Public Blogging: Let's Do Away With the Walled Gardens

Submitted by kpaul.mallasch on Sun, 01/15/2006 - 12:00am.

Steve Outing at E-Media TidBits: Public Blogging: Let's Do Away With the Walled Gardens - When I saw this, I thought about Amy Gahran's recent comment about the Berlin Wall. Outing's talking about something a little different (although related) - breaking down the 'wall' seperating newspaper (old media) content and other content available online.

Personally, it's frustrating (although a bit encouraging) that the local newspaper The Star Press, won't mention with even graf my little community website startup Muncie Free Press. Now, a lot of people (including a really close friend) tell me that it's to be expected - that The Star Press (i.e. Gannett) is a business and running a story about me would be bad for them (which is, truth be told, a little encouraging - they see me as a threat ;)

The thing is, though - that's a business decision. Journalism decisions should trump business decisions. (We're not slinging pizzas, as I always say...)

I think Outing's observations go along with this. I already do it at Muncie Free Press, to an extent, but I need to expand my efforts. (On a semi-related sidenote, my Unofficial The Star Press Forum Watch has become a little popular...)

Outing wrote:

For a news organization to have a truly effective public blogging service, I think it's important to not only offer to host new blogs (as the Statesman website does), but to welcome existing bloggers in as well. That means figuring out how to incorporate Blogger/LiveJournal/MSN Spaces/et al blogs into the mix.

That can be as simple as using RSS to feature new posts from external blogs by community members. A Public Blogs page would be improved, I think, by having a larger mix of community bloggers -- some blogging using the news organization's blogging technology, others using external services. The walled-garden public-blogging approach doesn't make much sense in a world where third-party blogging services are so widely used by members of your community.

Yes, this is a bit of a leap for traditional news organizations, for it means there's less control over the content of blogs hosted by other services. But is it really? If you don't like the content of a community member's external blog, simply don't feature it.

Yes, but it's a leap that needs to be taken. Isn't 2006 Year of the Leap in someone's calendar?