March 7, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Is it a blog if it’s being produced by a newspaper?
It’s a great question - one that San Antonio Current editor Elaine Wolff [profile] answered adroitly in an AAN listserv discussion today. An AAN staffer asked - What’s the point of a newspaper producing a blog? Isn’t this just daily content written by people who write for the weekly? Are we just calling these “blogs” because sometimes we are using common blogging software packages?
Wolff replied in part:
“[…] We’re appropriating the word [blog] to communicate to readers that it’s an open forum for their input - more a conversation than a one-way flow of information. The next step is to make our software actually reflect that.”
So, call it a blog, call it daily content written for a media company that publishes a weekly - what’s really important is that we’re now in the business of conversations.
[Full disclosure: I worked with Wolff at the Current in 2004.]
Tags: blog, communication, conversation, newspaper
Ian R:
March 10, 2007 at 1:52 pm
I’m still not convinced. A blog is already a thing… can’t we just come up with a new fake word? “blogommunitation” ?
I was really only asking because I was getting confused — people saying “blog” when they mean “article comments” or something else — if we’re gonna be in the conversation business, we need to be able to communicate. And I don’t want to sound all Printed Word or anything, but it seems like if we want to convey that we’re open to user input, it might be best to use a time-honored English word like “comment” rather than a kinda-fake word like “blog”.
Like right now, I’m “commenting” on your “blog post”.
But that’s just my blogpinion. Now, I’m going to go sell that word to Cox Communications.
Ian R:
March 10, 2007 at 1:53 pm
I should also add that I have no idea why I care about this
Roxanne:
March 10, 2007 at 4:24 pm
Let’s open a nice ripe can of Marshall McLuen. Is “blogging” merely the use of new kind of publishing tool that enables us to have conversations? Or does “blogging” also connote a style of writing that’s different from web reporting?
Ben:
March 10, 2007 at 4:55 pm
All great points. The newspaper’s “appropriation of the word” is an interesting idea, but i am not sure it truly is an appropriation as much as it is a valid participation in “blogging”. The most interesting aspect of blogs is the ability for the audience to actively contribute to and comment on the content being published — in a way a leveling of the power differential that the printed word perpetuates.. If the paper offers content up in a way that allows for this active discussion to be attached to the content, then sure, it’s a blog.
But that’s just my opinion, man.
If it is something different (and perhaps it is), it isn’t surprising that we would call content delivered in this fashion a ‘Blog’, simply because we don’t yet have the language to describe what exactly it is quite yet…
Spell Check:
March 12, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Or even Marshall McLuhan. Auto F for failing to check spelling on famous person’s name.
Roxanne:
March 13, 2007 at 8:27 am
Oh, you got me there! Are we being graded?