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I was just talking to Ric Cantrell about the Bloggerpresser that is taking place this afternoon at 4:00 in the senate building (it’s an open invitation – see his post for details on attending live or virtually). I want to share a couple of interesting thoughts from our conversation.
Ric mentioned as he has tried to organize this event that bloggers are not like the traditional press corps. (Not that he expected they would be.) With a standard press conference he can simply email the reporters who cover politics at the various news organizations and know that the conference will be covered. With bloggers there is no definitive list of who is interested or available. He can send an email to those whose emails addresses he has, but that does not guarantee that everyone who would like to come has been informed. There is no central place where anyone can be assured that all the appropriate bloggers will get the information.
That makes me wonder – what would be the best way to deal with this issue? Is it something where political bloggers who wish to cover state legislative issues should be expected to follow senatesite.com to get announcements when they do blogger oriented events? Would it be better to have a Utah Bloggers Pseudo Press Corps email list that interested bloggers could subscribe to for such announcements? (I made that name up as I typed it, don’t hold me to that name if you favor the email list idea.)
Another question I have is – who is interested in the idea of press credentials for bloggers? Who is interested in a non-credentialed Blogger Press Corps? Please let me know if you have interest in this area so that we can expand the group of people who are discussing the possibilities.
5 replies on “A Blogger Press Corps – of Sorts”
This is something I am interested in. However, most of the good bloggers I follow seem to be the type that read a lot of other blogs; therefore would get info about press conferences anyways. It appears most of the top Utah Political Blogs that cover legislative news knew about the press conference too. I found out via twitter, jumped to the senate site, book marked it and called in when it was time.
Also creating a blogger press corps also brings blogging to a new level of reporting and not just political rants. Are we prepared for this? Most of us I think are but some maybe not so ready.
I could be way off base, who knows. But the idea that Bloggers are really reports seems to becoming up a lot lately. There is a difference of opinion regarding this topic; especially since we inject so much of our own opinions in our blogging. Personally if you are going to blog about the news and politics youare are now becoming a reporter. Not a reporter in the traditional sense, but a quasi-Blogporter of sorts. Ok, I am ranting now and will move on. Thanks for the post.
I enjoyed the bloggerpress briefing and I am looking forward to more.
I was watching through the stream today, and as I commented on The Senate Site, I’d have enjoyed it more if there had been a chat or an IM option for me to interact more.
I think it’s great they are doing this, and I think something like a Google Group email list combined with announcements via The Senate Site, and word of mouth from bloggers would be enough to get the word out, and build up a regular base of attendees.
The reason I was asking about some established way to contact bloggers for these events had a lot to do with Ric being apprehensive that there would be low turnout. That was largely due to the fact that this was a first and he could not know what to expect. Considering the participation we had I don’t think it’s much of an issue. If we do something in that regard it would be a matter of formality more than necessity (which might run counter to the whole culture of blogging).
BenJoe raises some good points. I think it is important to emphasize that anything we did to make a blogger press corps would be based on self-selection and would not reach to all bloggers. The reason the idea comes up is that some bloggers really do comparable work to some reporters and it seems that there should be a way to recognize that. If there were a blogger press corps it would be important that those who chose to participate should understand and accept some of the basic rules that traditional reporters already live by. I believe that creating a reasonable and enforceable standard for defining such a corps would be our biggest challenge to move forward on this – the self-selection after that standard was created would be simple, each blogger would decide if they wanted to meet whatever criteria were established and would then act according to their individual decision.
The biggest part of the participation problem is that most of us do this as a hobby (albeit we are passionate about it). The constraints of work, family, traffic, etc. can make it difficult to participate even when we’re interested.
I don’t know if a credential would really be in order. We’re basically all opinion columnists of our own publications, albeit with a higher circulation than if we were passing out photocopies of our manifesto on a busy street corner. I could see the utility of access, but events like this lend legitimacy. A better way to get access is to register as a lobbyist.
I think that the fact that this is a hobby rather than a profession for us is why Ric could not know what to plan on when he organized this. I think that whether credentials are appropriate is a question that we have to answer as we explore the idea. On the other hand, I think that characterizing all of us as opinion columnists is not accurate. Certainly opinion accounts for a huge percentage of blog posting, but some bloggers are seeking to dig up facts rather than simply promoting their own opinion – just the same as good journalists.
By the way, does anyone know the difference between press access and lobbyist access?