Blog, Blog, Blog

Blogging stuff keeps piling up in my life. Here's two posts in one, first on ADN blogs and then on Quarterlife and Marshall Herskovitz.

Anchorage Daily News (ADN) wants bloggers
At the Alaska Apple Users Group meeting last night, Kathleen McCoy from the Anchorage Daily News announced the paper was soliciting local bloggers who cover a specialized topic - community council news, local horse news, etc. They already have 13 blogs that I counted here tonight from gardening and barhopping to hockey. I got to talk to her a little during the break. Seems as the print version - and the employee base - shrinks, the ADN is trying to fill the void by using the free labor of local bloggers. On the one hand, that's good in a number of ways. It means

• ordinary people are writing about what they're passionate about
• we'll get coverage with different perspectives
• there won't be anyone to force a certain look or perspective
• there will be more room for comments - and maybe individual bloggers can do a better job of monitoring the nastiness of some of the current ADN blogs
• featured blogs will get more attention than they might otherwise
  

But on the negative side it means:

• the inconsistent quality we see online in general
• corporate exploitation of community public citizens - they aren't likely to share any ad revenue and they are cutting staff and replacing it with unpaid bloggers
• hit and miss coverage as unpaid bloggers have to earn a living and miss their posts, decide they don't need to subsidize the ADN with their blogs, and otherwise skip posts and/or drop out

I think the ADN has no choice but to figure out ways to create an electronic presence. Kathleen has been around the ADN many years and I think she's trying to make this work. So far their stance on monitoring the nastiness of some of the regular blog posters seems short sighted to me. I can't find the posts I was looking for, but here is a little after Andrew Halcro quit his ADN blog.I'll hold judgment, though I'm on the wrong side of neutral in my expectations at this point.


Quarterlife

One of the best television programs I ever saw was "My So-Called Life." One of the producers, Marshall Herskovitz, was on Fresh Air this morning, talking about the television industry (the effects of corporate consolitdation and the end of the ban on networks owning the programing) and his new effort - an internet tv program called Quarterlife that has been bought by NBC. Quarterlife has been on the periphery of my consciousness, but the interview brought it front and center. I watched the first two shows today. (You can watch it online at Quarterlife.com- there are 11 episodes so far, all available.)

The show is about a young woman who... you guessed it, has a blog named....did you figure it out yet? Quarterlife. It is very real, very unlike most television. And no commercials. And you won't have any late fees.

I suspect blogs are a transitional genre, and maybe corporate World will end up buying up or otherwise coopting the best - or at least most profitable - but something is happening here. Stay tuned.

[More recent posts at ADN Blogging Policy - 1 and ADN Blogging Policy - 2.]