Blogging and the media

22Apr08

In mid-2007, around the time Age of Conversation was launched, I sent some press releases to local media announcing the fact that a fellow Novocastrian had been published  as part of this unique world-wide effort.

A few days later I ran into one of the journalists who had received the press release and asked him whether he would be running the story. "Love to," he said "but management would hang me." He explained that his publication didn’t recognise bloggers, saw them as the enemy and would not be giving any column space to stories about them. It was an interesting reaction and telling of the paranoia in the traditional media about the emerging social media culture.

Less than six months later the same publication relaunched its website
and actually featured blogs. Well sort of. Mainly their blog is a
re-hash of one columnists daily printed effort. Nonetheless, its a
start, even if I don’t think they have quite latched onto blogging yet.

However one local media has. One of my work colleagues, Gordon
Whitehead, has been writing recently on his blog about the need to
create a new branding for our home town of Newcastle. Next thing he
knows radio station ABC1233 has picked up on his story and have
interviewed him on their breakfast program. Seems that they have been
monitoring local bloggers and looking for interesting stories and
perspectives.

In fact, if you check out the ABC1233 website you will see that they
have really embraced new media. Streaming radio, videos, chat, audience
contribution and more. Well done ABC.

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