Blogs vs. Newspapers

There’s been a few, heheh, blog posts in recent days to deride the art of blogging by journalists. First it was Mark Cuban, who believes that newspapers should brand their blogs as something entirely different:

If I worked for the NY Times, or any other media company with any level of brand equity, I would have done everything possible to define the section of our website that offers ongoing as anything other than a blog. I would make up a name. Call it say…..RealTime Reporting.

RealTime Yankees: Catch in depth, up to the minute reports on the Yankees as only the NY Times world re known staff of Sports Writers can bring up

RealTime City Hall: The NY Times has more journalists covering the action at City Hall than anyone else. Catch in depth, up to the minute reports on NYC politics as as only the NY Times can.

Brand it RealTime. Brand it anything. Make sure you market it as having the characteristics unique to your staff that NO ONE ELSE on the net can bring.

if I were marketing for them, I would be doing everything I could to send the message that “The NY Times does not have blogs, we have Real Time Reports from the most qualified reporters in the world. Like blogs we post continuously , 24x7x365 to keep you up to speed, unlike blogs, we have the highest level of journalistic standards that we adhere to. A copy of which is available at…..” You get the picture.

Robert Ballantyne, who writes for PopJournalism.CA (yes, that’s Canada) thinks confessional blogs by journalists are wasting time:

But what absolutely reeks is the rise of the confessional journalist blog. In particular, the Toronto Star is leaping headfirst in this direction. Follow columnist Antonia Zerbisias as she loses weight in her Broadsides blog! Relate with reporter David Bruser as he tries to beat the cancer stick in his Smoke Signals blog!

Please – who cares? — and don’t you two have more important things to cover?

Ehhhh. I think Mark Cuban has a point — I like the idea of branding a blog “RealTime” or how about “Behind The Scenes”? (Shout out to beFrank, whose blog in my opinion is the very essence of behind the scenes). But….its all kind of too late now. I think the problem was that blogging happened so fast for the mainstream media, that all they could do to catch up, so there was no thought put into how blogs should be branded. I mean, people, a blog is technically simply software, a vehicle by which you publish. God knows you don’t have to do it every five minutes or every five days. Look at me. This is my first post in nearly a week!

As for the Canuck, ehhhh. I think he’s trying to get some attention by making fun of navel-gazing print reporters. Heheh. I mean, there ARE some people who would be interested in how those people lose weight or quit smoking. Maybe they just should have started personal blogs and not ones under the banner of the newspapers that employ them, hmm?