Can social media play a role in a time of life crisis? The answer is a resounding yes, says blogger who abruptly lost his 35-year-old wife and was comforted by the massive show of support from Twitter- and Facebook friends.
I've been meaning to blog about this issue for quite some time now, but I didn't want to treat the subject in a haphazard manner, and the right words seemed to escape me. The particular life crisis digital developer Mads Kristensen describes is a very dramatic and harrowing one. However, it is my experience that social media can be of great help even in what, compared to Mads' story, are quite minor troubles as well, but first anexcerpt from the mentioned post:Ten days ago my wife suddenly suffered from cardiac arrest in the middle of the night. I called 911 and did, what I could to help here, but it was to no avail. She was taken to hospital and put in an intensive care unit without regaining consciousness.
I was of course in shock. But I got the word out on Twitter. And in a matter of what seemed like a few minutes the first messages of sympathy started to come my way through Twitter and on Facebook, to which I have tied in my Twitter account... It helped me on a personal level... It helped to reach out... My wife sadly died on Saturday October 4. She was 35... (full post here).
Mads' experience of how reaching out through the social web like this was of great comfort makes perfect sense to me, and I've heard many tales of other bloggers who've found a lot of support from their readers in difficult times. Their troubles have been very different ones though, and I don't want to mix things up by dwelling on the details, but rather just say that: yes, there seems to be a lot of evidence around that this can be of great support, be cathartic even.
Some would of course argue that it's a dangerous thing, something that people may come to regret at a later stage, sharing toomuch of their lives like that, especially when they are going through such upsetting times - I've treated a rather different aspect of this here - but I think times are changing, the culture is changing, and part of what Ben Casnocha
On a personal note, even without the soul-baring, I've often found that when I've been depressed about such things as, well... taxes, the weather, and oh well, taxes... when I've felt like I've been fighting windmills and other impossible obstacles; even wished I had it in me to sit down and give up... social media has been of great comfort.
One minute I've been lost in dark thoughts over some trivial or not so trivial issue, then someone left a funny comment on my blog - forcing me to laugh, forcing me out of whatever dark mood I was in - or I discovered someone blogged about something I wrote, giving it a great new spin and taking it in a direction I had not forseen, or I read a funny tweet or see some heart-warming pictures on Flickr from friends in far-away places... the world becomes so much smaller this way....
Somehow you're more connected than ever: both with people you've never met but feel you "know" through their blogs, and with friends who live in the same city but you just wouldn't be able to check in with so often if it wasn't for Twitter, blogs, and social networking sites...
No, I'm not leading up to rant, rather I'm going to invite bloggers, journalists - and everyone interested - to share in whatever competitive advantage I get from tapping into the social web
Better still, I've put together a seminar on using the social web for Saturday, together with a few other partners.
The seminar is open to everyone (more background here, in Norwegian. This is a non-profit event, but we've had to take a small participation fee, 250 NOK, to cover our costs. The fee includes lunch, coffee and, of course, wi-fi).
Keynote speakers:
I'll kick off the seminar with a talk on how I benefit from using the social web as a journalist and blogger, giving an introduction to how the web's distributed conversations can be used for research purposes, to increase your audience and improve your reputation (yes, this is just to set the scene, an introduction to using the social web).
However, we've also been so lucky to get someone much more technically advanced than me to share his expertise, namely Colin Meek, who's worked on investigative and in-depth research projects for over 15 years as a journalist and policy analyst:
"Web 2.0 and web 3.0 resources shift internet research to another level. In many ways the future of the internet is through 'networking' and 'semantic' technology. Using web 2.0 and web 3.0 isn't just about getting better results more quickly. If you invest a little time you can harness these powerful new search tools to more accurately follow trends and key words, breaking news, and find new ways to monitor your beats through 'networks' of other users," Colin says.
Now, the Norwegians among you will probably know that Heidi, voted Norway's best political blogger for her personal blog, is the citizen journalism editor at ABC Nyheter, the first commercial news site in Norway to feature a mix of citizen- and traditional journalism. Her talk will look at how mainstream media's efforts to enlist readers and attract so-called user generated content really went.
