Blogging journalists het roi

Just finished the feature on blogging freelance journalists. Took four hours to write and is in London as of ten minutes or so ago. Or is it? How fast does email travel? Just a thought... I'll link to the article when it goes online, but I won't blog the process like the Budget story. I'm finding the different ways in which journalists are using blogs to be a fascinating and recurring topic. These guys are the journalists I mention in the feature:

• Christopher Allbritton
• Sandeep Junnarkar
• Kieren McCarthy
• Ruud Elmendorp
• Neil Mcintosh

All doing very different things for very different reasons. I enjoy reading all of them, maybe you will too. They're in my RSS feed.

Post feature linkfest:

• Have a listen to Brett Martin's 22 minute piece on This American Life, episode 307 - In the shadow of the city - about a group of drunken ex-Eastern Bloc folk getting marooned off the coast of Manhattan. Brilliant. Nice work Brett. Very nice.
• New York Magazine sifts through the numbers behind the blogs in an article called Blogs to Riches. Long article. Very interesting.
• Pete Well's great pro-blog column in Food & Wine Magazine has sparked off all sortsa moronic tittle tattle in foodblogland, most noticeably at Food Blog S'Cool - although I see the moderator has now hidden all 100 or so moronic comments. BTW - I have a pdf of all the hidden comments. Drop me a line if you want to see them in all their spite... - Far more intelligent debate going on at Food Musings. I've had my say there and I won't repeat it here. But if you are one of the morons, do read Pete's column again. And then read it again. Make an effort to understand it. It's really not that hard. Pete Wells = pro-blog. That's about the size of it.

Technorati Tags: journalism, blogs, marketing

Comments

[Kady]

I agree that his article isn't AS bad as some people are taking it but he did seem awfully arrogant and I really don't think it's his job to badmouth basic blogs as being boring or to take quotes out of context like that. Besides, the cheese sandwich day is a cute idea. Anyway, congrats on the great review but try to understand why some people are upset. Especially those who were quoted.

[pieman]

It's Pete's job to report and give opinion. If he had told readers of F&W all foodblogs are brilliant, the readers would (quite rightly) think he was an idiot.

Any quick scan of a representative sample of foodblogs quickly reveals there's more crap than a cowshed out there. Pete has to call it as he sees it, report the facts and entertain.

He certainly wasn't out to 'get' anyone. He backed his findings up with unattributed quotes. He was well within his rights to name them, but he didn't. The fact they've chosen to out themselves is their own affair. Although I personally would have kept schtum, or quickly edited my blog :)

Bloggers are more than happy - as was seen on food blog s'cool - to badmouth anyone and everyone. But, if you put something out there in the public domain under your name you must expect criticism.

The fawning backslapping of some foodbloggers is beyond trite. Maybe Pete's column is a wake up call for shitty bloggers to get their collective shit together and blog better. I have no idea why people are getting so freaked out by his column. Do people read and not think and not reflect? It's not the way i read, but it's one of few explanations I can find for this. And then there was the whole cheese sandwich sheeplike reaction that was just bizarre, hilarious and sad.

Enough.

[sam]

This issue was already addressed several days ago on Food Blog S'cool and I had hoped it would come to an end when I apologized publicly and explained that people had silly reactions in the heat of a moment which for some were regrettable. Like you I appealed for calm and suggested people go back and really reread the article. I don't think passing round the comments for any reason is really going to help anyone at this stage.

[LadyKaldi]

So what kind of moron lumps all food bloggers (or any group for that matter) into one bucket? A dull as dust moron. An aint-I-superior moron. An if-I-don't-like-it-then-it's-crap moron. A pieman moron. And I happen to find the Pete Wells article was spot on even if he gave short-shrift to research. You and your blog however are a waste of ink and eyeballs. Maybe if you went back (again and again) to his article, YOU'd begin to get it. Naw, not you. You think you're great so that's enough. Just as it's enough for every other blogger ...

[pieman]

Sam, you aplogised for reactionary comments which is great, but you can't apologise on behalf of the 50-100 or so others. Closing the comments on that thread was daft and equally reactionary meaning no-one could go back and retract their own vitriol. They may well do so on their own blogs, fine, but I for one am not gonna bother tracking them all down. However, I would have followed that food blog s'cool thread, but now I can't.

[sam]

I dunno - I have been so slated on another blog for retracting my own comments this week - that right now I can see the wood for the trees as to what is the correct measure to take in these circumstances. I had been considering quietly reopening the comments in question. I know that important people in the equation will not mind if I do so. But I think I am going to sleep on it for a good few nights longer before making a final decision.

By then maybe some things will be better left to be forgotten. We will see.

[pieman]

I suppose everyone fires off crappy comments now and then, it's not big and it's not clever. But, IMO, the S'cool thread for all it's trite childishness does more to support Pete's column than not, as does your apology. Open it, vite. And I've only had three requests for the pdf, not exactly selling like hotcakes...

[pieman]

Oh and if you're referring to:

http://www.kqed.org/weblog/food/2006/02/commonwealth-club-features-food.jsp

Yes, that was pointed out to me this morning by another blogger. TBH, I really think deleting comments, unless we're talking spam and wotnot, is a BIG BIG no-no. It doesn't serve any purpose. I mean, there's a dumb comment in this thread which I could easily delete, but what's the point?

[PetStarr]

Bizarre - I'm a journo too and just finished writing an article for this week's newspaper on the local blogging phenomenon. The revolution has started!