Blogs vs. Journalism
By patrick, posted July 21, 2007 at 11:57 am | 1 Comment ยป
Last year Om Malik lead a discussion on what bloggers could learn from journalism, and vice versa. This year he teams up with noted contrarian John C. Dvorak to take the discussion to the next level.
Matt introduces them with gossip column bold certain things, and Dvorak loved doing it when writing about tech.
Mac verses PC… who is who….
There is no difference between Bloggers and Journalists, wanted to start right off with that. But mainstream journalists are refusing to see that. Its an organic growth progress, though.
The amount of passion a blogger can bring to a topic, is what regular journalists can’t seem to bring. There is a shifting of distribution is what we’re seeing. Blogging is just a different form of media. We’re just a little bit more hyper active, we believe the story is evolving, rather then cut and dry.
It’s making the media have to change to match it. The internet has changed the tables, that even though blogging is considered low end, its making media change and adapt to it. Dvorak is predicting that Forbes will fold within 6 months because of it. because they aren’t changing. As a whole blogging is effecting the scene.
Malik having worked in Big Media, seems the responsibility wasn’t there. The ones actually bringing the news just didn’t have it. Big Media controls so much, but they acan’t control the internet… what happened to the mainframe is what’s happening to Big media.
There is a point where you have to take a stand though, watch what you blow up on… when blogging.
The reason blogging is better, is that you can write, engaging others. You can moderate without killing the blog, but engage. Very small portion of readers will actually comment… but the commenter’s are what actually creates the “sub-blog.”
Person who set up the Times blogs, notes that they moderate all comments. As Dvorak notes, if your filters are worth a shit, you don’t need to do so much moderating.
Dvorak says he gets 50 – 600 comments on posts, and you’ve just got to let it go. Washington Post had an issue since they couldn’t handle being called idiots… You’ve got to let go and accept criticism.
Malik has taken the Top 10 commenter’s on his site, and made them Authors… They are smart people, writing smart things.
Muse on the idea of permanence of articles: It’s a problem with Big media… and one of the strengths of this medium. But what’s the point, if you need to make a correction, then just fix it.
You lose credibility even if you have great material, just because “Its a Blog.” And that’s not right. But if you resent your material in a neo-blog style… even still a one man shop. He gave XXL Mag as a great example.
To keep yourself from getting in trouble. To keep from “making stuff up.” you need to protect yourself as a blogger, is try to verify sources. Perhaps take a course in journalism so you can learn what you can use, and can’t use.
It seems blogging has really done well where there is a lousy free press.
Dvorak mentions one thing he’s loved, is that to research a place, he makes sure to type in the name of the place and blog, and doing a search for that. He gets a clearer picture more often then normal means.
New York Times guy is going to comment again, and then wrap up… Building this trust with readers. Mainstream media is trying to build this trust… it is happening. But Dvorak says “its the company line.” Malik “Goes you don’t use your audience very effectively.”
Dvorak “he says their clueless on how to deal with this.”
And on that note. And we’re breaking for lunch.
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John Pozadzides of One Man Blog has posted the video of this session.
[...] next presentation after a small break was Blogs vs. Journalism with John C. Dvorak and Om Malik. I loved this blog because of the controversy it actually created [...]