We conclude the seminar with a debate on whether there are benefits to be had for mainstream media from engaging in conversations on platforms other than their own - such as on the sites of their competitors, on blogs or social networking sites - or if it's just a waste of journalists' precious time.
Helge Ögrim, editor-in-chief of Journalisten.no, and blogger George Gooding kick off this debate with short intros, but we'll run this session more as an "un-conference" than a panel debate.
I say "Journalists ignore the social web at their peril" in the headline simply because, armed with a blog, someone who knows how to harness the social web can easily outcompete journalists at their own game. I've optimistically hired a big venue, so I don't really think room will be an issue, but it would be great to know if you're planning to show up so we can order enough coffee, food etc. Time and place: Saturday 25/10, 10am to 4pm, Håndverkeren, Oslo.
Follow the seminar on twitter: #socialweb , technorati tag: swOslo
So it's official: blogging does change journalists. It takes these swaggering, macho creatures, unencumbered by community ties, political or moral persuasions, friendships or other obligations and affiliations which might compromise a journalist's independence, and makes them... eh... ...human...
This might of course be taken as evidence that the naysayers were right all the time, and blogging is indeed corrupting everything that is sacred about our trade....
I'm being a bit flippant here, but Paul Bradshaw's findings on how blogging has changed the journalism of reporters who blog makes for interesting reading.
In June, he distributed an online survey to find out how journalists with blogs felt their work had been affected by the technology. 200 blogging journalists from 30 different countries,including myself, responded.
" The responses paint an interesting picture: in generating ideas and leads, in gathering information, in news production and post-publication, and most of all in the relationship with the audience, the networked, iterative and conversational nature of the blog format is changing how many journalists work in a number of ways," says Paul in his first blog post on the findings. He's published the findings bit by bit, in what I believe will be seven posts in total, you can find all the posts that has been published so far here. Enjoy.
Last year, I put together a team of bloggers who live blogged the Norwegian Editor's Association's Spring Conference.
But after the event, the blog we set up for the Association, www.redaktorene.no (translates as editors.no) was largely abandoned - a fact I bemoaned when I set out for this year's Spring Conference - until today, that is:
For the autumn conference, the bloggers are back, and I imagine the new bunch of bloggers already hammering away on their keyboards by now. Two of them have even started blogging ahead of the event, covering such issues as The Media and its experts, The New Journalism and Hunting for the advertiser's gold.
So if you're fluent in Scandinavian languages this might be a blog worth tuning into today and tomorrow. The last time we did this we had an open identity the editors could use to join the live blogging, but I believe only one person dared use that, and then only to make two-three offhand comments about boring speakers. This year Geir Arne Bore, editor-in-chief of Drammens Tidende (DT) asks on his personal blog why the editors don't blog themselves, and why they are not the ones to share their reflections from the conference via their own blogs....
You also can follow Bore and others twittering from the conference ( #Nored )
Here's your chance to hear Eirik Solheim, one of the
new media gurus at The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), talk about
NRKs blogging efforts, media transparency and how to engage readers in the new
media reality.
I might be promising a bit too much here as this is a very informal session I'm organising for tomorrow, but I know I have many editors, journalists, bloggers and people who are more than averagely interested in the future of media reading this blog, so I thought those of you who are based in Oslo or nearby might find this interesting (which admittedly is a small portion of you, but still...).
I'm in the process of setting up a forum for
Journalisten on online journalism: a place to discuss, be inspired, argue
and exchange experiences about this ever shifting, fast evolving frontier of
journalism, and, incidentally, our first meeting this autumn will be tomorrow
at 5pm. It will feature a short introduction by Eirik, before we open the floor
for questions and debate. It's short notice, I know, but if you'd like to come
along tomorrow and/or want to be informed about our future events, drop me an
email...
