participatory journalism last week.

The Power of Many

Napsterization.org

About.com Gets Participatory Journalism

About.com is digging deeper into citizen journalism, according to Jonathan Dube, who has penned an article on Poynter.org, entitled The Experts Among Us.

JD's Open Book Test

JD Lasica, a thought leader in the participatory journalism movement has opened up a Socialtext wiki to solicit reader comments on his new book, Darknet: Remixing the Future of Movies, Music and Television.

Lasica's upcoming book from John Wiley & Sons focuses on the digital media revolution, exploring the idea that digital technologies are empowering people to create, reuse and reinvent media.

More details on JD's New Media Musings blog.

AdAge: Advance.net May Sell Ads Across New Network of Local News Blogs

This week's issue of Advertising Age reports that Advance.net's NJ.com is using Meetup.org to recruit bloggers to dig deeper into local news by drilling down to neighborhood-level coverage of soccer leagues and recycling rules. The NJ.com local blog network can be found here and the editor's invite is here. The AdAge story is not available online yet.

Even more notable, execs from parent company Advance.net tell AdAge that if things go well they will sell ads across their network of weblogs to local advertisers that can't afford Advance.net NJ dailies, such as The Newark Star-Ledger and Trenton Times.

AdAge writes:

"Advance.net's plans are another sign of how blogs are becoming entrenched in the mainstream media landscape. It helps that logorrheic buzzmachine.com blogger Jeff Jarvis is Advance.net's president and creative director."

On the NJ.com Weblogs about page, it says:

"We are starting weblogs here to bring you the best and most notable of the Web on a variety of subjects. You can start your own Weblog with no effort, no expertise, and no expense."

Participatory journalism is getting bigger everyday. Big Media is marrying Micro Media and this will have major ramifications for the PR industry, especially once they find ways to make money from their efforts. Stay tuned.

BlueHereNow Dishes Out A Cake Mix of News From Mobloggers and Pros

I just stumbled across a company called BlueHereNow that aims to blend professional and participatory journalism into a rather potent cocktail of information.

BlueHereNow aggregates stories and photos from the pros with selected contributions from mobloggers. What's even more odd, is that they use story and subject popularity to build an editorial direction that "responds to the true interests of the online community." Does this mean all Britney all the time? I guess we'll never hear about what's happening in Latvia anymore. Shucks.

BlueHereNow makes its content available to anyone who wants to syndicate it through XML and RDF feeds as well as through a more powerful syndication tool.

The image below is an overview of their model. Personal journalists are encouraged to submit stories here. It's not clear if PR pros can submit items.

BBC Asks Readers for Help in Covering a Story

Poynter reports that BBC News yesterday asked its readers for help in covering a breaking news story when shots were heard in Damascus. Nobody knew exactly what was happening. When the BBC's own reporter couldn't add much background very fast, the organization published some basics online and asked its readers to add more details: "Are you in the Damascus area? Did you witness the blasts? Send us your comments using the form below." Reader comments and an article are posted on the site right now.

Books Get Napsterized

Toronto Globe and Mail has an story on how the rise of print-on-demand technology and Web sites devoted to self publishing are making it ever easier for writers to bypass conventional publishers.

Google Support Confirms Gmail Threading Bug

UPDATE: This post was blogged on Upian's Hot Links and on Jeremy Zawodny's Linkblog.

I am going to test out my theory that "personal journalists" are having an impact by doing some reporting of my own and watching if this spreads online.

As some of you know, I have a Google Gmail account. Now don't get me wrong. I love Google. I live on it. And I am thrilled they are launching an email service. It's speedy, it has massive storage, I like the contextual ads and I like the conversation threading features ... if they get them fixed.

I am using my blog to report that Gmail, in beta, has a conversation threading bug that Google has confirmed to me via email. They say they are working on it. I am sure they are. I am posting this not to bash them, but to monitor if or how this spreads.

Basically, when I send out multiple emails to multiple recipients that share the exact same subject header, they all get grouped together. I got confused today by the bug...I couldn't follow who I was sending email to.

Here's the thread from their support team, confirming the bug. Let's see who picks this up. If you blog me, please trackback this so the group can see the results. Thanks.

