I read a blog post by The Telegraph's Shane Richmond a couple of days ago that has been bugging me ever since. Not because I disagree with it, because on the whole I think he's right. It's just that something seemed "off" about it. Shane suggest that mainstream media blogs might have a role to play in promoting middle-ranking bloggers:
The conclusion is this: perhaps MSM blogs, often seen as the cuckoo in the nest by those who are going it alone, have a role to play here. Perhaps our position gives us the opportunity, maybe even the responsibility, to help drive more "non-crazies" into the top tier of the blogosphere.
And this bothered me for a few days. Yes, I do think it's a key role of journalist bloggers to link to the best of the community around them, and to encourage the growth of individual bloggers. But there seems to be an underlying assumption in Shane's piece that MSM bloggers have an inherent power that they can use for bloggy good. And my experience is that they don't have that power. They have to earn it like everyone else in the blogging world. A well-known name of brand is good for getting a first look, but that's all. It's the quality of what you produce that gives you power, be you MSM or amateur.
In many ways, I think Shane's following post hits the nail more accurately on the head:
This seems to be a change in direction for a blogosphere. Instead of bloggers trying to reach the elite on their own, they are now selling into bigger entities, bringing their audience and hoping to gain from being part of a larger whole.
This is a win-win equation much of the time. When we brought Flightblogger into the Flight Global stable, we gained the traffic and skills of a great blogger, and he gained the resources and brand name of a long-established publisher to back him up. And more to the point, we gained a great example of just how powerful, how journalistic and how traffic-generating great MSM-backed blogging can be.
I really hope that in the coming months we'll finally see the blogging versus journalism meme die, and we'll start to see the true fruits of the great symbiosis between a profession and a style of publishing that the meeting of the two entails.
Time to get some work done. :)
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