Session 2: The Power of Participatory Journalism

Warren Kinsella

• Blogs are “punk rock” media: angry, do-it-yourself
• “Corporate blog” is an oxymoron
• Wag in audience during technical difficulties: “This may be the
  first time in history that Warren Kinsella has been silenced by
  technology.”
• Daily blog campaign:
• What is the big hairy deal about blogs?
• Who is my target?
• What is my message?
• Why should anyone care?
• What’s the big deal with blogs?
• They’re free
• Proudly biased
• Really easy to access
• Hegelian dialectic on speed
• They’re populist
• Google power
• Specialists are welcome
• Interactions are welcome
• Pithy as heck!
• Rather faddish at the moment, aren’t they?
• Are they the digital pet rock?
• Tips on ensuring blogs last past Christmas
• Tell a story. Facts tell, stories sell.
• Be brief: your readers demand it
• Leave no charge unanswered
• Take it seriously: hit back or lose!
• Who is my target audience?
• Nobody does it for themselves: otherwise they’d just write into a locked diary
• Don’t try to be all things to all people
• Your target audience isn’t the world, but the people you want to get onside
• The Pyramid of power:
• Top: Big bananas — presidents, prime ministers, etc
• Next: Commentariat — senior staff, big-shot reporter
• Third: Chattering classes — people who stay informed and involved
• Bottom: The rest of us — little power and interest, but they
  vote governments in and out! “They are what blogs are for and about”
• “You own personal computers, which means you are suspicious of the government, like me”
• Don’t ignore layer 4: they’re the ones everyone is afraid of
• The soccer mom vote in 1992 US elections / Canadian equivalent is “new Canadians” — watch out when they get angry!
• More influential than big bananas, than bureaucrats, lobbyists and politicos put together
• They are us — reach out and hold onto them
• You (bloggers) are uniquely qualified to do that
• Warren’s corporate media tips:
• mainstream media will not be able to absorb blog culture
• Mainstream media wired differently than us; different DNA
• Failure, misery, disaster make their bells go off
• Bloggers answer only to themselves
• Bloggers have the last word
• The
  media have a different focus. Consider Roger Ailes orchestra pit story:
  “If you have two guys on stage,” he said, “and one of the guys says ‘I
  finally have a solution to the Middle East problem,’ and the other guy
  falls into the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the
  evening news?”
• Why should anybody care?
• Most of the time, people don’t — not because they’re dumb, but because they’re busy.
• Make readers care: make it interesting, you’ll get read
• Be unique — deliver a message the opposition can’t
• Hebrew National story: competing against Oscar Mayer with “We
  answer to a higher authority” — something that Oscar Meyer couldn’t say
• Be repetitive: simplicity, repetition, volume
• Don’t let them change the channel on you!

Jay Rosen

• Will cover how his blog, PressThink, decided to cover the convention
• Wanted to try out blogging the DNC because it hadn’t been done before
• PressThink tries to operate within a “newsy” way within its own domain
• Story about who got credentialled
• Instead of simplicity, repetition and volume, it’s complexity, depth and nuance (the opposite of Warren’s approach, BTW)
• Jay’s approach: wants to limit the readership — it’s not for everybody, but it’s for a specific type of reader
• “The very last thing I would assume about my audience is that they need something drilled into their heads.”
• Interesting observation: media says that conventions are less and less relevant, yet they keep sending more people to cover it
• Story about regimes of political convention coverage: see this entry in PressThink.
• Another kind of coverage: inspiration from the past — Article on how Norman Mailer covered the 1960 convention for Esquire
• “People have subscriptions to newspapers, people have relationships to the blogs they follow.”
• Newsday’s reporting online had no links “because that’s the way they think”
• Including links to the material you’re drawing from “is what any
  responsible journalist should do” — that’s an advantage that weblogs
  have
• “The way you blog an event like this [the DNC] is that you participate in it.”
• Story about Obama: Obama said he had a blog and met with the bloggers. He asked for tips. Rosen’s reply: “Write it yourself!“
• Thought it was amazing that the DNC had a CEO — asked to interview him.
• Convention: communication vehicle for party message. People get
  news from different ways, hence they had different groups: bloggers,
  TV, talk radio, etc.
• Interview with Thomas Edsall: Bloggers are breaking up the groupthink
• “The most serious journalists are serious about blogging.”

Q&A

• Chris Waddell: Does not believe in Kinsella’s “pyramid of
  power” — 50% of America is disenfranchised. How do we re-enfranchise
  them, via blogging?
• Kinsella: Blogging — not sure the world changed with bloggers at the DNC, but I’m sure they changed
• Rosen: Important to ask the questions about employees doing
  weblogs. What are the consequences of individual authorship? Suggests
  studying the most popular weblogs: what makes them good or effective?
  “Start local” — make it real to people in your area.
• Rosen: The very first weblog that a mainstream journalist that becomes a success will point the way for the others
• Rosen: There is a “phony competition between mainstream
  journalism and weblogs”. Suggests to journalists to learn from
  webloggers — “Every skill that a journalist has is tapped by the
  weblog”
• Kinsella: The “mainstreaming” of blogging may “denude” blogs of their essence, which is to say “up yours!”