Coverage of the Steve Jobs keynote at the Macworld conference took on several different forms this year. Some publications took the traditional journalistic approach by writing articles after the fact, while others experimented with the less formal, more reactionary approach of blogging.
Even with blogging, however, the popular variation seemed to be the practice of live blogging, rather than giving a post-keynote synopsis. Engadget led the way with Macworld keynote coverage by employing this method, commanding a dominant market share over its closest competitor, Gizmodo.
LeeAnn Prescott outlines the different approaches taken by the two sites in their respective coverage of the Steve Jobs keynote in her Hitwise blog:
The sites used different posting strategies, with Engadget offering updates by refreshing the same post, while Gizmodo issued updates with individual posts every few minutes. The Engadget community was very vocal in commenting, with 544 comments on the post to date. One commenter demonstrated his excitement about the product by typing “pressing refresh right now feels better then sex.” Ryan Block, the Engadget blogger, peppered his report with comments on crowd reactions as well personal commentary, which often was mirrored by the blog commenters.
I can’t attest to the commenter’s adoration of the refresh button, but the numbers seem pretty evident that Engadget’s live blogging approach best satiated the public’s thirst for live news coverage.
The live blogging approach seems to be the growing trend among blog readers, anymore. Last week, Robert Scoble gave real-time updates of the time spent traveling with John Edwards in his initial bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Robert’s blog was flooded with entry after entry documenting the trip, and people still couldn’t seem to get enough.
This has ever been the evolving nature of news coverage. The desire for instant knowledge has spurned the likes of CNN, Fox News, and other media platforms dedicated to providing around-the-clock reporting.
Live blogging is just the next logical link the journalism chain.
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Joe is a staff writer for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest ebusiness news.
