The Rise of the Blog, Part II
Posted by DickH on 06 Nov 2009 at 07:50 am | Tagged as: Lowell-2009, Technology
I joined about 20 others (including a good sampling of Lowell’s bloggers) at last night’s Parker Lecture. Dan Gutterplan is a professional journalist who works by day for the Newburyport newspaper but also writes one blog entry per day, five days per week, for sports radio WEEI. He gets paid for the blogging gig which he got by winning a contest that had 600 entrants. He explained how he used Facebook and his email address book to rally support for his cause (the winner was selected by readers of the station’s website).
Gutterplan spent much of his talk reviewing the history and mechanics of blogging, but I found his observations regarding newspapers and the profession of journalism to be most interesting. He spoke of the great dilemma faced by newspapers today: they have more readers than ever but those readers are viewing the newspapers’ websites because of their easy accessibility; but subscriptions to print versions of newspapers continue to plummet, a trend that seems irreversible. Gutterplan offered some of the mainstream media’s solutions to this dilemma (government subsidization of newspapers, charging for website access), but none of them seem viable.
While newspapers have always derived some revenue from subscribers, the bulk of the industry’s income has always come from advertising but neither newspapers nor anyone else has found an effective way to shift advertising from print newspapers to websites (and in this context, “effective” might mean “being able to charge as much for web ads as for print ads”). Many businesses that have traditionally advertised mostly in print are instead shifting their ad buys to radio and TV. Gutterplan explained that one trend that shows some promise is so-called “behavioral advertising which keys off of your viewing (or writing, in the case of email) choices. For instance, if you search for “Boston Celtics” you might start receiving ads for Celtics tickets. Surprisingly, Gutterplan identified one of the most immediate threats to newspaper viability in Massachusetts as a proposal from Governor Patrick that legal notices be shifted from newspapers to a government run website (a proposal I’ve previously endorsed).
When asked (by me) about the relationship between professional journalists and those who write on blogs for free, Gutterplan said professional journalists do have a problem with amateur bloggers. “If you earn your living from writing and someone else is doing it for free, there is resentment.” He also added in the “trained journalists overseen by editors” rap, but it was clear that the number one concern was personal economics.
Dick,
Thanks for joining us last night. You asked very thoughtful questions that certainly added to the evening.
Hope to catch up again soon.
-Dan
Sorry I couldn’t make it - I promised the Mr. that we would use this week to get some very neglected house and other work done…after all the stuff we’ve booked our schedule with these last few months, I figured it was the least I could do!
One great, if underrated, point that Gutterplan brought up last night was about how blogging can be a great way to keep in touch with large groups of friends.
An e-mail or phone call system modeled like a ping-pong rally is eventually guaranteed to fail. As friends separate geographically, even though e-mail and cell phones have made communication cheaper and easier to use than in “the olden days,” eventually one person is going to get preoccupied with other things, drop the proverbial ball, keep putting it off, and then just feel awkward about it and let it go. Even two of the best-intentioned people will eventually lose touch if they just rely on each other to keep the *rally* going.
As Dan said, blogging is a great way to keep in touch with large numbers of people in an easy way. If you embark on some adventure, rather than trying to e-mail all your friends individually, or sending some mass e-mail prefaced with an awkward apology, you can just blog about it. It’s great because it’s non-intrusive (people can read if they want but aren’t being asked to respond or even to read at all), and people can drop in and out at any time.
A friend of mine just had twins a little while ago. He writes a blog about parenting which, I confess, I don’t follow very closely. However, because I know he writes it, it would enable me to quickly *catch up* on what he’s been doing in just a few minutes, and it gives me a way to contact him at any time if I wanted to get in touch or was going to be in his area.
I’m always amazed when I run into people at things like reunions, weddings, etc. who are otherwise terrible at keeping in touch but who will cite things I’ve written on my blog, chapter and verse. I think it’s just way easier for people to read a blog than to compose e-mails or find time to call because it’s passive and doesn’t really *require* anything on their part.
Ditto for Facebook and Twitter. Facebook in particular is just an amazing tool because it gives you a basic idea of what any of your friends are up to, with the option of meeting in person if you’re visiting their area, but without any need for a tit-for-tat way to maintain the relationship.
And, as he said, blogs have a MAJOR advantage over newspapers because they’re interactive. The comment threads on blogs are often the most interesting to follow, and of course you can never even come close to that with things like printed Letters to the Editor or even with call-in shows that require long wait times to get through.