“We are all press here.”
That was the reminder BlogHer organizers gave to all assembled for the opening session of BlogHer 2007 today at Chicago’s Navy Pier.
Everything related to the media is changing, especially traditional concepts of who’s a reporter and who’s the public. In a crowd of bloggers, it pays to remember we are all the media.
“The press room of the future is going to be driven by broadband.”
That’s one hint about the future of public relations from a guy who ought to know…because he’s one of the folks who’s changing it.
John Furrier, CEO of PodTech.net, spoke last night about the future of PR and press rooms to a group of about 50 PR professionals and other interested folks at the Third Thursday social media meet-up in Palo Alto. The discussion was moderated by Giovanni Rodriguez, principal of HubbubPR.
Third Thursday focuses on the use of social media in marketing and PR.
Furrier started out as a tech guy, not a PR guy, and he didn’t intend to change PR. He just wanted access to a decent press room at the big Consumer Electronics Show (CES), a space where he could quickly upload his podcasts and videos.
Hey, it’s timely info, and people are interested…so why would you want to wait until you got home (or could find a local Starbucks with a good wifi connection) to publish it? News ought to get out fast!
So in January, for this year’s CES, Furrier decided to create his own press room…a couple of rooms actually, at the Bellagio…with wireless, of course, mega broadband access, plus some plasma screens… and food, lots of it, because he noticed the food at the official CES press room tended to run out fast. He called it the Bloghaus. It was open all three days of the CED, 24/7.
CES opened its traditional press room to bloggers this year, but…it was crowded, the food ran out and the wifi crashed. So a funny thing happened…a lot of the bloggers, podcasters and video bloggers started hearing about this swell place over at the Bellagio and migrated to the Bloghaus.
Soon, Furrier had a full house. And the Bloghaus was operating more like a studio than a traditional pressroom, with bloggers and video bloggers conducting interviews and uploading them right away. By the end of the three-day show, 750 video clips on CES had been uploaded from the Bloghaus.
Even some mainstream media (MSM) folks showed up to check it out, like Stephen Levy of Newsweek and John Markoff of the New York Times. A few savvy CEOs showed up too, and gained some street cred for being willing to talk to bloggers one-on-one. Maybe they’d figured out this was a way to reach millions of people within a few hours.
One thing Furrier noticed is that bloggers and video bloggers tend to work a little differently from mainstream media (MSM) reporters…they talk to each other more, they collaborate. He described it as “conversations among influencers who form opinions.”
“It dawned on me that this is the press club of the future,” Furrier said. “I think you’re going to see more of this…we are in the early stages of a transformation.”
What’s changing is the relationship between traditional and emerging media, he said. It’s getting more symbiotic. MSM reporters are recognizing that bloggers can simply get a lot of information out faster. Also, they’re recognizing that communities of bloggers who focus on specific issues can uncover good stories…and help them percolate up into public awareness. Then, as Furrier put it, “the mainstream media comes in and fossilizes the story for the public.”
Coming up next in my next post: Furrier on the death…and rebirth…of the VNR.
I was fortunate to have two local video bloggers, Ryanne Hodson and Jay Dedman, come to my journalism class last week to talk to my students.
Ryanne has developed some great online tutorials for aspiring video bloggers at Freevlog.org. She is the co-author (with Michael Verdi) of Secrets of Video Blogging. Jay is the co-author (with Joshua Paul) of Videoblogging.
“There’s definitely a need for quality content,” Ryanne told my students. “It’s great to come from a place like CBS or CNN…and now we’re producing our own content.”
“It’s so exciting now because it’s so wide open,” added Jay, noting that it’s still fairly easy to get attention for your videos because there are so few video blogs out there.
Jay’s advice to my students: Start making videos, do it consistently, focus on the kinds of stories you like (not the kinds you think might be popular), have fun…and do it because you really love it. He says he only wishes video blogging had been around when he was a little younger so “instead of forming a rock band I could have formed a video band.”
Ryanne added, “Your blog becomes a resume.”
Jay & Ryanne’s Video Blogging Resources
(Note: The content of their RyanIsHungry vlog was recently licensed to the PodTech Network for broader online distribution.)
I don’t know if you’ve read about the death threats made against blogger Kathy Sierra and the blogosphere’s response, including discussions about the need to foster a culture of web civility.
If not, you can catch up with this post and link from Sierra’s blog, this joint statement by Sierra and Chris Locke (some of the threatening comments and images were posted on Locke’s meankids.org blog, in addition to on Sierra’s blog), and this NYT article, “A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs,” that discusses the issue and offers links to some suggested codes of conduct.
This morning, I read “Bloggers, Don Imus and free speech,” a column in today’s Salon.com by Joan Walsh, who earlier wrote this thoughtful piece about the Sierra threats, “Men who hate women on the web.” It got me thinking about it all again.
I don’t know how I’d react to such threats online. However, I do clearly remember getting a nasty, anonymous note in response to a “letter to the editor” I’d written (criticizing some Bush administration policy) that was published in the Mercury News a few years ago. It was unsettling to think that some warped individual was angry enough and motivated enough to look up my home address and send me an obscene, threatening note. It made me feel like I should be looking over my shoulder; it made me wonder if this nutcase was motivated enough to show up on my doorstep someday. It was kind of scary.
Clearly, that note was meant to intimidate me…to shut me up. Unfortunately, I have to say it did…at least for a while. It made me think twice about submitting any more letters to the editor. It didn’t totally stop me, but it did give me pause…and if I’m completely honest, it probably deterred me from writing a few times…before I got over it.
And that was just one threatening letter. I really don’t know how I’d deal with an onslaught of nastiness and threatening comments on one of my blogs.
