Newscoma

Mabel is an impossible dog to get a picture of believe it or not. And sometimes she demands my attention. And then, sometimes she blogs.

Umm, MSM quit linking the bloggers awhile back even when they took their stuff without attribution. So know, MSM is yelling at each other about not getting attribution?

But it’s a good conversation.

The thing is, In Session now knows what bloggers have been going through. Although I don’t think there is a term called blogger laundering. But what they said, and what bloggers go through … well it’s similar.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a few who do, but the days of the past world of blogging are over. I guess the Nashville folks are eating their own now. Let’s see, Pith just started doing morning round-ups. The Nashvillest have been doing that for a while. I think Pith was right to do this, but Christy and Morgan are the ones that started this latest trend. Well, and Brittney in the early days when dinosaurs smoked cigarettes.

It’s all good. We can all do this together. But eating our insides from within, well, that’s just nuts. And Say Uncle is telling you this.

Christian explains it:

RESOLUTION: Unless your news organization’s blogger has added anything significant to a news report that is not yours, including opinion, it’s always best your legacy media (or online version of legacy media) link directly to the original source, not to a blog that simply curated the source without adding anything of value.

This isn’t just mainstream, it’s everyone. Linkage is groovy and that’s how bloggers remain, no matter where they stand, as an important voice.

Link, people, link. Because if we link each other, then MSM pays attention.  It scares them.

Maybe I’m wrong, but this just seems like people losing at hopscotch and pouting at the swings when they don’t get their way. None of us like it, but it is what it is.

Update: Betsy has more at Pith in the Wind.

Ron is a great writer. He’s on about a kajillion blogs right now and he waxes philosophical on this beat of blogging.

Bloggers are vain.

Maybe we’re not physically vain, though I know some bloggers are. What we are is emotionally vain. Not to generalize or anything (he says right before launching into a series of broad generalizations), but we’re a lot of misfits. Basically, there’s no such thing as a normal blogger who doesn’t do it for pay alone. Hell, even those that do it for pay are probably weird, too. We’re overworked young professionals. We’re mothers stuck indoors with the kids all day who need to speak to someone on an adult level. We’re geeks, dorks, and dweebs who hide behind websites or nom de blog or the general anonymity of the Internet to reach out to other people in a safe manner without all the fear that comes with meeting someone face to face.

It’s a lot easier to relax and be yourself online (or be a totally fake person, but if you try that kind of thing you’ll generally get found out one way or another). You don’t have to worry about the fact that you need a shave, or that you’ve got popcorn husks in your teeth, or that you’re a 450lb albino balding midget. Nobody’s judging you for how you look, or how you’re dressed, or how much money you make. It’s all about how well you write, the links you find, and the connections you make with other bloggers with your personality.

The whole post is amazing and if you want to see someone break it down on why bloggers blog, this is your best bet today.

UPDATED: Aunt B. is talking about this as well this morning. As I’m still going through post-election blogging uncertainty and a blogging mini-identity crisis, the best thing I can add to her post is our words on the Internet, we want them to please others but in the end, they have to please us as individuals as well.

The Internet is a fickle bitch. As Ron articulated and as Aunt B. did as well, you have to have some real about yourself or people won’t come by to visit. I’ll never forget having lunch with Huck a couple of years ago and the man with him, his name escapes me, said he likes to read blogs where it’s not just one thing. That he wants to feel a connection with the writer. He also said that if political blogging is your thing, it’s best to feel like there is a real person behind it. I’ve taken this sage words of advice to heart. I figure that you guys come here because you choose to.

And I’m grateful to each and every one of you for being a part of Newscoma. It’s a wonderful bond as there are times I feel completely geographically challenged but the Internet and bloggers has opened the world to me. It’s important for me on a personal level. Yes, I do this for me. But also, yes, I like the connection of feeling a part of something bigger than myself.

Wow, deep this morning.

Today’s Howdies go to Democracy for Tennessee, Geek Thoughts (who has a great rundown on the Nashville Predators this morning) and change your feeds to Vibinc, who has a snazzy new website.

I mentioned yesterday about the blogs I write and how I want you to read them and then either pat me on the back, give me a job making $100 grand a year or give me a pony.

I keed. (Well, maybe not about the job but you get my drift.)

With that said, it started a series of emails between myself and a few people off line that I wanted to address about public relations, promoting online content/products and the differences between being annoying and savvy. First of all, there is nothing wrong with self-promotion. It isn’t shady as so many people think it is. YES, I said it. It’s only shady if you are doing something shady. Many of us just blog because it amuses us and we like to communicate with other people. I’ve built some fantastic relationships with people that I’ve met in the blogging community. Relationships I would have not had otherwise.

(more…)

I was reading Rob Robinson’s post this morning about candidates shutting down their websites after a campaign, citing some of the candidates for mayor of Nashville have already let their’s expire.

I agree, either use it or lose it. But, with that said, I want to add something to Rob’s thoughts.

