point taken!

@ everyone: the most interesting thing that happened from the perspectve of this comment string is how the san diego union tribune moved its “fire blog” from its crappy website blog format to blogspot, i.e. linked AWAY from their own website. That seemed to me at the time a critical admission of the superiority of indepdendent media source. I mean, the paper abandoned itself.

I’ve been writing the same stuff since long before I sold my services. If I’m standing up for something or standing in opposition to it, it’s because of my beliefs, not because I’m twisting my beliefs too sell something.

That’s a promise.

Actually, Steve, the discussion is really about the merits of doing extra work that is not included in your actual site, the problems that could create in a critical situation and the way it could mislead users….

It goes to the heart of how users would like to use your site rather than how you would like to have your site used INTERNALLY…

Given that this is such a huge story, it’s well worth talking about how confusing this might be to users and how much it might disrupt workflow (to the point of possibly not looping the assignment desk in and keeping show producers updated)

The actual merits of blogging itself are only part of this…. (Given that comments are now functionality that is included with stories, this speaks to the overall concept of blogs being somewhat redundant — especially if they are not included in your site search and are hard to navigate and ugly, very ugly, to look at)

I think everyone would welcome a discussion on this subject…

(Don’t worry, it does not speak to the concept of creating dozens of different blogs as separate URLS that can “help” your main legacy site… how could anyone be bothered with discussing the merits of that? it’s certainly so successful it is above reproach… one of the key concepts of your consulting business is safely not discussed here… don’t worry…)

2007, I mean.

do a site search on CNN.com for a specific thing you see on their politics blog.

see something? it doesnt pick up the blog in the search.

messed up to say the least.

this is a perfect case of the internal tools driving how and why an organization is doing something a certain way. and, if CNN is flawed in this way, why wouldn’t a smaller TV station or newspaper also be flawed in its thinking?

I can’t believe how much of this exists in this industry — and it is not getting any better.

we’re seeing more people who don’t care how and if things work or make real sense in this online news industry.. it is becoming more a debate about ethics and philosphy than “does it actually work” — and the people who help figure out if things work arent valued the way they once were.

lesson: if CNN does something that doesnt make any sense at all, there is real potential for others in the industry to make the same mistake. even more potential, actually…

(by the way, the Political Tracker is impossible to read.. if you printed out the page it would stretch 80 feet… and that is better than putting headlines — that are well-written and make sense — on a page and letting me select from them? right…)

While I see your point, the root of “blog” is “web log” and only one definition includes opinion. I really couldn’t say that a lot of opinion factors into “liveblogging”, which may be closer to what’s being done about the fires.

CNN’s “Political Ticker” contains a lot of posts, but that which merits such treatment does find it’s way into regular stories. And, I can definitely understand how a blog-type device could be updated more frequently, in a less formal style and because the posts would be numerous, the subjects wouldn’t necessrily have to relate to a wide audience. If I may return back to my CNN example: If every post on the “Political Ticker” were to result in a full-fledged, self-contained story, then the “Politics” secition of CNN[dot]com would be harder to navigate.

The same could be said for fluid content on a breaking news story and though RSS feeds might exist for the larger news source, it seems to me that a less formal, bloglike-format could be easier to distribute/update.

you don’t ALLOW, you encourage.

you don’t SOLICIT, you request.

you don’t PUSH, you invite.

this may seem simple symantics, but it really gets to the root of the problem… and there is a problem. when “you” as an industry talk down to the “peoples”

all the best!

still on the island of molokai… an island locked in the ’50’s.

We solicit commentary from the community in our blogs, we chat with the community in our chatroom which our 5 p.m. news anchors host during the newscast, we solicit commentary from the community in our 6 p.m. Sound Off! segment where we push people to the website to answer the question of the day and then read their comments live on the air, we aggregate news headlines from other media outlets in our market on our website and aggregate blog feeds from across the Pacific Northwest and we even held a political debate recently with the local daily newspaper and a segment of the debate was composed of people submitting questions to our website as the debate was underway.

If you have any other suggestions on what we can do to strike up a non-top-down conversation with the community I’m all ears.

Gotta run … I have a blog to update.

again, I am not opposed to blogging WHEN IT MAKES SENSE

but, news organizations that have a website do a lot of things to seem “cool” and say “yes, we did it” (In a Ted Knight voice…)

Cat person… your blog does not duplicate any of your other work — and there is no user confusion. It’s great.

good job in this case… but, you’re not really who I was aiming my comments at.. you dont have a traditional news site to start with (that I know of)

i am blogging this event because people are desperate for information about the areas that aren’t being covered as much by the media. i actually don’t have a fire story, nor am i writing about fire stories. mostly, i’m updating new communities that are being evacuated because the mainstream media aren’t really conveying that information promptly enough. Hello? Is this not obvious to you?

my wives parents have a home in escondido, one of the under reported communities, and that was basically the impetus on monday morning when they showed up on our doorstep with their luggage at 5 AM monday morning.

hope that is satisfactory in terms of an explanation for you.

Look, I am all for blogs.. I am on one now.. this is a great use of a blog.

But, creating yet another confusing place for users to go, creating yet one more product and scattering the content further around on your site during a critical news cycle just doesn’t make sense — especially if you have comments with stories….

Even the blog itself on the latimes.com site is impossible to read… it is not organized and is one long story after another copy and pasted in… no graphics, no photos… yuck.

as a user, WHY would I look at it? it’s HIDEOUS

I think we have enough communication problems without letting reporters run around in a critical situation updating a blog with great prose and then HOPING they will tell everyone after (or gasp — before) they do it..

One, good solid article for the USERS with all addional info appended to that (sidebars, links, photos, video) makes the most sense… but what do I know…

Blogs are the emporers new clothes…

who edits your comments from the community?

do you even allow community input?

it ain’t much of a conversation if it’s all top down.