The River

The personal professional blog of Pamela Parker -- musings on marketing, advertising, media and technology.

Journalism

Journalist + Blogger?

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Interesting piece in Wired News about journalist/bloggers, like myself. A few thoughts:

  • On Scoops Of course I can’t scoop ClickZ on my blog. I’m paid to manage and write for the site full-time, therefore I must make it my first journalistic priority. This might be a bigger issue for print journalists (esp. magazine), because it’s fairly easy for us to publish something relatively quickly, and then I can link to it from my blog. It’s be tougher, psychologically, to sit on something while waiting for a monthly to come out.
  • On Objectivity I’m in a bit of a different position than some because while I write news, I also write opinions for ClickZ Experts, therefore it’s not entirely out of the scope of my role to be a person with opinions. However, I wouldn’t blog in an opinionated way about something I’d written as a News story.
  • On the Role of Blogging, for Me I try to make it clear (with my disclaimer on the site) that what’s on the blog are my opinions, not my employers’. To some extent, I blog about things that wouldn’t be appropriate for ClickZ (gecko/salamander sightings and other personal stuff). And as readers have no doubt noticed, I’m not a big ranter on my blog — at least not about things that we cover — and part of that is by design. If I didn’t have the regular news and column outlet, I might be more aggressive and depend more heavily on my blog.

    I think the steps Chris Allbritton (fellow alumni of my j-school) has taken to shift his blogging behavior after being hired by Time magazine — as described in the Wired News piece — are entirely appropriate.

    • Closing the Blog/Journalism Gap

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    The gap between blogs and journalism are closing fast. Bacon’s, which provides info on journalists and publications for PR pros, is developing a blog monitoring service to launch next year.

    "The news cycle for a story sometimes originates from a blog and can on occasion find its way into the mainstream media," says Ruth McFarland, Senior Vice President and Publisher for Bacon’s.

    "With today’s information overload from often irrelevant or dubious sources, our aim is to help our clients by filtering the communications clutter. Bacon’s will therefore focus on blogs run by reputable, credible professionals. Initially, these will be blogs of active journalists, but as our in-house researchers scrutinize and approve additional news-related blogs, we will add to the scope of our coverage," says McFarland.

    Next, bring on the blog e-mail "press" lists. Aargh.