Gmail Team (gmail-support@google.com) Tue, Apr 27, 2004 at 3:18PM
To: steverubel (at) gmail . com
Hello Steve,

Thank you for your report. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to fix this at this time. We are, however, aware of the problem and the engineering team is working on a fix.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Please keep in mind this is a preview release of Gmail, and we appreciate your patience during our limited test period.

Sincerely,
The Gmail Team

Original Message Follows:
------------------------
From: steverubel (at) gmail . com
Subject: I send multiple emails with the same subject to multiple recipients. Even though each is a separate thread they all get threaded together. Please advise how to remedy.
Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 19:06:00 -0000

Hi. When I send out separate emails to recipients using the same subject line and I get replies, they get threaded together when really they are separate conversations. How can I fix this? Thanks.

GmailAddress: steverubel (at) gmail . com
QuestionTopic: conv_threading
Name: Steve Rubel
OS: winxp
Browser: Internet Explorer 6.x

IBM Gets Participatory Media

Poynter's E-Media Tidbits notes that IBM has published a white paper (PDF) on their Web site called Media and Entertainment 2010.

IBM's Saul J. Berman contends that between now and 2010, as technology becomes more powerful and affordable, an increasing segment of consumers will be able to compile, program, edit, create and share content, resulting in greater consumer immersion in media experiences.

I’m not sure why Big Blue is saying “by 2010.” This is actually happening now. It cost me $80/year to set up this blog on TypePad. Had I opted to use Blogger, it would have cost me nothing. Still, there’s a lot of interesting points in the IBM white paper, which is written for media and entertainment executives, but has implications for PR.

In the executive summary, Berman writes:

We foresee growing participation in media experiences well beyond traditional media, in three additional sectors we have labeled multi-media, “big” media and pervasive media. Successful companies, in transforming their business models to serve these four distinct channels and behaviors, will continue to reposition and restructure. They will focus on the core components that create value for their customers and consumers, divest unneeded properties, improve the monetization of assets – and importantly, join with other players to achieve scale, lower costs and offer value-added products and services.

We call this business model the “open media company of the future” – a dynamic media business that:

* Opens the media experience: Leverages advances in technology to provide customers and consumers a more involved experience with the media firm

* Opens content reserves: Develops accessible, flexible digital content systems that can enable distribution to virtually any media context

* Opens content creation and distribution: Establishes digitized processes that monitor and incorporate input from customers and consumers to garner their attention

* Opens content packaging, bundling and sales strategies: Utilizes variable pricing models that enable partners to advertise and share profits, and enables consumers to access content through more compelling release schedules.

If I find more interesting nuggets as I delve into the 44-page document a bit further, I will post them here.

What is participatory journalism?

CyberJournalist.net asks: "What is participatory journalism?" and provides links to answers as well.

Newsday published photos this weekend of Billy Joel's Long Island automobile wreck shot by the person who helped the rock star from his car. Some might consider this participatory journalism. Of course, readers have been selling photos to newspapers for generations, so participatory journalism, in this sense at least, is nothing new. What's new is how the Internet has expanded the outlets for participatory journalism and thus helped it spread in so many new ways.

Here's a definition of participatory journalism from J.D. Lasica:
(1) Audience participation at mainstream news outlets.
(2) Independent news and information Web sites.
(3) Full-fledged participatory news sites.
(4) Collaborative and contributory media sites.
(5) Other kinds of "thin media."
(6) Personal broadcasting sites.

For more on this topic, also check out WeMedia and draft chapters from Dan Gillmor's new book, We the Media.

Citizen Journalist Photographs Billy Joel's Car Wreck

Participatory journalism at work...

Newsday.com posted fresh photographs of Billy Joel's Long Island automobile wreck that were shot by the person who helped the rock star from his car.

"When we found out it was Billy Joel, we were like holy cow, this is Billy Joel," said Tom Phillips Jr., who helped Joel out of the car and with other neighbors helped push the vehicle away from the house and off the lawn.

You can view the photo here.

Bloggers as Journalists' Partners

Robert Scoble today wrote that bloggers should not try to compete with journalists, but rather they should work with them as partners. I think we’re going to see a lot more structured collaboration between professional journalists and “personal journalists” in the years ahead, perhaps using wikis.

