In a meeting with some fellow members of the incredibly informal RVA Blog Network, ideas bounced around the table with the scattered energy typical of folks who spend their waking hours drinking from the firehose of the Information Superhighway.
In the coming months, some of those ideas will turn into very real and very specific opportunities for the hundreds of people in the Richmond region with weblogs.
We talked about ways to introduce more people -- especially those at the margins of the Internet as a result of age, education or class -- to weblogs, online journaling and community news. We brainstormed initiatives that could strengthen the content of Richmond's growing network of hyperlocal news sites. And we stumbled across a notion that could dramatically increase the relevance of weblogs as a community resource.
We also wondered why Richmond's mainstream media seemed so slow and awkward to embrace the 300+ weblogs (of every shape, color and content focus) as a resource -- or to add to the mix themselves. Why is the connection between the professional media and those crazy kids with their sassy webpages so diffuse?
Later that day, a friend in the thick of trying to reinvent Richmond's print media sent me a link to a new weblog penned by media consultant John Wilpers. He wonders the same thing (but nationally):
You might think that as you move down the list of large American newspapers, away from the tradition-laden (tradition-handicapped?) major metros of the east and west coasts (and, OK, Chicago), that you might find a greater connection between a newspaper and its community (e.g., more local bloggers and vloggers on the papers’ websites).
After all, among the 19 largest circulation metro dailies, we only found seven papers that welcomed bloggers — Denver, Dallas, Houston, Detroit, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and Cleveland (hmmm, no east or west coast papers among that group….). It HAD to get better, right?
Wrong.
Sad to say, local bloggers are no more likely to be integrated into daily newspaper websites as you move down to papers below 400,000 circulation.
Of the next 15 largest metro newspapers (numbers 20-34), only five integrate local bloggers (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Portland Oregonian, Indianapolis Star, Orlando Sentinel and San Antonio Express-News).
So, as editors wave goodbye to more and more laid-off, right-sized, bought-out staffers, those editors remain as incapable as “Blind Pew” of seeing the rich content being created all around them. As the old proverb goes, “God protects fools, children and drunkards,” but probably not purblind editors and the newspapers they work for.
But it's not just about integration for the sake of integrating, as Wilpers notes in a previous post. The weblog phenomenon is becoming mainstream, too, and it's starting to steal market share.
Look no further than the RVANews platform, which aggregates news feeds from 11 community news sites -- including one I operate, North Richmond News. NRN generates about 50% unique content (not published elsewhere in Richmond) and pulls together scattered content of interest to North Richmond residents from more than 20 news sources; it has an email subscription list of several hundred and generates more than 6,500 unique visits a month. Is it a threat to, say, the Richmond Times-Dispatch? Not yet.
Wilpers says that's about to change:
It’s time to be name names.
Too many big, ordinarily smart newspapers still refuse to involve high-quality local bloggers and vloggers on their websites and in the pages of their paper in any significant way beyond a lame, well-hidden, token local blogger index page (if that).
Now the thieves are at the door, about to make off with the family jewels (audience and advertising) and newspapers are leaving the doors unlocked and the valuables in plain sight...
...It’s time for editors to drop their tired excuses: “Bloggers aren’t journalists,” and “they’re just loonies in jammies,” and “my paper’s reputation will be sullied” (hey, guys, YOU choose which ones to publish!).
Pull in the best local bloggers and vloggers now or lose them and the thousands of folks who follow them, going where they can find the best local content and communities of shared interests.
So, here's a funny conclusion to this story. The best bloggers in Richmond decided not to wait. In the next few weeks, we hope to announce a new win-win for Richmond's ad-hoc, informal weblog community and for the mainstream print, radio and TV news. Stay tuned.