Blogger and editor Raja Petra “RPK” Kamarudin is to be held in detention for two years under the country's draconian Internal security act (ISA). Petra, 58, has been held in Kuala Lumpur since 12 September under article 73 of the same law. He is charged with sewing confusion within the people, attacking Islam’s sacred status and is considered a threat to public order...
One of the more disturbing stories in my newsreader today. Reporters without borders has more on the story, including an appeal by Kamarudin's wife.
Update 7/10: Yesterday, Kamarudin was put on trial for sedition after writing an article about the implication of leaders of the ruling party in the 2006 murder of a young Mongolian woman.
I came across two posts today that brilliantly spell
out how web 2.0 is a blessing for journalists
Of course, those of you who've spent a lot of time
using social media might be familiar with a lot of this, but the posts summarise
the headlines of just how useful these tools are expertly. And I do wish these
things were more widespread knowledge: it would make our industry more
interesting.
First, Alfred Hermida lets Scott Elliot explain how he
benefits from blogging about his beat.
Scott is a former education reporter with the Dayton
Daily News who's just taken on a new role as columnist for the same paper. He started a blog about his beat, Get on the
Bus, three years ago:
"Here's what I quickly learned - readers are
interested in knowing more about education, particularly the behind the scenes
information or data that is not widely reported. My blog quickly and consistently
became the newspaper's best read blog, even as bunches of new ones launched,
often doubling the page views of the next best read blog..." (full post
here).
Next, I stumbled across Alison Gow's post comparing the
life cycle of a news story web 1.0 with web 2.0 (via one of
Jemima Kiss' tweets). Do check out the full post. Here's Alison's conclusion:
"I had no idea when I started doing this how thin
the 'old' opportunities for investigative stories would look compared to the
tools at our disposal now; it's quite stark really. It drives home just how
important mastering these tools is for journalists as our industry continues to
develop and change."
NB: due to formatting problems on my blog when I first
posted this, I had to delete my original post and retype the text in a new post (changed the text a wee bit in that process).
Adam Tinworth, the blogging supremo of Reed Business Information (RBI) England, reports how Flightblogger, one of RBIs bloggers, broke the Obama running mate story.
This ties in nicely with that quote I let hang in the air Monday on how beat bloggers pose a serious threat to the newspaper industry (well, threat and threat, smart newspapers set up their own beat blogs of course - which I believe is the story behind Paul Conley's example, Pharmalot).
Adam explains how Flightblogger, aka Jon Ostrower, got his 'scoop' because he knew his beat well and enlisted his readers to help give him the 'where' and 'when' of a story he knew was happening (seems both CNN and Fox predictably failed to credit Flightblogger for the story.)
On a previous occassion, Adam told me RBI had acquired Flightblogger because he had factory floor level contacts for Boeing aircrafts; he was was not a trained journalist but was doing
original reporting; was good at participatory
journalism and had all the right instincts.
Ostrower still does what he wants to do, but gets money for it, while RBI scooped up a great beat reporter. It's a win-win, and smart move if you ask me. This is what I alluded to when I said the quote from Conley's post represented the future. Its also a good illustration on the quote from Betteridge I said represented the present in Monday's post.
Yes, it's that kind of day: just recovering from what felt like a flu on Saturday, which today is more like a really nasty cold, and trying to catch up with work as well as all the writing I planned to do over the weekend I mostly spent in bed.
And while there are so many things I'd like to blog, there's simply no time, so I thought I just do a massive plug for this site of Adam's I've been paying too little attention to:
First of all, it reminded me of this great quote by Brian on what is surely the past?
"It’s as if, when the telephone first arrived, only a few hobbyists had seen the point of it, and had at first enthusiastically chatted to one another on it, while grander people in “mainstream institutions” had sneered. Have you actually listened to the drivel that these phoners say to each other?, said the mainstream institutions. No, said the mainstream institutions, it’ll never catch on. We, said the mainstream institutions, give it five years, then it’ll be gone, and good riddance. And then five years later, they all had their own telephones. Which for all I know is what really happened."
Then there's this quote from Ian Betteridge, which must be about the present, right?
