Blogs are forcing journalists and journalism to become more accountable. And those who can’t beat the bloggers at their own game (news/opinion), really better join them in adopting their best practices.
Consider what Chris Anderson blogged recently. He’s the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine.
Chris says he prefers good blogs to most traditional journalism in the niche domains where his interests are greatest because they support comments, correct mistakes, back facts up with links and more. However, what’s even more notable is he hints at why it’s so hard for a big media brand to change on a dime. He writes…
(Quickly heading off the obvious question–why don’t we do all this at Wired?–the answer is that we do some, we should certainly do more, and someday soon I hope we will. But it’s tricky, because the print version exists independently from the website [see this Wikipedia entry for the complicated details] and we don’t want the two versions of each article to diverge too much, for fear of confusion over which one is the “right” one. Meanwhile, nobody else in print media has really solved this problem yet either. And yes, I am aware of the irony that this is another distortion caused by inefficient distribution, exactly what I spotlight in other industries. Let’s just say I know of what I speak.)
All I can say is, thank God Wired has a progressive editor. What about the countless other media brands that face huge challenges and may not even see them clearly.
Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.
He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.
