medianow

Bloggers dog big media while moving mainstream- -

                                      

By Jay Fitzgerald
Thursday, August 4, 2005 - Updated: 07:54 AM EST

http://business.bostonherald.com/technologyNews/view.bg?articleid=96529&format=text

The pajama-wearing hordes of bloggers aren't about to collectively trade in their morning garb for mainstream corporate media duds.

     But more bloggers – who love to shine a light and heap scorn on the mainstream media's foibles – are increasingly crossing over mainstream lines, writing opinion pieces for newspapers and media Web sites while cutting partnership deals or even selling their sites to traditional news outlets.

      It isn't a case of bloggers ``selling out'' and losing their feisty character and independence, local and national bloggers say.

      It's more a case of a natural convergence in which bloggers break into the mainstream media due to their online popularity – and the mainstream media experiment with bloggers and blogging in the face of dramatic changes within the media world.

     ``I think we'll see more crossovers both ways,'' said Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and founder of the popular Instapundit blog.

     Reynolds said he frequently appeared in newspapers and on TV news shows long before his blog took off in 2001 – but he has picked up more mainstream writing and other gigs due to his blogging. Lately, he's written Op-Ed pieces for, among others, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and other newspapers.

     MSNBC, Tech Central, Slate.com and other print, Web and broadcast sites are other frequent hosts to blogger-written pieces or blogger interviews. But if some bloggers think Reynolds and others have ``sold out'' or lost their media-tweaking ways, the readership numbers at Instapundit in particular don't indicate that.

     Readership continues its upward trend, Reynolds said in an e-mail interview with the Herald.

     Bruce Allen, a non-journalist blogger at BostonSportsMedia.com, said he thinks the convergence between bloggers and media outlets is ``a good thing as each entity can benefit from the other'' – bloggers getting access to more readers and media outlets getting fresh new voices. But he warned there's ``no doubt'' bloggers who join media outlets can ``lose part of their independence'' and risk losing a personal touch – depending on how a media organization handles a blogger's copy and personality.

     Locally, there's been movement in the blogger-to-MSM front.

     Last year, BostonDirtDogs.com – a Web site for Red Sox and sports fans – was purchased by Boston.com, owned by the Boston Globe. Oliver Willis, a popular Boston-based blogger, recently moved to Washington, D.C., to work for Media Matters of America, a liberal media-watchdog group. He's kept his personal blog at oliverwillis.com.

      There's also a mainstream-to-blogger trend under way.

      The Boston Herald, Boston Phoenix and Boston-based Christian Science Monitor have all jumped into blogging, highlighting bloggers on their Web sites.

Jay Fitzgerald is a Herald staffer who has his own personal blog, Hub Blog, and writes blog for the Herald, EconoBlog.

- 作者： medianow 访问统计：　2005年08月7日, 星期日 10:51 加入博采