"Saying that journalism means “picking up the phone” means that journalism is a social thing. Most of the job isn’t writing - it’s finding and cultivating sources, getting to know people, and getting to that point when you can pick up the phone and talk to someone about what you need to know. As Danny points out, this means that lots of things which bloggers do are really journalism, and, contrariwise, lots of professional journalists don’t really do journalism."
Which brings us to the future, at least to what's my bet on the future. Well actually it's Paul Conley's, which, in all fairness, I first heared discussed at the Big BIog Company HQ quite some time ago, but it needs repeating for a wider audience, and certainly for journalists like myself, who are prone to forget it at times, when getting too caught up in the endless deadline rush:
"More importantly, it won’t be long before other newspapers realize there’s potential (and some easy money) in duplicating the Pharmalot model. There are thousands of business reporters covering hundreds of beats at newspapers across the country. And odds are there’s at least one who would pose a competitive threat to any B2B publication you could name."
Which brings me back to Whispers of the Hackopalypse, just added that to my newsreader, so I won't forget to check in for updates...
I know I write a lot about the wonders of the web, but it does of course have its pitfalls as well, and here's one of the best parodies of web evangelism I've come across in a while.
Now, even though I read the Cluetrain earlyish (2002 I think, thanks to Adriana), I didn't come across Gluetrain 'til yesterday, here's a few excerpts, but better afford yourself the whole treat if you, as me, miraculously hadn't heard of it until now:
A powerful inter-galactic conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to waste time at work, download naughty pictures, and build pipe bombs. As a direct result, things are getting really weird -- and getting weird faster than the parking lot at a Grateful Dead concert...
6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media. How many discussion groups on nude pictures of Pamela Anderson Lee could you find twenty years ago?
12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. So just let 'em build the damn stuff themselves, and retire on your stock options, OK?
I found this gem via Doc Searls, who, both through his contribution to Cluetrain and his blog, has provided me with, and inspired me to elaborate on, many of the best metaphors I know for describing things great and small, both in the virtual and the real world. I was fortunate enough to be able to thank him for this in person in London in February. Here's a shot I snapped when the company I was with had just escaped Google HQ (a visit we all had to swear on a legally binding paper we'd repeat nought of).
Sunday Herald has a really interesting piece on how some of Scotland's leading journalists are coping with reader comments, which makes for interesting and revealing reading (via Martin Stabe).
Most can't abide or be bothered with them for more or less obvious reasons; it's also interesting to consider that those who do see value in them are both beat journalists addressing a niche audience (Spectator and a BBC blog).
The article reminds me of Gawker's recent piece arguing that newspapers shouldn’t allow comments at all, at least not on news articles - a position I have some sympathy with. Perhaps comments should be welcomed on a news site’s blogs and forums only, while for instance using services such as Twingly to visualise the conversation the site’s news articles spur elsewhere on the web.
Now that's the how, Adam Tinworth and his colleague Andrew Rogers have a few interesting thoughts on why journalists shy away from comments. Adam has these suggestions:
Another explanation that was put to me by a tabloid journalist, was that the fact that she couldn't be herself - as in a person who had such and such values and opinions - but had to represent the newspaper, made it a lot more difficult to engage in conversation with readers online. If I understand her correctly, we're back to how the mantra of objectivity inhibits journalists in this brave new world of ours.
I haven't encountered this particular obstacle myself, but then I predominantly write for journalists in my day-job - and if we get vitriolic comments it's most likely for missing a comma, or misspelling, or for not being good representatives for journalism at large - I can imagine it would feel much more inhibiting not being able to show your colours if the discussion is on politics, policy etc. To paraphrase Adriana, 'on the internet you can't behave like an institution. If you want to behave like one, you get isolated and bypassed.....