Scoble writes:

"So, webloggers, stop arguing about whether you're gonna beat Walt or Dan or Steve or Mary Jo. You aren't going to.

Instead, we should see what we could do to work together to help each other.

How? For instance, what will happen during the next major earthquake in San Jose? Will the few hundred journalists who work for the San Jose Mercury News be able to keep up with such a huge story? No. Webloggers, because of our numbers, will be able to cover such an event in a way that traditional journalists would never be able to."

My advice – make regular use of Feedster, Bloglines, Google News and even MediaMap to keep a watchful eye on the bloggers who are cited frequently by journalists who cover your company/clients’ industry. Stay in touch with them regularly, but don't spam them with press releases and pitches. Know how to work with them for mutual benefit.

Participatory Journalism Webcast

For those interested in participatory journalism, Vin Crosbie notes on his blog that the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism is hosting a panel on April 29 called "Disrupting the News Industry: Media Concentration and Participatory Journalism." The free event will be Webcast online.

Panelists include:

Vin Crosbie of Digital Deliverance LLC media consulting firm

Neil Chase, managing editor of CBS MarketWatch

Dan Gillmor, columnist for the San Jose Mercury News and author of the forthcoming book Making the News.

Ken Sands, managing editor of online and new media at The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington.

Bob Magnuson, lecturer at the graduate school and former CEO of InfoWorld, will moderate the panel.

Participatory Journalism is Worth Watching

I have been doing a lot of informal research lately into participatory journalism. The concept is simple - major media outlets are increasingly soliciting their readers, viewers and users to actively participate in the editorial process. I have been asking what impact this might have on how we practice PR? At what point should we begin pitching readers as well as traditional media gatekeepers we have relationships with?

My client recently pointed out to me that participatory journalism actually began in the '60s when Sports Illustrated writer George Plimpton strapped on a football helmet and actually experienced what it was like to play in the NFL for the Detroit Lions. Plimpton chronicled his adventure in the classic book (and later the movie) called Paper Lion. The trend has steadily evolved ever since pioneer Plimpton.

In the early '90s, for example, the major TV news networks began incorporating raw unedited footage from viewers who happened to be on the scene when news broke. Shows like MTV's The Real World blurred the envelope even further when they chronicled the actual lives of seven strangers forced to live under the same roof. The reality TV phenomenon is a close cousin of this phenomenon, but it's really entertainment, not journalism.

For now, participatory journalism means that big media are increasingly soliciting the assistance of micro media outlets to help them build their franchises. Dan Gillmor from the San Jose Mercury News epitomizes what some call "open source media." He has been steadily posting new chapters of his new book on this subject, which he calls Making the News. He is using his blog to solicit reader feedback so that he can make his book the most useful reference available on the topic. Similarly, The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington recently begun to solicit readers to become official bloggers for the paper to expand their local news coverage, according to this post on The Public Journalism Network.

For now, this all bears watching. But evenutally, I envision a future when PR pros will be pitching their neighbors to write about clients for the local newspaper and not just the actual trained scribes we court today. What are your thoughts? Are you pitching readers? Share your comments to this post so we can all learn from your experiences.

Micro Media is Changing the PR Practice

The proliferation of Weblogs and RSS news feeds has changed the practice of public relations forever. Despite all of the hype about media consolidation, we are no longer living in a mass media world dominated by conglomerates.

Today we're just as likely to be influenced by something we read on a blog like Scobleizer as we are by an article in the Wall Street Journal or a segment on Good Morning America.

This means that the role of the public relations counselor is changing...quickly. Clients are still looking to agencies to reach key audiences. This hasn't changed. The difference, however, is now PR pros must not only secure "earned media coverage" but also know how to influence influential bloggers, many of whom are part of the audiences we covet.

The rules of engagement are different in this world of micro persuasion. PR pros now must: 1) continually study how news spreads online, 2) identify and qualify the most influential and vocal members of their audience, 3) know how to reach these influencers and 4) learn how to easily assimilate into the audiences they want to reach by launching and promoting their own weblogs.

The goal of this blog is to track the phenomena of Micro Persuasion. It is designed to serve as an open forum where all PR pros can learn how micro media outlets persuade audiences and how to communicate key messages through the blogsphere in this new age.