Traditional Media and Blogs
Crikey on the Friday 13th did a mini-‘analysis’ of Fairfax bloggers. I’m sure they won’t mind if I post part of their findings here on my little blog. 😛 : Even the most casual reader of Australian newspaper websites will have noticed the explosion of blogs as on-line editors embrace connectivity and bleed their staff…
Crikey on the Friday 13th did a mini-‘analysis’ of Fairfax bloggers. I’m sure they won’t mind if I post part of their findings here on my little blog. 😛 :
Even the most casual reader of Australian newspaper websites will have noticed the explosion of blogs as on-line editors embrace connectivity and bleed their staff writers white. The growth has been almost viral.
So today we decided to do a brief survey of the latest Fairfax bloggers and their most recent posts. Some have managed 50 words since last November. Others have not.
Stay tuned next week for a survey of News Limited blogs. (read more here)
They then go on to post snippets from the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. For example:
– They say opposites attract. But when a gluttonous couch potato coincides with an uptight neat freak, does all hell break loose? — Samantha Brett, Sam and the City
– Wired‘s Clive Thompson wrote a good piece this week about how many long-time gamers are now becoming parents and having to judge what is appropriate for their own kids (rather than simply staunchly refuting any criticism of their hobby). — Jason Hill, Screen Play
Then today News Ltd came under review:
Blogwatch: The blogs that ate News Limited
As Crikey wrote last Friday, even the most casual reader of Australian newspaper websites will have noticed the explosion of blogs as online editors embrace connectivity and bleed their staff writers white. The growth has been almost viral.
As promised, here’s an explosion of taste tests from the News Limited smorgasblog:
And then post snippets from The Australian, The Herald Sun, The Courier-Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Adelaide Advertiser, PerthNow and PerthNow: Sunday Times. Here’s two from The Australia:
Talkback radio celebrated its 40th anniversary this week: sufficient cause to look at the balance sheet of a medium that has been described as “the entertainment phenomenon of the millennium”. — Mark Day, Mark Day Blog
I’ve spent the day walking around the Virginia Tech campus talking to students — those able to speak. — Geoff Elliot, Geoff Elliot Blog
So Fairfax and News are head to head in a blog war? *shrugs* Good. Why do such a shallow review? Oh Fairfax are blogging and here’s some snippets. Oh Gosh News Limited have opened up blogging and here’s some snippets. Why? I think Crikey know something is going on but don’t know how to evaluate it. Not an unusual response.
What gets me is that Crikey isn’t doing anything with their community. I mean, Crikey has the potential to create a SpinStartsHere around media, to really own media savvy readers and they are ignoring it. I wrote to them about a year ago suggesting an online community based around a Crikey Army theme and the response was something like “yes dear, you go ahead and call yourself a Crikey General or give yourself any other title you want”. Clearly Crikey customer support thought I was barking mad. Mr Pot meet Ms Kettle…
I’ve talked to other bloggers about this before. They are well placed to take advantage.
I agree that they need to add a blogging/ community arm to the main publication, and Kos like they can bring topical content from there to the front page.
However I suspect that the writers and editors there are just like all the other big media guys in how they pursue their craft – despite their protestations to being plucky little battlers – and especially of late.
So it wouldn’t be surprising that they didn’t “get” blogs and other new media outside of a few bones thrown that way.
In the end I unsubscribed after being on the books for several years because I no longer saw value in what they did, and I saw far too much content, that appeared to have been pinched from blogs and published a bit later.
More immediately, I think they could do better with their Blogwatch section, they always have a narrow focus and appear to go back to a few favourites regularly – they don’t spread the blog love.
Now back to the feed reader.
Australians have yet to see a single traditional media group use trackbacks on their blogs. Blogs without trackbacks are not a conversation. Big media clearly does not want to have a conversation.
Interesting, both of you are mention the importance of bloglove/googlejuice. I tend to comment less on blogs that don’t link back to here. Why? Because my comment sits just as well on another blog somewhere else covering the same subject that will help this little blog. Often I can’t be stuffed returning to a site that doesn’t allow comments, or doesn’t allow links in comments. And I hate sneaky “no follow” tags…
How hard would this be – scrape the Crikey site, re-post it at say CrikeyArmy.com.au, open the articles for comments and then let word get out? Of course, ignore the newsletter stuff until it time expires (I think it’s 24 hours before the articles in the pay-for newsletter hits the open area of the web, not sure). We wouldn’t want them to go totally broke overnight would we? :p
Poor sweet doomed little Crikey.