This is one of the key questions in a survey two master students are conducting for a thesis on blogs and trust (you can find a link to it here, in Norwegian). Trouble is, it’s a bit like asking “Do you trust people who talk?” or “Do you trust people who write letters to the editor?” – it depends on who they are, what I know about them, where they’re coming from, what their agenda is etc etc. In its current form, I can’t imagine the results of the survey can be used for much as the questions are too ambiguous (which in my case meant I often chose ‘neither agree nor disagree’). When asked if, on a scale from 1-7, you agree or disagree that private persons who blog are credible, which number to pick? Yes, I trust the blogs penned by private persons I read regularly (surprise), but that is not to say I trust all private persons who blog – and why would I spend time reading blogs I don’t find credible? As a journalist, it’s not unusual for me to use blogs as a starting point for my reporting. But I see the blogosphere a bit like a virtual pub: you don't go home and write up what some stranger said over a few pints as if it is the whole and unvarnished truth, but the “pub” is a great place to get ideas, input, leads - information that has to be examined further. Of course, if you run into a regular you know quite well, and who you know is a director with the company he talks about, you will trust his account much more and perhaps not spend an equal amount of time checking his credibility etc: I don't treat online sources all that differently from how I treat real world sources, and of course I’m more likely to trust the ‘regulars’ in my ‘local’ cyber pub - that’d be the one where all the media geeks hang out – and the people they recommend, more than a total stranger, say from the place where the stamp collectors hang out. It’s also a lot easier for me to verify the credibility of a media person than a stamp collector, as I know the media industry and its issues very well, but know precious little about stamps: how to judge them, who’s who in the stamp world etc. Unfortunately, I do see journalists who, having just discovered blogs, leave behind all concepts of critical sense and just copy paste - especially if it's a newspaper industry source who've just jumped on the web 2.0 bandwagon - come to think of it, a bit like they copy paste what other online newspapers write daily, and everyone in the industry knows better than to trust a fellow journalist’s account, right?
If you only read one blog post today, make it Adam's musings on why media gets community wrong, I think he's spot on here:
...most media people don't realise that blogging is a community strategy. They think of it as a publishing process and, perhaps, as articles published with a particular tone of voice. They certainly don't think of it as a conversation.
This is clear from our traffic figures. Those blogs that do really well are those that are aware of there being a wider web world outside our sites' confines and which talk directly to the readers. Those whose traffic is abysmal are those who show no awareness of a wider conversation around their topics and who adopt a "wisdom from on high" tone of voice...
Now, of course, most of you are likely to read much more than one blog post a day, so while you're at it, Jeff Jarvis on 10 questions news organisations should be asking themselves, is a must read if you haven't already read it, and "Beat blogging allows reporters to concentrate on core reporting" (via Hivand) certainly gave me something to think about, a highlight from the latter: "When writing for the print edition, reporters often have to spend large amounts of time getting "man on the street" quotes from random people to flush out stories. Not with blogging. That's what the comment section of each blog post is for"....
This graph from The World of Information Access' 2008 report (via Sambrook), speaks volumes (click on the image for a full size version). More on the report from BBC here.
I was struck by this sentiment from a British newspaper executive that Adrian reported under Chatham Rules a while back:
This person had "no interest in UK blog content... didn’t rate UK blogosphere - UK newspapers have already occupied that opinion territory and run the best blogs." It reminded me of Andrew Grant-Adamson's musings and investigations, and the debate these sparked, in the earlyish days of UK newspaper blogs.
It is ...eh... a long way to have travelled in such a short span of time, from not really getting it (late 2006) to having occupied this niche entirely (spring 2008), I thought to myself. I also thought it was a rather interesting notion to 'occupy' a realm some would liken to the realm of human conversation. The whole idea of the media industry, especially the publicly financed part of it, using its financial muscles to 'occupy' all attractive niches is also an interesting one, although, in this brave new world of ours, where everyone with access to an internet connection can be his or her own publisher, it seems to be a bit optimistic to say the least. Especially if you take these stats, that put political bloggers and 'one man bands' Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale ahead of the likes of ITN and Guardian Politics, into account... There is of course that old adage of "lies, damned lies and statistics" to consider, which Guido Fawkes explores a bit further here. Still, this does seem to contradict the notion that UK newspapers have successfully occupied 'that opinion territory'...
