Web 2.0 Television

This post has been updated. 

Still more responses to the blog fire Andrew-Grant Adamson set ablaze when he questioned the purpose of newspaper blogs (my previous post here): 

Shane Richmond of the Telegraph asked his fellow newspaper bloggers for their input while he wrote up his own well-thought out response. Good points came up, like adding info to supplement print articles (where space is tighter), "getting a debate going", maybe with with "more provocative" writing, raising writers' profiles and that in the books section's case, Ceri Radford says "I think writing about books in general lends itself to blogging as it's such a subjective area." But in that post, foreign correspondent Peter Foster said it best: "The blog is the story from the side-roads, the newspaper the story from the highway." Just call me a hitchhiker. (More after the jump — grab your towel, though that link will open audio material.)

(One point I take issue with, though, is this point that David Blair makes: "For me, the blogging I'm most proud of are the daily diaries I've posted from Congo and Darfur. I hope they conveyed a feel for what these places are actually like. It's hard to do this if you are restricted to writing daily news stories for the paper." But isn't it the reporter's job to do that in a news story, too? At least sometimes? I always thought so.) 

Richmond's own response finds newspaper blogs exist, for starters, to provide niche content as well as for space reasons — to publish items that don't fit into the print edition. His next point: experimentation. "The blogs allow journalists to try things that are a little different from what they normally do and we can experiment technically as well. The blogs were the first part of the site to offer the option to post articles to social news and social bookmarking sites, a feature that has since been added to all of Telegraph.co.uk."

Here's more:

The blogs really are a conversation, with readers and with other blogs. This post is an example of the latter.

And therein lies point four: interactivity. The blogs are steered to a great extent by their readers. Our best bloggers have all, at some point, allowed the readers to dictate what they write about. Of course, the paper is shaped by its readers too but with blogs the connection is more immediate and more personal.

This is a major shift in the language of journalism and we would be foolish not to get involved and learn how to operate in this space. As we understand it more we will be better prepared for the future and so will our journalists.

Which brings me to my fifth point: personality. In a recent post I said that it is important to turn more journalists into 'personalities'. Blogging is the ideal way to do this. In a world that is more fragmented, where reader loyalty is harder to maintain, a journalist who is a personality can be a very valuable figure.

Niche content received attention from PressGazette blogger Martin Stabe, too — his main example being their benefit when covering local politics. His post discusses some of the blogs the New York Times has put out, on topics like the World Cup, or food (courtesy of popular restaurant columnist Frank Bruni. Also, it seems many agree sports blogs are a great idea, which makes sense — aggressive debate online, rah!). He also makes good points about blogs creating revenue streams through "micropublications."

Stabe later rounded up both Richmond's response and Grant-Adamson's followup post, which finds that a religion blog, "Articles of Faith" by Times of London's Ruth Gledhill, tops the, er, charts. (Stabe, no stranger to this blog's comments section, also today links to a spamblogger (it appears) rather than directly to my post on "evolving newspapers." Hmm. UPDATE Nov. 6: Stabe has corrected the links, for which I thank him.)

Mathew Ingram of the Globe and Mail, writing on his personal site, observed that few newspapers are making use of the opportunity blogs provide for writers and their readers to enter a real dialogue. I know the comments on the Globe site require quite a bit of moderation from their Web team, but I don't know to what extent that's true for their blogs. 

More bloggers will weigh in on this, some from newspapers, some not, I have no doubt. I'll be watching in my rearview. 

UPDATE: Thanks to Ruth for the comments.

Also, Andrew Grant-Adamson finds that "technology tops the Telegraph blogs", then posts a reprise including this:

I have my doubts about the slow development of blogs. If you are a journalist you need to get eyeballs on pages quickly. I rescued Wordblog from the dead in June because I wanted understand the process from the inside. In the third week it scored 2,633 hits — above the Telegraph average — and has gone on rising. Last month it was just short of 40,000. It is hard work and has to become a routine.

There is no doubt that blogs have become a valuable element in the mix offered by newspapers. They do all the things Shane says they should be doing.

But they are not a simple add on to an existing job. Blogging well takes time. Ruth wrote in a comment:

I spend hours of my own time doing the blog, and sometimes end up working until 2am or 3am, it is such an addictive medium. I really love doing it so don’t resent the time.

Commitment like that is essential. Newspapers need to be selective and think carefully about their policy. Blogs have to be an integral part of the business plan and show that they contribute to the achievement of the plan.

Image from blogs.redding.com by Phil Fountain.