Been meaning to link this little anecdote from The Constant Observer for a few days now*:
The young woman--some tall blond 20 something thing--who was bemoaning that she needed more "attention" at her blog. So I said, rather jokingly "Flame an A-lister." I don't know...I did it and it worked for me ;-) But I was absolutely stunned when she said, not jokingly, "Oh, I'm considered an A-lister, so that won't work."Two thoughts occur. The first is shallow, unworthy of me, and consists of a small amount of disappointment that a post about a tall, blonde 20-something wasn't accompanied by a photo. The second, slightly more noble response is: "My goodness, don't some of the new wave of pro- or semi-pro bloggers take themselves seriously?" I know that could easily be construed as a kettle/pot/black response from a professional journalist but hey, it takes one to know one.
Considered an A-lister? wow. I'd been on a panel at BlogHer, with a bunch of great women, and I've had a bunch of speaking engagements over the past year, and worked on a pretty significant project that's been recognized by the Knight Foundation, I wouldn't consider myself an A-lister.
I saw a little of this at BlogHer Business in New York earlier this year, and was quite taken aback by some of the questions asked by the newer bloggers there, and how much they resembled the sort of questions journalists ask when shoved in front of Movable Type and told to get on with it. For one, they tend to ignore the idea of linking to the competition (ie bloggers on the same topic as them) because they're afraid of losing traffic. That's exactly the sort of thing that the much-maligned hacks say, and which blogging experience tells us is not a problem (quite the reverse, in fact).
Be interesting to see if this trend continues or reverses over the next year...
*Fair warning: there will be a few posts of the "meaning to link for a few days" variety in the next 48 hours.
You know, that's one of those funny old things I could easily rant about far too often: media organisations are always prone to think that linking out is bad for traffic. No matter which surveys I show my employer(s), the thought that linking out INCREASES your traffic/goodwill from readers/value etc just beggars belief for most editors. Linking as an added service your provide for your readers: many media folks struggle, big time, to accept that. In many respects, the world some editors live in, compared to the world we inhabit as bloggers, is so far removed from each other. For one, I've sometimes incurred the reply "you know, we do have a blog, it's a place we have where all our journalists write for FREE"
thanks!...good thing I wasn't drinking my morning coffee when I read this...I find your observation about the similarities between new bloggers and journalists really interesting. Funny thing though--when I started blogging, it was pretty much a jump in, read a couple of books, and figure it out for yourself. No big conferences to go to to "help" bloggers make money/gain rank/schmooze better. And with the emphasis on making money is coming a whole wave of bloggers for whom linking is really link-baiting (and driving traff) rather than community-building. Hence, I still link a lot, but only to people I can tell are interested in the community/sharing aspect of the whole thing. A-list or not ;-)
But aren't we all A-listers to someone? ;)
Seriously, there is a definite harder edge that creeeps in, blogging is a strong weapon in the arsenal and people are using what they can to make money and get ahead. It's no longer a geeks toy, but is every saleswomans tool. Not sure I like that too much, I tend to stay away from those and stick with the geeks.
Kristine: To be fair, many journalists were trained five years ago in the idea of "sticky content", whereby you get people into your sites and KEEP THEM THERE AT ALL COSTS.
Some are understandably rather narked at having what they were told to do then turned on its head. But that's the issue, isn't it? They're being told to do it, rather than discovering themselves by reading and participating in blogs.
Tish & Rachel: I think you've both hit the nail on the head, in the sense that many of these newer bloggers are more interested in the triumvirate of publishing-traffic-Adsense then they are any feeling of community. So they're more interested in SEO tricks and mechanical approaches to getting better PageRank than they are the traditional method of serving your time, writing great stuff and getting links...
Will Google make it harder or easier for them to do that, I wonder?