Traditional media such as newspapers and radios are casting an increasingly covetous eye over the growing number of internet blogs, hoping to cash in on a slice of the action.
With daily newspaper circulation in decline, the highly critical and at-times irreverent world of the personal online journal with its potential to attract millions of readers is looking more and more attractive.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch even warned the American Society of Newspaper Editors last month that the owners of traditional media cannot afford to be complacent.
Young people ”want their news on demand, when it works for them. They want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it. They want to question, to probe, to offer a different angle,” Murdoch said.
”Where four out of every five Americans in 1964 read a paper every day, today, only half do. Among just younger readers, the numbers are even worse.
”So unless we awaken to these changes, and adapt quickly, we will as an industry, be relegated to the status of also-rans, or worse, many of us will disappear altogether.”
According to the US web consultants Perseus, blogs are increasing at an incredible rate. In 1999, just 23 blogs were thought to exist.
Now there are more than 31-million, and the figure is set to reach 53-million by the end of the year.
That is a huge global community of people, all with something to say, for better or worse, on every topic under the sun.
In the United States, bloggers have even turned into media watchdogs when CNN’s Eason Jordan resigned after an army of bloggers exposed shortcomings in his coverage, ignored by the more traditional media.
The bloggers were also instrumental in exposing problems in a story last September on the National Guard record of US President George W Bush by CBS’s Dan Rather — who retired from the evening news in March of this year.
In South Korea, 30 000 people contribute to the country’s new, sole online daily OhmyNews.
”Blogs allow readers to retake control of the way in which they read information. They don’t want to read information in a linear fashion, and they don’t need to be told what they should read,” Loic Le Meur, vice president of California-based web editor Six Apart, told AFP.
”Blogs are a revolution, the revenge of the amateurs.” Already some newspapers have moved towards trying to incorporate the bloggers’ world within the pages of their own papers.
The Guardian newspaper in Britain turned a young Iraqi into an overnight success when it picked up his blog filed during the height of the 2003 war in Iraq.
Salam Pax’s vision of the horrors of daily life was soon scoring 20 000 hits a day, and The Guardian eventually recruited him as a journalist.
In face of huge news events such as the war in Iraq, the traditional media ”can’t turn a blind eye to what is going on on the blogs,” said sociologist Jean-Marie Charron.
As well as recruiting would-be reporters, media outlets are also giving free rein to their journalists to launch their own blogs.
”While some journalists have set up their own blog, others are publishing whole online magazines,” said Six Apart, which organised a meeting of 300 bloggers from 22 countries in Paris last week.
The initiative in France was started by the left-wing daily Liberation, and the number of blogs is multiplying, the California group added.
Launched in December 2002, ”skyblog” from Skyrock radio targets the 12-to 24-year-olds, and now counts some 1,9-million blogs, with 5 000 to 10 000 new ones being created daily.
”It gives the new generation a new means of expression, of freedom, of exchange of ideas,” said Skyblog boss Pierre Bellanger. Last year Skyrock’s electronic platform counted for some 20% of the radio’s $32,35-million turnover.
According to Le Meur at Six Apart, blogs can be a rich source of revenue in several ways, from advertising to sponsorship.
”Several brand names are beginning to seek out those bloggers who are influential in their fields, to pay them and get them to test products.
”Media see in this an opportunity for this to evolve from a brand that diffuses information, to a brand that gives its readers their say.”
Le Monde Interactif (Le Monde Interactive), the top French information site with more than 14-million hits a month, launched its blog network in 2004.
It now has about 2 200 bloggers. Setting up a blog is reserved for subscribers only — currently some 60 000 — but they can be read by all.
”It’s a fantastic format for journalistic expression which allows an almost instantaneous dialogue with the reader” for a major event, said director Yann Chapellon.
Thousands of people turned to their blogs during the death last month of Pope John Paul II to voice their thoughts, with many using the internet to share their faith.
For the first time three correspondents for Pelerin, a French Catholic magazine with a circulation of 300 000, wrote about the funeral rites in blogs.
For deputy editor-in-chief, Benoit de Sagazan, their blogs had a double advantage. ”They allowed up-to-the-minute reports, and also allowed the correspondents to tell lots of intimate details which would have been impossible to publish on paper due to the lack of space.
”The blog allows a more direct and spontaneous tone.” — Sapa-AFP