Thursday, March 30, 2006
Newspaper Blogs Continue to Evolve
byTraditional media are beginning to discover the potential of blogs to supplement coverage, generate online traffic and create dialogue with consumers.
Newspapers are especially active on this front. So far, most efforts fall under a couple of different models.
Several individual editor/reporter blogs are popping up. They typically augment stories, seek story ideas and solicit comments from readers. A recent addition comes from Kara McGuire, writer of the excellent Ka-Ching personal finance column at the Star Tribune. According to McGuire, Ka-Blog allows readers to “weigh in on my latest dollar dilemmas, keep up with important-but-sometimes-confounding money matters or share your views on saving and spending.”
The more promising model – at least from a citizen journalism perspective – pairs reporter blogs alongside citizen blogs. About 10 reporters at The Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog on topics ranging from Microsoft to nightlife and baseball spring training. Directly next to the reporter blogs, you’ll find three citizen blogs: Bus Chick, Globalism and Trade, and Ear Candy. The newspaper actively solicits new volunteer bloggers and approves their ideas before they go live. It’s a good approach to ensure the readers are serious about blogging, which in turn generates quality content.
Other newspapers have adopted a looser reporter/citizen model. The Forum, for example, has created the Area Voices blog engine. Citizen blogs appear next to a few media blogs, but the creation and approval process for citizen blogs is less formal. As a result, the volume, quality and frequency of posts vary. Still, it’s a good effort to engage with the public.
