JC / Railbird

My instincts (newspaper reporter instincts included in the internal system) tell me we will rue the day these changes began to unfold. I worry about a Tower of Babel, but I also like some of the things I see. I’m going to buy this book right now.

Posted by John S. on August 11, 2008 @ 1:57 pm

Do! Clay Shirky is a bit of an evangelist for new media and Web 2.0, but he’s also an engaging writer and comes at the subject constructively:
“Here Comes Everybody” (Amazon link)
I sometimes feel now that we have a Tower of Babel — so many opinions out there, so very many — and feel a shiver every time a site like Bleacher Report or Open Salon launches — what does it mean for those who work professionally as writers and editors that publishers have began tapping into an apparently limitless pool of people willing to write for free and “edit” by commenting or voting? But there are many things I enjoy and like about the new scene, and I believe there will always be value in original reportage and credible analysis. A business model or two that supports both online, as in print for so long, is sure to emerge. Of course one possible outcome then is that media turns into a bifurcated, niche-driven market, and we lose the broad middle long represented by most newspapers …

Posted by Jessica on August 11, 2008 @ 2:55 pm

Count me among Bit of Whimsy’s fans. She never seemed quite the same this year; nevertheless, I’m sad to hear this news.
(P.S. I hate when DRF “hides” these nuggets in other stories.)

Posted by Valerie on August 11, 2008 @ 3:10 pm

The shiver that you feel for the launch of a Bleacher Report or Open Salon is my shrug. These sites are Metafilter without the community and the now almost decade long tweaks and tinkering that have made Metafilter a site i still visit daily and contribute to.
These supposedly ‘web 2.0’ sites will crumble as quickly as they have arrived. It’s no surprise that the front page of Bleacher Report is basically the same as the front page of the sports section in any newspaper in the country without the decent writing but with the added features of moderation and commenting (all made even more useless without the base of a strong community).
I think Mark Cuban is on to something when he says:
“I’m sure the NY Times, like all major media outlets hopes that because it is branded a NY Times blog, that readers will have the perception and expectation that it will be of a higher quality than say, Blogmaverick.com.”
“That when readers actually read the blog, they will see that its of a higher quality than say, Blogmaverick.com. It may well be that some do. The marketing reality however is that there is a significant risk that they will not. That rather than assigning the brand equity of the NY Times to the blogs hosted, they will take the alternative path of assigning their perception of what a blog is to the NY Times, there by having a negative impact on the brand equity of the NY Times. That’s an enormous risk for any mainstream brand to take.”
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This is basically the number 1 reason why I believe print is failing. They’re chasing the garbage like Bleacher Report and devaluing their brand and status in the process.

Posted by o_crunk on August 11, 2008 @ 5:06 pm

Except, good commentator o-crunk, that “The Rail” — the Triple Crown blog hosted by The New York Times — was of an exceptional quality, and in no way diminished the value of the brand. I’m going to assume, without knowing, that commentary in response to posts was edited in much the same way letters to the editor are chosen, filtered. When you read a dumb newspaper, you often find dumb letters to the editor. When you read The New York Times, more often than not, you find well-reasoned letters to the editor. Same with the New Yorker magazine: It runs the cream of the letters, much as it runs the cream of the writers. This is just one of the many benefits of having a team of seasoned editors meeting on a daily basis to make decisions about what will be published. Many blogs welcome the entirety of the flotsam and jetsam floating around cyberspace. I agree with you that if you fish on the bottom, you are at the bottom yourself, but I believe time-honored standards are being applied. Whether that translates into financial success, clearly, remains a dicey prospect, but for the sake of the goal of literacy, accuracy and ideals, I suggest we hope it does.

Posted by John S. on August 12, 2008 @ 2:11 pm

Yeah but is ‘The Rail’ a blog? Something that just started and stopped with the Triple Crown?
I can not deny the quality of ‘The Rail’ – seemed a win-win for everybody involved (and probably doubly so for the ‘year round bloggers’) and introduced many who might otherwise not have known that there is a discussion online about horse racing.
To what end then, particularly for the NYT’s bottom line, I’m not so sure – especially when a community is created then abandoned.
But here’s the meat of what I’m trying to get at. We can agree that ‘The Rail’ was of a high quality. Would you put some of the other horse racing blogs sometimes ‘Deadspin’-ish take on issues and put it in the same league as ‘The Rail’?
I’d personally say NO. But those other blogs are more ‘blog’ to me than ‘The Rail’ (and equally just as thought provoking, funny, etc) even if they had the same contributors. Readers know the difference between what’s filtered and what’s not – so I think that even naming ‘something’ like ‘The Rail’ a blog does a poor service to NYT and raises the level of normal blogs to ‘The Rail’s’ level that do it year round.
I think the mainstream media sometimes has a very strange view of what a blog is. When ESPN recently started having ‘bloggers’ on sportscenter reporting from NFL mini-camps, I literally balled over in laughter.
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Boy, I just re-read this and I’m tempted to just delete and forget. It comes off as too media vs blogs and it’s really not what I’m trying to get at…but what the heck…I’ll post it.

Posted by o_crunk on August 12, 2008 @ 7:18 pm

While comments on The Rail were moderated, many of them were more ill-informed and poorly written than most of what appears on racing blogs. Because the audience was bigger? Dunno. It often seemed to me that the quality of the posts/articles themselves was diminished by the commentary they inspired.
Go back and look at the Derby day postings.
As for The Rail being “win/win” for everyone, Railbird and I talk about this nearly daily…I’ve heard that The Rail got more daily traffic than any other NY Times blog, and it certainly raised the profile of Brooklyn Backstretch, which I appreciated. But as Jessica so regularly points out, the NY Times sold on advertising based on the content of The Rail without, as far as I know, paying its contributors. If you consider exposure equal to payment (and I did), then it’s a fair deal. But if you don’t…what an excellent business model!

Posted by Teresa on August 12, 2008 @ 10:29 pm

Bloggers may be out there writing for free, God bless ’em, but after twenty five years in the business, I sure don’t!

Posted by John S. on August 12, 2008 @ 11:00 pm