An appeal to media – be curious about the new voices

Like Magnus already noted, Ola Larsmo at Dagens Nyheter today writes about blogs and he wants media to stop arguing about journalist blogs and instead open up to new voices. Well put. I remember saying something along the same lines about a week ago.

“Vad är det egentligen vi bråkar om? Redan etablerade skribenters rätt att yttra sig i ännu ett medium? Men varsågod. Det är inte så problemet ser ut, utan den fråga man bör ställa sig varför medierna inte är mer öppna åt andra hållet – det spännande med den nya tekniken var ju att det skulle släppa fram nya röster, de där som de etablerade mediernas inskränkthet höll borta? Är det inte det pinsamma tomrummet vi bör diskutera, och kanske rent av göra något åt – i stället för att bli indignerade för att någon ifrågasätter behovet av fler ögonblicksbilder ur innerstadsmedelklassmediefolkets leverne? Exemplet Salam Pax är lysande i sin förebildlighet – och vad som fordras nu är en lyhördhet från redaktionerna, en nyfikenhet på de nya rösterna.”

“I can’t name one single non-journalist with a blog”

Belinda Olsson, columnist at Aftonbladet, writes today about blogs and delivers the quote of the day:

“Jag läser bloggar då och då, det är inte det. Jag förstår grejen med att om man älskar en skribent är det kul att få lite extra dvd-aktigt material. Jag skulle själv gärna läsa lite blogg (dagbok) av Carolina Gynning. Men revolution? Nu kan vem som helst bli journalist? Jag kan inte rabbla upp en enda icke-journalist som har en blogg.”

“Revolution? Now anyone can become a journalist? I can’t name one single non-journalist with a blog.” How ignorant can you get? She has been given a platform to communicate to hundreds of thousands of readers and just because she can’t name a blogger that isn’t a journalist, blogs don’t matter. I can’t name a single French philosopher, but that doesn’t mean no-one reads them. But then again, who cares what I think? I’m just a non-journalist blogger.

11 layers of citizen journalism

Here is another must-read from Poynter Online. Steve Outing outlines 11 phases of citizen or participatory journalism. How many Swedish media have come past step one?

1. The first step: Opening up to public comment
2. Second step: The citizen add-on reporter
3. Now we’re getting serious: Open-source reporting
4. The citizen bloghouse
5. Newsroom citizen ‘transparency’ blogs
6. The stand-alone citizen-journalism site: Edited version
7. The stand-alone citizen-journalism site: Unedited version
8. Add a print edition
9. The hybrid: Pro + citizen journalism
10. Integrating citizen and pro journalism under one roof
11. Wiki journalism: Where the readers are editors

“Who reads blogs? I don’t get it.”

It’s an interesting phenomenon, journalists who take their first plunge into the blogosphere, read journalist blogs, find them boring and then conclude that blogs are pointless for one reason or another. Here’s the most recent example. A journalist at Arbetarbladet heads out on a quest to solve the mystery about blogs and starts with 1) Linda Skugge at Expressen, 2) Fredrik Virtanen at Aftonbladet, 3) Helle Klein at Aftonbladet. Maybe she read some more, but the article doesn’t give it away.

I guess it is natural to turn to the familiar and check out your buddies blogs. But by picking the low-hanging fruit they miss most of the point in blogs. It should be required by any journalist who intend to write about blogs in the future to check out one of the aggregator services like nyligen.se or svensk.lemonad.org so that they manage to read at least one non-journalist blog before announcing their verdict.

The journalist continues to question who on earth reads these blogs.

“Och vem läser dem? Vem har tiden och lusten att sitta och surfa runt bland de miljarder bloggar som finns? Jag fattar inte.”

Well, to quote my blog reader survey, the average Swedish blog reader is a man, 26-30 years old, has a college or university degree and would vote for the moderate party if there was an election in Sweden today. Half of them spend more time (34 minutes or more) per day reading blogs than the average Swede spends reading newspapers (28 min), like Arbetarbladet. Maybe the question should be the opposite – who has time to read all these newspapers?

The blog survey can be found here (pdf) in Swedish. An English version is just about ready and will be up any day.

Blognapping common in Poland

Kaye Trammell has a excellent podcast about blog research that I recommend that you listen to. Some of her comments in regards to what motivates people to blog are:

– Bloggers are mostly motivated by self expression – a will to share thoughts and feelings with others.

– People who give feedback in form of comments are motivated by social interaction – a desire to interact.

– People who give feedback in the form of trackbacks are motivated by information – a will to share interesting information.

I believe this graph is associated to this research.

Dr. Trammell also mentioned a Polish blog survey that found that bloggers in Poland are more often female than male and that female bloggers are more motivated to blog by social interaction reasons than male bloggers. Polish blogs are often password protected so they are not open for everyone to read. It is also common in Poland that people steal others blogs, which means that they try to find out their login and password and then take over the blog.