Of course, it may be that I'm putting too much into one word and getting all obsessed about proprietorial language, but the words we choose can say so much which lenses we see the world through. I'm all for media organisations joining the conversation, and applaud those who have journalists who succeed in leading it - I can think of a few who do exactly that, or come very close - but occupy? That's what you do with hostile territories, right?
I was going to say that if how journalists and bloggers treat information is anything to go by, I'd much rather marry a blogger than a journalist.
Because in this respect, journalists are conditioned to be the worst control-freaks imaginable: the kind of person who'd lock you up in a cup board and only let you out on his terms in a context where he could take all the credit for any positive attributes you may possess (yes, I know she looks great and talks sense, but that's all down to my efforts: just like Elisa DooLittle would be nowhere without her Professor Higgins, this chick would be nowhere without me).
Detail from one of my photos from a friend's wedding
Obviously, quite the opposite to how bloggers treat information, sharing it generously with anyone who will listen, often allowing it room to stand on its own without any editing, live free and all of that. The catch of course, is that if you translate this to a romantic relationship, you'd end up living in some kind of hippie commune, wouldn't you?
But if you consider how journalists are trained to treat information: how they're encouraged to walk over dead bodies to get exclusives; rip off other journalists' exclusives at the first chance; how journalists are taught they don't have friends, only contacts etc, it is rather ... eh...dehumanising, isn't it?
I have certainly stopped talking to journalists I don't know who call me for 'background' advice on the basis of issues I write about on my blog, because experience has taught me that it's likely to be a one-end street: bloggers always credit, with journalists it gets all political and it's much more likely you'll be left feeling ripped off. Now, a journalist might think here "how stupid to share information in the first place", but I'm also a blogger, hence I have conflicting inclinations: to share or not to share?
So how come I started thinking about this? Well, I read this terrible example of the journalistic epistemology at work, and I found myself wondering why I'm doing my best to spread knowledge of the wonders of social media and how to use it to your advantage. I mean, only yesterday I was giving a workshop on this, and when I came out of it I read this, and I thought: oh, dear... :
...Do not tell your journalism colleagues about Twitter! Keep it as your own secret tool.
When I first came to
When I paid my employer a courtesy visit at their offices in
I knew enough to shut up and kept covering (with the help of the Internet) Asian logistics for another two years -- until editorial resistance against the Internet failed. It took them a few months to learn that that what I did from
So instead of seeing journalistic conservatism about online media as a problem, try viewing it as your competitive edge...
The sentiment belongs to the Lebanese artist Zena el-Kahlil. During a seminar on how free the internet really is earlier this month, she spoke for the first about what happened during the July Warin Beirut in the summer of 2006
That summer she penned Beirut Update, a blog that became a means of survival for her during the war and a way to bear witness of what was happening. In her opinion, the blog ultimately helped bring down barriers between those on the Lebanese and the Israeli side:
'When the bombs started falling, I didn't trust that international media would represent what was happening accurately'.
'It seemed as if my international readers came to trust my first hand account more than international media.'
'Blogging became a means of survival on many levels, it became a catharsis' 'It was a source of information. I needed to be an eyewitness. I had no political agenda, I was just writing as me – a 30-year-old normal woman'.
'Blogs were popping up everywhere that summer: the blogs were helping people on so many levels. There were two wars going on that summer, the summer of 2006: one in real life and one in cyberspace. Blogs were popping up on the Isreali side as well, there were lots of pro-Israel bloggers.'
'That summer changed history: it brought down barriers. It was helpful to see each other as human beings. Regular people got more involved: the events mobilised people to get online, send links, start typing, get more involved.'
These are my random notes from Zena's talk during this seminar, and a friend's interview with her afterwards (in Norwegian) early this month. I've deliberatly put these up here without too much editing because I think these quotes say a lot about the changing media landscape worth contemplating. For my own part, her words reminded me of two things:
1) how blogs seem to bring people closer even in the respect that they make it easier to have civilised or even meaningful conversations with people you wouldn't normally engage in conversation with. Or, to quote Adriana, via Doc Searls:
"isms" are for people who don't have blogs
Quid pro quo is how control freaks have relationships.
