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September 3, 2008

Is blogging becoming the lifeblood of the news?

I know it's no big revelation that news blogs are popular. They have been for a while and their popularity keeps growing. For some reason, though, I just never thought that a blog coming from a more traditional news outlet would be in the same league as a blog that stands on its own, like The Huffington Post.

I guess that when the TV and Newspapers started blogs, I sort of saw it as a ploy to get to the hipper, younger crowd in the same way that the Gap ends up adding stores to every corner in parts of town that were once cool for being a little rough around the edges. I didn't think they would carry that much weight, but like the Gap, they do.

My company's websites have been adding blogs like crazy...blogs covering news, sports, weather, celebs, wedding planning, weird news, and lots more. These blogs have been gaining such a huge audience that we've had to add servers twice this year, so far, just to handle the traffic.

After the last rash of crashes, I received an email from an editor telling me how important it is to make sure our blogs stay up, since they are "the lifeblood of what we do..."

As dramatic as that sounds, it seems to be moving in that direction as news providers see that the less formal style is what people are looking for, even when looking for serious news. Also, during huge stories like hurricanes or political stories, where content is being updated minute-by-minute, blogging software can be much easier to use, since the majority of CMS's tend to be much slower and more convoluted. We are finding that by putting blog headlines in place of the "normal" ones during breaking news stories, the information can be presented much faster and can be more up to the minute.

The less formal tone as a reason for the increasing popularity of news blogs is interesting though, as Ed Pilkington from the Guardian points out in this article. He is primarily writing about a nasty comment that McCain made several years ago that wasn't reported by the media, but he made an interesting point in the difference between British and American media and the popularity of blogs:

"Such coyness has long been ingrained in the US media, which has an annoying tendency to regard its readers as wayward children in need of moral protection. That's one important reason, incidentally, that blogs are doing so well in the US - they have no such scruples and behave in ways more akin to the British than the mainstream American media."

Aside from the ability to get news that is more current through news blogs, is it maybe even more relevant that people are tired of receiving sanitized, over-edited news? Or at least it is becoming more important to people to balance the sanitized news with the messiness of blog reporting. That and the ability to interact is becoming more important to people as well, and even though more news providers are adding the ability to comment on traditional articles, the community that develops from the less formal blogs seems to bring people back.

It's really cool to see a technology like that blossoming at an alarming rate and to see it become less of a geeky thing and more of an expected thing.


By kim | | Comments (0)



June 12, 2008

News Blogs

There has been a lot of discussion, over the past few years, about why a lot of people get their news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Of course, we know that people don't get their news there, but they appreciate the delivery of the news much better. In fact, unless you keep up with the "real" news, you won't get the jokes in either Comedy Central show. wxyz dot com, the station you can count on for the most web 2 point oh content, we now have blogs!

That is where a lot of news organizations are running astray. People still get their news from their local newspapers/stations and from the national news outlets, but they laugh about it with Stewart and Colbert. They see it in a different light that way.

I think that a lot of it is the personal tone of each of those shows. They pose as news anchors, but they're really just us -- if we were all witty and smart, that is -- commenting on current events. They aren't the untouchable anchor with the perfect hair and teeth and commanding voice, but that's what makes them more appealing. We like feeling close to and sharing a joke with someone who is intelligently commenting on current events or even on every day life.

How can the conventional news outlet respond? With blogs. It seems simple enough, and these days seems like common sense even. But there are too many news outlets who either don't have blogs, or who don't promote them. It's amazing, really.

When my company updated all of our blogs to the latest version of Movable Type -- a huge effort, for an upgrade -- we took the opportunity to also update the designs. We took them from looking like a hodge-podge of old-fashioned and messy design to something professional that fit in with the main site without looking like just another news story. As a result of that, we have seen more and more people get excited about blogging, and there is a great reader response to that.

I assumed that we would be taking cues from some of the major news outlets, like CNN and MSNBC, but I was surprised at the lack of marketing from the homepage that they had for their blogs.

Although MSNBC was my favorite as far as look and feel go, I had to Google "MSNBC blogs" just to find them. There isn't a link off of the home page to any blog listing page or even to the blogs themselves. I do like their look though...looks like the main MSNBC site but each blog has a personal touch of the blogger, so it isn't just another part of the site. And, their blogs are cross-browser compatible, unlike their main site.

ABC actually has a "Blog Roundup" section of their homepage to link to their individual blogs. But the others, CBS and CNN, only had links from the bottom of the page.

As for local newspapers and stations, I looked in some of the major markets and found a few, but they were mostly wordpress templates squeezed into the main news wrapper...not attractive.

News blogs are important to have, these days. People want to see their favorite reporters doing something different than just reporting the news on camera. Even if it's hearing that the Anchor is moving to a new apartment or that the weather guy buys the same thing from Starbuck's every morning that the reader does, it means something. Think about Oprah's "after the show" program. People want to know more, and in a more personal, "behind the scenes" way.

So where are the blogs? They're out there, and a lot are good. The potential, though, is being ignored by most media sites, and not just the major ones.

It is important to get your reporters blogging about anything. Promote it, because it is increasingly the most comfortable way for people to get their news. Have a more personal tone and give a "behind-the-scenes" look. That doesn't mean that a blogger needs to be as funny or snide as Stewart and Colbert, or even funny at all. In fact, sometimes it's annoying when the one we actually get news from tries to be a comedian. People want to connect though, and blogs are an easy way to achieve that, while adding more updated content to your site.


By kim | | Comments (2)



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