Newspapers and Blogging, My Predictions
Taking everything I know from working at scrappy little newspapers and big media companies, covering the media and online news industry, reading SEC filings and news stories, taking part in many off-the-record talks over beers and combining that finally with some things I heard at BloggerCon over the past weekend, let me tell you where I stand on how and when newspapers (and other media companies) will embrace blogs.

Newspapers will add blogs to their Web sites first with their existing columnists, through frequent community op-ed writers the paper has come to trust and through occasional "event" blogs related to things such as an election or major natural disaster. The two things that must happen before newspapers move beyond those steps are that the legal liability must be made clear through litigation and the economy must improve enough for them to hire more people to implement the blogs.

That's the nut of my conclusion. If you want the long version, keep reading.

This morning I pretended I'm the executive editor of a newspaper. I pulled out a yellow pad and made a list of all the pros and cons I would consider when thinking about creating blogs for my staffers and/or community members. Here are my lists:

CONS

What is my legal liability? What will it cost be to defend a libel suit filed against a community blogger? Since I'm the deep pocket, I'll surely be named in a suit.

What technology will I need? Will it be expensive or difficult to integrate with our existing system?

Will the blogs compete with my existing stories?

Will I look stupid if the blogs scoop my own reporters?

Will I need to monitor the content?

How many people do I have to hire?

If I put my company's logo on these blogs, I want to ensure they have the same quality as the rest of my newspaper but I can't guarantee that if their blogs aren't edited. Do I have enough money to hire more copy editors to read the blogs? What happens when I get accused of censoring the bloggers content?

Does Tylenol make enough aspirin to take care of the headaches I'll have when my community bloggers start ridiculing my advertisers?

This will open the door to all sorts of conflicts of interests. I don't want the local PTA to find out that my star education reporter is a womanizing alcoholic and if I let him have a blog that may become apparent.

Will they create more trouble than they're worth?

Do I have anyone in my newsroom I already trust who can lead this effort from the news side and understand the technology?

Will this destroy my local monopoly?



PROS

Extra content for free!

When people call up to complain we didn't cover their ribbon-cutting ceremony or their kid's play, we can tell them to get a blog.

Our Web site will become the town square, encourage more dialogue on community issues.

We will ensure our position as the primary site on the web for news of our community

Customer loyalty will increase.

We might be able to sell ads on community blogs.

Community bloggers can generate story ideas for my reporters and sometimes do the legwork by sitting through long meetings or reading long documents we don't have the resources to do ourselves.

This could be a farm system for finding new reporters or columnists for my print edition.

I could have a news assistant create a "best of our blogs" file and use it to plug news holes in the print edition.

Might my reporters actually work harder if they are afraid of getting scooped, or justifiably ridiculed by a local blogger?

Blogs could be a place for us to put information we don't have space for in print or even a logical place in our online edition.



Enough of that exercise. Let me add two comments from BloggerCon that also scratch the surface in explaining why the transition will be awkward for some of the writers. The comments are both from journalists who attended Jay Rosen's session on journalism at BloggerCon on Saturday. Dan Gillmor, a technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News who also writes a blog for the paper, said this: "Columnists going to blogs is almost seamless." Rebecca MacKinnon, who covered Asia for CNN for more than 10 years and is now studying at Harvard and running a remarkable blog on North Korea, said it took her a long time to let her personality come through on her blog. She also had a hard time learning to show "the process" -- meaning the failures to access information and not just the successful results.

And finally, here is some added detail to my nut graf up at the top: Newspapers will start embracing blogs through their columnists, op/ed writers and "event" blogs, I should make clear that these will all be edited by that section's regular editor plus a copy editor. Some newspapers are already doing these things. I predict more papers will do this and more often. And there are very few barriers to these blogs starting.

However, the legal uncertainty and economic outlook will keep most newspapers at least two years away from pursuing blogs in any serious way. The legal liability must be made clear. This will happen only after a few significant court cases make corporate media attorneys so comfortable that they can green light the project for a newspaper. And just as important, the economy has to improve in such a way that newspapers can a) put their staffs back at a pre-recession level, b) invest in the technology they think they need to support blogs in-house and c) have money to hire an extra editor and or tech support staff to handle the new work. Everyone in a newsroom is traditionally overworked and underpaid, even when the economy is good, and 98 percent of them will be loathe to take on even more work. Most are sitting on at least one empty reporting position they haven't been able to fill for a year or two (on beats such as courts, schools, city hall, cops, etc) that other reporters are picking up in addition to their own beats. When the economy really improves, newspapers are traditionally among the last to feel the recovery, so any shift here will not come before 2005.
- posted by Amy @ 4/19/2004 10:40:00 AM