Christian Grantham is writing today about local bloggers. The former producer for WKRN, the ABC affiliate in Nashville, has been following the technology as well as content management systems regarding MSM’s roles in the blogging community for a long time.
The effort by mostly print and broadcast to figure out how best to harness the power of local blogs seems to languish in experiment mode as legacy media resources shift to triage a dying industrial-aged distribution model for news and information. Blogs have long urged legacy media for the better part of the past decade to pay attention to the dramatic shift in the way people prefer receiving news and information. The message seems to have arrived on the desks at the top ten years too late.
None the less, the experiments continue.
A couple of observations as much of this has to do with the recent demise of the latest Nashville is Talking. My first thought is that to set up an online community affiliated with a mainstream entity is for one to be truly successful, management is going to have to commit financially to the project and cash is harder to come by these days. Christian mentioning that is important. The next revolutionary online system will see management making a clear commitment instead of being in experiment mode.
A clear direction needs to also be established. Is it news? Is it politics? Is it a knitting blog? Is it a mommy blog? I am making light here but all of these things are part of a larger community. CG mentions in the comments that having a version of an online Managing Editor or Blog Jockey, for lack of a better word, is important. I also agree with his perspective because blogs, and their readers, are about trust somewhat like radio or your favorite anchor on television. If you like a morning show where there is a bond built, you are going to keep returning to listen. Same thing with blogs. You have about three seconds to get the attention of a casual blog reader, but if there is content and a good connection with the audience where there is trust, then those “eyeballs” will keep coming back.
One thing that creates such a conundrum is that MSM forgets that in blogging there is an intimacy between blog author and reader. That goes against the grain of the old school of news organizations. And, in many ways, that’s the hard part to, as Christian wrote, harness local blogs. And local is where it is at. No one wants to read about Cleveland if they live in Memphis. They want to know what impacts them.
His observations as he has been on the front lines in an “experiment” that went dark are intriguing. MSM I think is ready but there is a difference between a portal, a blog and a news site. I feel like that is key. It is good to see they are working on coming up with new ideas and keeping the elements that made blogging popular in the first place. That combination will be what makes the difference.
Alright, back to politics then …
As long as we try to commoditize information (which, Constitutionally, should be considered free), we are going to continue to struggle with this problem. The music industry is trying to solve this as well – but the bottom line is that successful information brokers manage to build a level of trust and a reputation for delivering. That's true whether you're a TV station, newspaper, blogger, or just the guy at the water cooler.
The key difference between the “phenomenological” media (trying to show things as they are) and the “ideological” media (trying to make people believe something, convince, persuade) is that one tries to respect and include the “Other” while the other tries to deny, destroy, and dismiss the “Other”.
The whole purpose of any media is to call attention to something. That's all. So, how we choose to “consume media” is largely a matter of where we choose to pay attention. The “liberal” media tends to be more open-minded and phenomenological, while the prevalent and more profitable media today (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh) relies on the creation of a tribal “us versus them” ideological approach. One seeks to challenge prejudices while the other seeks to reinforce prejudices.
Memphis has a pretty fertile blogosphere but it goes almost unnoticed (inside Memphis) and unpromoted. I think we (Main Street Journal) and The Memphis Eye — and now y'all, sort of — are the only people actively promoting it to Memphis. Which is a shame….
Great post, I love reading posts about blogging and this was no different. It is great to see the perspective of other bloggers. I found an equally interesting blogging post here, you should check it out. http://blog.socialmaximizer.com/6-ways-to-make-…