Dagsbrun, an Icelandic publishing company, is launching free daily newspapers in 10 U.S. cities in the coming months, and blog content will make a significant portion of each issue.
According to a report from WBUR’s Curt Nickisch on today’s Morning Edition from NPR, BostonNOW — which starts circulation today — editor-in-chief John Wilpers plans to eventually allot half of his paper to content culled from local bloggers.
Including blog content in editorial content is a way to capture community opinion and provide an incentive for bloggers to produce content (they’ll get recognition from a well known organization) and to refer others to the outlet. “Hey, go look at my comments or pictures in the paper!”
However, many mainstream media (MSM) journalists balk at bloggers since they wonder why some person who is probably writing late at night in their underwear (hey, I’ve done it — just not in the office) should do the same thing that their paid to do. Further, most bloggers don’t have editors to fact check; let’s not forget the indifference many bloggers have towards grammar, style, and objectivity.
This attitude is changing as more journalists are now blogging and stories are broken or wonderfully fleshed out in the blogosphere. In fact some papers, like express the free daily published by The Washington Post, are publishing excerpts of blog posts to reveal how people feel about the news. It is kind of like quoting a person or turning a missive into a letter to the editor.
Of course, quality control is needed, but this is a rather interesting development in the relationship between the MSM and the blogosphere.
Hopefully, as traditional media outlets pursue more substantial outreach efforts to bloggers, positive synergies will develop. Bloggers can increase journos’ access to expert or eyewitness accounts for the whole range of stories and journos could help willing bloggers hone their journalism skills. Of course, some MSM journalists will still fight such outreach efforts while some bloggers will resist any movement to stifle their personal expression (ie the rebuff against the recent call for blog standards of civility by social media experts Jimmy Wales and Tim O’Reilly), but that doesn’t squelch the potential good of journalists and bloggers teaming up to produce a product that’s fit to print.
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