None of that has stopped me from blogging. And if you’ve read my blog, you know I don’t shy away from criticizing the Bush administration. But, hey, my blog isn’t exactly well-known or popular, so it’s not exactly an issue at this point.
What I do know if that I’d have no qualms about deleting blog comments that are offensive, or blocking comments from mean, nasty or threatening individuals…on this blog or any of my class blogs. Maybe it’s the teacher in me; maybe it’s because they’re my blogs.
I’ve never had to remove a student post, although I have talked to a student about a post that I felt was inappropriate. I explained why, and I asked the student to modify the post. That took care of it.
I hope that’s the most I ever have to do.
Oh, if you have a moment, please check out Kathy Sierra’s blog, Creating Passionate Users. Right now she’s put up a “best of” series of posts that’s simply fascinating. She’s an original thinker, and it would be a loss to the rest of us if we let nasty web trolls knock people like her off the web.
(A version of this post is cross-posted on one of my class blogs.)
If you’re an aspiring musician, forget the demo tape or CD…and start blogging.
That’s the word from Sony BMG, the world’s second-largest music company, which has announced that it will no longer accept hard copy formats. A Reuters article quotes Ged Doherty, Sony BMG’s U.K. and Ireland Music Entertainment chairman and chief executive, on the change. He said:
“Blogging is clearly one of the major trends in music, media and entertainment…so it makes complete sense for the major labels to use the process in a creative way to encourage, discover and communicate with new artists.”
Doherty added that he hoped the new blog initiative would help break down the barriers between new artists and music companies.
Sony BMG is following the lead of social networking sites such as Bebo and MySpace, which already bring together musicians and music fans.
Explore the “big picture” of this story at http://news.com.com/2104-1027_3-6172257.html?tag=st.bp
Remember the recent dust-up over the bloggers hired by the John Edwards campaign? In Salon.com, blogger Lindsay Beyerstein explains “Why I refused to blog for Edwards.”
The upshot? Her gut feeling was that any liberal blogger who joined the Edwards campaign would face a full-bore attack by right-wing bloggers and conservative groups…and she didn’t want to become that kind of target.
And that’s exactly what came to pass after Amanda Marcotte, a well-known feminist blogger, joined the Edwards campaign. Right-wing bloggers combed through her Pandagon blog and attacked some of her more provocative posts. Others joined in, and soon it was pig-pile time. Marcotte eventually resigned.
A better model for political blogging, Beyerstein said, is the 2006 Jim Webb Senate campaign, which put two bloggers on its payroll. These bloggers, Josh Chernila and Lowell Feld from Raising Kaine, are the guys who captured the “macaca” moment…and knew what to do with it. Beyerstein explains:
When Webb’s videographer captured George Allen’s “‘macaca’ moment“…all the campaign had to do was upload the video to YouTube and send out some well-targeted e-mails to bloggers and other supporters and wait.
Supporters forwarded the clip to their friends. Bloggers started posting the video on their sites. The “macaca” clip got more than 600,000 views on YouTube alone and exploded into the mainstream media.
The lesson for progressives, Beyerstein says, “is how effective bloggers can be when they’re outside the campaign.” She concludes:
“I think the candidates who benefit the most from the netroots are the ones who can inspire bloggers to do their work for free…. Every campaign needs a blog, but the most important part of a candidate’s netroots operation is the disciplined political operatives who can quietly build relationships with bloggers outside the campaign. And the bomb-throwing surrogates need to be outside, where they can make full use of their gifts without saddling a campaign with their personal political baggage.”
What I find interesting is that while academics and journalists waste time debating whether or not bloggers ever can be “real” journalists, PR professionals have decided. They are dealing with influential bloggers the same way they deal with influential reporters…by sending them information and trying to build relationships.
“Campaigns ‘work’ bloggers more or less the same way they work the mainstream press,” Beyerstein says. “They send out e-mails and press releases. They make phone calls. They make their candidate available for interviews. They invite bloggers to campaign events. They network in person at Drinking Liberally or the YearlyKos convention.”
Sounds like dealing with the media to me.
In Chron 2.0, an article posted last week on sfweekly.com, JMC lecturer Michael Stoll takes an in-depth look at the life and times of the San Francisco Chronicle. Overall, his article offers another fairly dismal view of the future of newspapers and journalism, pointing to continuing decreases in readership and increasing competition for ad revenues from the likes of craigslist.com.
But, as Stoll points out, at least the Chronicle is still hiring…unlike the Mercury News, which is about to slash its news staff again. As reported on the eastbayexpress.com blog:
Merc managers plan to lay off 40 editorial staffers on Monday night and Tuesday morning, along with another 61 workers in the newspaper’s other departments…. Management has remained tight-lipped…and the secrecy has put the 446 employees who received layoff-warning notices on edge. “It’s the largest layoff in Mercury News history – that I’m aware of,” said Luther Jackson, executive director of the San Jose Newspaper Guild.
Aspiring young journalists may want to take note of what the Chron is looking for in its reporters these days. Near the end of his article, Stoll notes that prospective Chron reporters are being asked to explain how they would make blogging, podcasting, and video a part of their news routines. Stoll also quotes Narda Zacchino, the paper’s deputy managing editor, who says, “I think we think of ourselves not just as a newspaper anymore, but as a multimedia provider, not just in print but on the Web.”
In the olden days, people used to tell ambitious youngsters, “Go West, young man, go West. Now I think it should be: “Go Web, youngster, go Web.”
A sign of the times, perhaps?
According to BlogTogether, a blog for North Carolina bloggers and podcasters, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill is looking for a tenure-track prof who’s a blogger.
An excerpt from the UNC ad says candidates should be “highly skilled in writing and editing online news, in blogging and in developing news content for the web.“
Sounds like the future is now.
(Thanks to grad student Ryan Sholin for passing this on.)
