The death of normal media?
12/11/07 18:53 Journalism in practice
Entrepreneur and former Dragon's Den panellist Rachel
Elnaugh makes some interesting points about blogging
and its impact on her own blog here. Essentially she sees
evidence that her blog rather than any press
coverage has made an impact on public
perceptions of her, and she suggests 'normal'
press will get a wake-up call.
Well, yes and no. The Guardian's 'Comment is Free' site is ample evidence that the traditional media does indeed understand how important new media has become. What's going to be even more important, though, are three things about new media and blogs in particular.
1. Responsibility: Many blogs are written by people who are inexperienced writers and who have no training. This can be a good thing because you see their thoughts as unpolished, which can be more raw and genuine - but the laws of libel apply in Cyberspace as much as they do elsewhere. We haven't yet had a big test case in this country. The biggest, probably, in which Mumsnet upset Gina Ford, was settled out of court. But which amateur blogger knows just how far they can go without falling foul of the libel laws?
2. Quality: This brings us neatly to the second issue, which is quality control. There's a lot of dross out there in Blog-land but then there's a lot of dross in journalism too; but has anyone told the bloggers how carefully they need to check their facts before publishing them? Journalists, by training, are inveterate checkers and goodness knows we make enough mistakes. Bloggers, without that background, are prone to repeating anything they hear. Only this morning I saw a blog on the failure of the iPhone: thing is, I was there covering the story for BBC London's breakfast show in Regent Street on Friday morning and I'm telling you people were queueing. Maybe not as many as Apple would have liked but they were there. And has the blogger offered Apple its near-statutory right of reply? Has he hell.
3. Payment: i know, I know, the Internet and blogging in particular is supposed to appeal to the sort of hippie who wouldn't dream of demanding payment for his or her work. Nevertheless, after the initial blogging bubble has subsided you've got to ask what's going to be left. If this is going to continue and people are going to get it right, they've got to find a way to make it viable to continue. This means making it pay. This is likely to mean advertising, and that in turn will mean guaranteeing editorial quality (advertisers won't subsidise something that's unreadable).
It'll be almost like the traditional media all over again.
Well, yes and no. The Guardian's 'Comment is Free' site is ample evidence that the traditional media does indeed understand how important new media has become. What's going to be even more important, though, are three things about new media and blogs in particular.
1. Responsibility: Many blogs are written by people who are inexperienced writers and who have no training. This can be a good thing because you see their thoughts as unpolished, which can be more raw and genuine - but the laws of libel apply in Cyberspace as much as they do elsewhere. We haven't yet had a big test case in this country. The biggest, probably, in which Mumsnet upset Gina Ford, was settled out of court. But which amateur blogger knows just how far they can go without falling foul of the libel laws?
2. Quality: This brings us neatly to the second issue, which is quality control. There's a lot of dross out there in Blog-land but then there's a lot of dross in journalism too; but has anyone told the bloggers how carefully they need to check their facts before publishing them? Journalists, by training, are inveterate checkers and goodness knows we make enough mistakes. Bloggers, without that background, are prone to repeating anything they hear. Only this morning I saw a blog on the failure of the iPhone: thing is, I was there covering the story for BBC London's breakfast show in Regent Street on Friday morning and I'm telling you people were queueing. Maybe not as many as Apple would have liked but they were there. And has the blogger offered Apple its near-statutory right of reply? Has he hell.
3. Payment: i know, I know, the Internet and blogging in particular is supposed to appeal to the sort of hippie who wouldn't dream of demanding payment for his or her work. Nevertheless, after the initial blogging bubble has subsided you've got to ask what's going to be left. If this is going to continue and people are going to get it right, they've got to find a way to make it viable to continue. This means making it pay. This is likely to mean advertising, and that in turn will mean guaranteeing editorial quality (advertisers won't subsidise something that's unreadable).
It'll be almost like the traditional media all over again.
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