Lessons From Blogging
There is a website entitled cyberjournalists.net. Having read an article from the New York Times on up and coming blogs, I found this suggestion particularly interesting. A website that addresses the issues / feud between the world of blogging and the world of journalism. The site discuses inner turmoil of newsrooms and how each organization is handling the use of new media.
One of the more fascinating new phenomenons is the sharing of embed video. Most news organizations are not sharing video due to various copyright and other legal issues. MSNBC however has broken the mold. Click on this site to watch President and Publisher Charlie Tillinghast discuss why they started allowing any user copy their embed code and use their videos.
In the video Tillinghast describes what used to be the way of the average youtube / blog user. A user would TiVo or DVR a program such as a nightly news broadcast and use the finished product and post it on youtube in any fashion they wanted.
By allowing users to copy embed code MSNBC is once again controlling the message. TIllinghast discusses how often times the way a user records video depends on the quality of it, as well as the quality of the audio and video once it is posted to the web. Using trained professionals who put the content together in the first place distribute the video via the Internet eliminates the middle man. It also puts the power back in the hands of the news organization.
The more and more I have studied the concept of blogging it appears that bloggers are media’s watchdog. Sites like cyberjournalists.net, mediabistro, and wonkette all exist to keep the media in check. So stealing back the embed process might seem like a blessing for blogers, but perhaps in the end it is completely defeating the purpose. The message.
