NYT Acknowedges Bloggers Have (Some) Role in The News
In the political arena, anyway! The New York Times reports that bloggers offer a perspective on the ground, closer to the events that the mainstream media has a hard time replicating.
That the blog now has a firm place in the choreography of national events ‘€” and in elections perhaps more so than in any other cultural exercise ‘€” is a boon to the democratic process, said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance at Oxford University and a co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.
‘€œIn a lot of ways they’€™re helping to set the agenda for the mainstream media in fast-moving events like this,’€? Mr. Zittrain said. ‘€œThey just need to be able to produce enough that’€™s credible quickly to give a lead.’€?
In the light of the crowdsourcing announcments of USA Today, I think it may be one more closer step in the evolution of the delivery of news, and represents the inclusion and validation of bloggers as a kind of “media”. CNN, for example, brought in a bunch of bloggers for a giant “blog party” last night covering the mid-term election in the States … which at times, felt like looking at an exhibition at the zoo (“Honey, don’t come too close — they might blog about you”). But many were given a chance to talk on the air as another ‘talking-head’ pundit, often times, with what seemed like equal footing as the other talking-heads.
In other news, political bloggers may also be better looking — which may have been the reason why they were invited to CNN. As reported in the NYT:
Constantine Stavropoulos, the owner of the cafe, said he had closed its doors for the ‘€œblog party,’€? which the network periodically broadcast and streamed online. He said he expected the bloggers ‘€” an attractive bunch, he said ‘€” to linger long after the votes were in.
‘€œBloggers look a lot better than I thought they would,’€? Mr. Stavropoulos said
Tony Hung is the editor of the BlogHerald. He is also a physician finishing his last year of residency in General Internal Medicine, and blogs at Deep Jive Interests , where he rants, occasionally, on new media topics.
You beat me to it! i was going to write about this tonight.. hehehe..
Oh well, that’s why I have you :)
Matt
Heh heh — its all good matt, its all good ;)
Tony, just a quick fact check note: Gannett at large will be employing crowdsourcing techniques in their watchdog/investigative journalism projects (their use of user-generated content falls under the crowdsourcing rubric as well). However, as far as I know USA Today will not be implementing these policies. And since both are really driven by local readers, that makes a great deal of sense. Doesn’t mean USA Today isn’t trying to follow us into the 21st Century, per se, but they’ll need to do it in different ways (such as a savvy integration of Web and Print editions, which is already well underway).
Jeff