2) of a poem (especially the last lines) by my favourite poet, Aase-Marie Nesse. Now, I must admit that I translated this to share with friends when I was 18 or so, so had I the time I could perhaps improve on the translation, but it works well enough/ is accurate (no rhyme in the original poem):
Infiltration
No, no board meetings, no committees
send all documents with the first flight
to heaven, awaken a new
Homeric laughter on Olympus
then we gather on the earth, two by two
and three by four, five by five,
we give each other commissions of trust
and invent our merry manifests
with ink and pen of pigeon's feather
we rise against everything
that suffers from contempt of life and contempt of death
that lines up our future with a ruler
that makes us less than a riddle
and a song
come, then we will meet on the bridge
in the middle of the fair or far north in the forest
a web of free-willing, out-doctrinated
east of the sun and west of the moon
and we betray the cold war
with a kiss
Just as I was putting together that post on Blondinbella and product placement, I came across Natalie's wonderful Blogging 101 for Publicists: an excellent tutorial in blogger relations for PRs from my favourite mixologist (who as far as I know blog for ... eh.. love and public spirit)
I know I've complained about some of the silly PR approaches I get as blogger in the past, and even linked 
up some useful advice
on how not to go about it, but Natalie offers nothing less than her "PSA for the other remaining few PR professionals who seem to have missed the memo explaining what a blog is and how it works," and generously says "Go on, drink up… this one’s on me". A few headlines:
Lession #4: The blogger has the final say.
Think of a blog as a publication. Now, realize that the blogger is the Senior Editor, Publisher and Art Director, rolled into one.
The clincher in the offensive email was this person’s feeling that she was doing me a favor, rather than realizing that it is, in fact, the other way around. This condescending line stuck like a bone in my throat:
“I treat you like a journalist, and thus expected a rapport like what I have with serious journalists.”
Umm... considering my bylines appear in national and regional print and online publications, most actually consider me a journalist, thank you very much. It would be appropriate to “treat me” as such. I was also a bit insulted – on behalf of myself and other bloggers – at the implication that bloggers are somehow lowlier than journalists, and not to be taken as seriously. Ironically, most bloggers I know are far more informed about a specific topic than the majority “staff writers.” And, believe me when I tell you that many of those “serious journalists” rip-off content from our blogs, on a regular basis, because we have become the experts in our niches.
Lesson #5: Understand the difference between a blog post and a magazine article.
Being a professional writer includes having the skill to change writing style, tone - and even the rules - when writing for any particular outlet. My blog "voice" is completely different from my magazine articles. I use the “first person,” spout my opinions and am influenced by my own biases. Its a free-form arena. I write exactly the way I want to, when I want to, about what I want to. If you like my style, pitch me your clients. If you don’t, there are a whole slew of other cocktail bloggers out there. Have at ‘em. Or, better yet, forget the Internet and stick with print.
Lesson #6: Become acquainted with what I call “the power of the blog.”
You see, back in 2005, when I held my final “salary job,” I was a restaurant publicist. Our PR firm had begun pitching food bloggers. At the time, I didn’t totally get what a blog was – but I knew it tapped into a valuable demographic many print publications didn’t reach. When I finally “hopped the fence” to write full time, in January 2006, the first thing I did was launch The Liquid Muse where I blogged, daily, because I had become so passionate about spirits, wine and cocktails. I took a 100% pay cut. Even today, my blog is a labor of love. The fact that thousands of people, every month, stop by to get their cocktail updates at The Liquid Muse is of huge personal satisfaction to me, and provides a valuable service to both the liquor companies and the readers, if I do say so myself. And, my readers know I’m not stifled by editors, publicists or advertisers. This is the power of the blog.
Lesson #7: Print is dying. Be nice to bloggers... Go check out the full post here.