Let’s take Rep. Stacey Campfield. I wouldn’t know this guy from a saltine cracker if he didn’t keep putting stuff on his (free) blog. As so far divided that both of we are on about, let me think, everything, he’s actually being savvy about one thing. He keeps the conversation going. Yeah, I know, I know, but his blog has gotten him national attention (not in a good way necessarily) but his name is out there. Hell, Stacey Campfield has become a brand and he doesn’t even pay for a fancy website because doing what many of us do.

My senator, Roy Herron, has a blog that he’s abandoned pretty much  although it appears the site is pretty active with some books he’s written over the past couple of years even though he was written up as politician who blogs back in March 2006 where Campfield and Herron were both discussed here in a Tennessee journal about “The Blogger System.” Hey, Bill Hobbs as well as some other folks, are mentioned over there too. It’s interesting to read the changes that have happened over the past 21 months since that article was published.

Now, back to websites. All of these folks should, in my opinion, keep those domains and take Rob’s advice by putting a splash page up if nothing else. I can’t think of a better way of communicating to constituents and I’ve preached this to my elected guys for the past two years. Do they listen? Well, sometimes.

Yeah, but local and state elected officials get a bit wiggy though, I think, about being too accessible but that’s another conversation for another day.

You know, the internet might not win you a campaign in 2007. But it just might raise you some money (can you say Howard Dean or Ron Paul), or much needed attention in this day and age which is sometimes how grassroots efforts get started.

Just saying.

Sharon Cobb has some interesting observations about Brian Williams hosting Saturday Night Live this past weekend.

The younger viewers they want to attract get their news online or from Jon Stewart. They’re never going to sit down at “dinner time” and watch the evening news like their parents did.

So Charles Gibson will continue to win the evening news war because Boomers and their parents, who are more comfortable with traditional news, will watch him, while Xers will get the news where I stated.

See, this is what is happening in news right now and I agree with Sharon.

There are some odd things happening on how people watch and read their news. I get stuck in two camps of thinking on this a great deal as I’m older than some, more progressive than others and living in a dire state of trying to juggle two worlds.

Although I by no means think that traditional news is dead, I do think it’s changing and folks that work in news are going to have to embrace those changes. Students studying for journalism degrees right now are being taught how to shoot video and how to disperse news in more than just the traditional avenues of print or television/radio broadcasting.

Problem is, no one really knows what to do. Some folks are cutting edge, but it’s still a gamble and an on-going work-in-progress. Some things work, others don’t and folks like myself are just rolling the dice.

Blogging is keeping ideas flowing, especially in the last five years, but it could be said that the market is getting inundated. Wordpress alone has signed on with 700,000 new blogs in the last year. Not everyone has a blog, but a lot more people do than in the two years since I began Newscoma.

So is blogging news? No, and yes. It depends on how individuals utilize those self-publishing platforms when you get right down to it. Folks like Enclave, Sean Braisted and Bill Hobbs from the other side of the political fence have broken news and promoted ideas in more of a conventional news model while utilizing some of the political punditry that this country has embraced in the last decade.

The other problem is, and this is just my opinion, that the news has been watered down but anyone who has read this blog during it’s infancy and toddlerhood know that I’ve been saying that since the beginning.

Britney Spears, campers, is a good example. It’s not the news of Edward R. Murrow, as Sharon uses in her post, but it is news because this is the sort of story mainstream media outlets are using to obtain that Xer audience to a degree. Lindsey Lohan going to rehab and then staying sober since she got out is headline news and it’s done for ratings. She is not a hero, she is a celebrity who is in recovery. A person elevated into a world of compulsive voyeurism created by corporate media. People apparently want to see this although it chaps me but it’s what the “new” media has generated, and fabricated to a large extent.

Is traditional media training a new generation that celebrity shenanigans is just as important as political policy? Are we, as a nation, changing the news appetites of a new generation?

A story like the Watergate break-in and it’s progression in the public eye through how it was presented by the media of the mid-70’s would not happen in this day and age. Hell, Valerie Plame, Halliburton and Blackwater barely made blips on the map except in some partisan environments.

On the other hand, I think Brian Williams might have done SNL for a couple of reasons. He is funny, we’ve seen him hold his own time and time again on The Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart. But I think Sharon’s right that they are wanting to show the staunch guy from NBC to a new audience. Ted Koppel had a dry sense of humor, but you only really saw that on The Late Show with David Letterman.

When I was in broadcasting and was a news director at a radio station, one of the biggest brawls I ever got into was with an advertising person who, without my knowledge, sold a commercial where I was supposed to read it as if it were a breaking news story. It was a shoe ad. I balked and raised unGodly hell over it. I thought it diluted the news. This argument went on for a couple of weeks, but eventually I won the battle. This was roughly 15 years ago. Today, I most likely would have been told to do the the ad and to shut up by management.

But, there are new outlets that are exciting. Much of this is online. Who would have thought my employees and I would be shooting video even a year ago? Not me, by any stretch of the imagination.

News is changing, there is no doubt. As technology, citizen journalism hosted on free self-publishing platforms (blogs) and the blurring of “hard” news and entertainment fluff continues, I am interested to see what will be the standard in two years, five years and beyond.

I’m thinking we are in the middle of a revolution and don’t even know it.