Are Blogs Becoming More Like Old Media?

Or are we talking about a whole different ball game altogether? This could be a case of mistaken identity. Perhaps we mean online publications. A recent article by the Financial Times states that publications born online are the same thing as blogs.

The Huffington Post might have been started by Arianna Huffington with the explicit goal to inject ample doses of opinion in the immediacy of an online tool. According to FT:

These days, Ms Huffington and her partners tend to recoil slightly when the Huffington Post is called a blog. To them, blogging is merely the latest technology tool to transform the news industry -– just as cable television yielded CNN and the 24-hour news cycle. While that tool may be central to their success, their aim now is to expand the Huffington Post into a mainstream media business –- a path that other blogs are also pursuing as the once-fledgling medium becomes more professionalised.

Well, I'd like to have a definition of professional, too.

I have a different theory. I think that the editors of online publications in most cases started as bloggers and then applied what they learned through the interactive and first person experience to publishing the news in a format that readers (we) have come to expect.

That's not all. Unlike their traditional counterparts who over the years tended to blend more towards a middle of the road benchmark -- ending up like each other in many aspects -- I am seeing evidence that new media editors are less attached to benchmarking and more into experimenting. In fact, from the interviews I had the opportunity to publish so far here, it is quite clear that the strategy is to have a conversation with readers, in many cases to invite them to contribute.

See for yourself what some new media editors respond to very similar questions:

• Ann Handley, editor of the Marketing Profs
• Tony Hung, Editor of The Blog Herald
• Lynne Johnson, Editor of FastCompany.com
• Chris Baskind, Editor of Vida Verde Media/LighterFootstep.com
• Tim McHale, Editor of The Madison Avenue Journal

I always preferred interacting with the medium and the information put forth by contributing my ideas. Until the online medium matured -- in all its manifestations -- all we had was push and pull strategies, not a conversation. It was never a matter of pushing a button to vote. I already did that by pushing the "off" button on my TV until it never went on again.

It's not even about being heard anymore, it's about influencing the outcome by participation. New media editors are self publishers first because that is the only way to understand what it feels like to be in the conversation -- by joining.

[AdAge Media Family Tree and the 100 Leading Media Companies of the last 10 years (1996-2006). Separate rant to Ad Age: make your images available in a format I can use as a blogger to illustrate a point, I'll give you credit. I had to print screen, save, crop, etc. Then again, Ad Age is a traditional media property.]

Comments

[Pier Luca Santoro]

Dear Valeria,
Really interesting.
May be the point might be another as well. As pointed out recently by Pej [www.journalism.org] there is a big distance between the topics dicussed on old media and the ones on user generated media. In this way the conversation might never begin.
Un abbraccio.
Pier Luca Santoro
PS: sorry, eventually, for my mistakes but i'm a little bit more confident with italian :-)

[Robyn]

Valeria, I like the space to both experiment and interact. Very well said!

[Lynne d Johnson]

This is an excellent post Valeria. It's giving me some food for thought. Thanks for this.

[Christina DiAngelus]

I believe blogs tend not to "report" in the way that traditional media reports on a topic. There may be factual information put forth, or links recapping interesting headlines, but often it's opinion, which is fine because conversations are essentially opinions. Conversations (or blogs) perhaps stem from traditional media and their topics but really require active participation, listening, engaging and opinions.

I read a few online publications, generally for industry news and trends. I don't read e-zines or e-newsletters anymore because to me, they are not newsworthy (and they certainly aren't opinion/conversational based). So I am left with the fabulous blogs of my choosing and other social media outlets that allow me to engage in dialog and express opinions. If a business has a blog, it should recall the days of the dotcom bomb and be sure there's an online marketing strategy behind it (and its other online endeavors). Blogs are really no different than social networks of previous lives...we're just doing it online with our cup of jo next to us instead of on the golf course...or over tea...or playing bingo.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Pier Luca -- your English is fine, no worries. We're all a little Italian here -- welcoming, ready to come your way, etc. Wait until I get my new Mac, you might even see more video ;-) Content it is -- new media publications afford space and effort for niche topics that readers want to learn about. Maybe this is fodder for a separate post. There are some small news organizations that have gone totally local and their communities are loving them.

Robyn -- we invent ourselves every time we enter a new conversation.

Lynne -- how cool of you to join in. Point and share when you're ready with your ideas.

Christina -- I think that between blogs and social clubs there were listservs. Online conversations of many to many, like Fast Company had, still has actually. The opinion is the main dish for people to gather, come together (convertere at the root of conversation).

I's like to open up the question to all readers here: what do you think? Strategy and measurement with a blog for a business?