4 Comments Add your own

• 1. True Journalism  |  January 29th, 2008 at 5:06 pm

  Anna, no offense, but I found Howard Owens’ column pathetically weak and his comments irritatingly dismissive. Blogging as the salvation of journalism? This guy is living in a bizarro world - perhaps he’s been absorbed into his Second Life reality and can’t get out?

  What makes newspapers like yours important and unique - always has, and always will - is your ability to make sense of the world. We readers don’t want raw data. We don’t want three-line rants and a link to a goofy picture. We want meaning. We want answers to the simplest of questions: Why?

  Can a well-crafted blog provide that? You bet. At times. But the reality is the blogosphere is a loud, crowded and obnoxious place. Technorati estimates that there are 175,000 new blogs created every day. So against that tide, journalists — trained in objectivity — are supposed to stand up and go “me, too” and just ‘figure it out’? You call that a business model?

  Look, before I get tagged as a dinosaur - hear this. I am NOT suggesting newspapers ignore the digital delivery of news. Clearly, there is no choice but to embrace the future.

  What I am saying is the industry needs true innovation. It needs to create a unique online presence that captures the best of what the technology has to offer (interactivity, immediacy, customization) while continuing to embrace the noble ideals of your profession, as embodied in the First Amendment. The two have to go hand in hand; otherwise, newspapers will have no identity beyond those 175,000 new daily blogs. And that would be truly “obfuscating.”

• 2. Rick the Ram  |  January 29th, 2008 at 6:56 pm

  I agree with True!

• 3. Anna Voelker  |  January 30th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

  I know Howard, and he’s not saying that blogging is the savior to journalism. He’s saying that blogging helps journalists understand better the medium we call the Web. Right now, our culture is to write stories for the newspaper, and then when we think about it, post that story to the Web. Instead, we (the media) need to think about the Web well before we start writing a story. With blogging, reporters (for starters) are putting information on the Web as they know it instead of hoarding it all for the next day’s newspaper.

• 4. Wenalway  |  July 16th, 2008 at 10:15 am

  http://www.wenalway.com/forum/index.php?topic=376.msg4854#new

  Howard Owens is clearly clueless. He doesn’t even realize his own company is “expanding” its way into bankruptcy.

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