What BlogBurst Means to Blogs and Journalism
I spoke with Pluck CEO
Dave Panos last night about Pluck's new
BlogBurst technology. The BlogBurst elevator pitch is "the AP newswire
for the blogosphere." BlogBurst will cull content from bloggers who
have been approved by Pluck to participate in the service. That content
will then be pushed (via RSS I believe) to newspaper Web sites.
Newspapers participating in the beta service include
The Washington
Post and the
San Francisco Chronicle.
The two great thing about BlogBurst are 1), that it allows the bloggers to
continue developing their content and brand on their own property, and 2) it will (eventually) provide them with revenue share.
I am cautiously optimistic about this service. I think that yes, it
will bring more mainstream attention to some excellent blog content.
New voices are always good. But I'm cautious because I don't think most
bloggers understand the implications this service, if successful, will
have for the blogosphere. Most bloggers are responding to BlogBurst as
if somebody just dropped a bucket of whuffie on their head.
But what will BlogBurst prove? If successful, it will prove that,
despite the hum and chuff about the power of the long tail, mainstream
media is still extremely powerful. And, what's more, most bloggers
desire access to this power. Although the blogging lifestyle was born of a cult
that worships rugged individualism and counter-cultural DIY publishing,
I suspect most bloggers will give up their adopted idealism for a shot
at mass media attention.
Is that a bad thing? No, not exactly. Blogging on your own site and
using BlogBurst to spread your voice are not mutually exclusive
propositions. But it
gives more credence to the idea that new media is rapidly becoming
the same as old media. We all choose our filters. A majority of us choose the
daily papers' Web sites.
Other points:
1. The success of BlogBurst does not portend the end of journalism as
we know it. I saw somebody post that idea somewhere. Rather, this
allows MSM newspaper's online sites to acknowledge and capitalize on
the conversation while maintaining their brand integrity and editorial
standards. There are many, many newspapers who are hiring their own
bloggers these days. See, for example, The
Greensboro News-Record.
Also, note the four blogs that New York Times has launched in the past
few months, using their own columnists and feature writers:
Walk-Through
on real estate, by Damon Darling;
Diner's
Journal, by Frank Bruni;
Carpetbagger on the Oscars, by David Carr; and the
Opinionator,
by Chris Sullentrop.
2. That said, the further integration of "journalism" and "blogging"
will help both sides understand the value of each. There is no clear
cut difference between the two words, as Rebecca Blood demonstrated
almost
two years ago: "When a blogger writes up daily accounts of an international conference,
as David Steven did at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable
Development, that is journalism. When a magazine reporter repurposes a
press release without checking facts or talking to additional sources,
that is not. When a blogger interviews an author about their new book,
that is journalism. When an opinion columnist manipulates facts in
order to create a false impression, that is not. When a blogger
searches the existing record of fact and discovers that a public
figure's claim is untrue, that is journalism. When a reporter repeats a
politician's assertions without verifying whether they are true, that
is not."
3. Bloggers vs. Journalists is obviously dead. Smart people, like Salon editor Scott Rosenberg, have been
saying this for years: "This debate is stupidly reductive -- an inevitable byproduct of (I'll
don my blogger-sympathizer hat here) the traditional media's insistent
habit of framing all change in terms of a "who wins and who loses?"
calculus. The rise of blogs does not equal the death of professional
journalism. The media world is not a zero-sum game. Increasingly, in
fact, the Internet is turning it into a symbiotic ecosystem -- in which
the different parts feed off one another and the whole thing grows."
4. Remember the
Power Law.
The Washington Post et. al. will be very
persnickety when choosing which blog content to syndicate. They will
choose based on content value, bot because you're friends with Michael
Arrington or
Steve Rubel or Robert Scoble. The blogs
chosen will likely already be quite popular and, if not, will quickly
become popular. That popularity (MSM driven) will totally eclipse the popularity
those blogs have garnered from within the blogosphere (conversation driven). Is that what you want?
5. I wonder about the potential for a
Slashdot-like effect.
