Fourteen Things Bloggers and Broadcasters can Learn from Each Other

BLOGGERS VS BROADCASTERS
14 Things They Can Learn from Each Other

Matt Baume
mattbaume.com

Sunday, May 2, 2010 1

Blogger vs Broadcaster


What's a blogger? What a broadcaster? It depends who you ask. So let's deﬁne our terms.

“Bloggers”
People writing for sites that “do news”


For the purposes of this presentation, when I say "blogger," I'm talking about bloggers who
"do news." *

For example, I've done reporting at SFist, The SF Appeal, NBC Bay Area, Streetsblog, Curbed,
and so on.

“Broadcaster”

Sends information out

Doesn’t engage with the audience

TV, radio, print

Traditional offline media


And instead of "old-fashioned journalist," I'm going to use the term "broadcaster." That is,
someone who's really good at sending information out, but doesn’t engage in conversation
with the audience. A broadcaster could be a TV reporter, a radio reporter, or a print reporter;
you can think of them as representing traditional offline media. I've done that type of work
myself at places like the Bay Area Reporter.

Blogger Vs Broadcaster:
Which Is Better?


So, blogger vs broadcaster. Which is better? I run a site called “Writers Getting Paid” where I
interview writers -- online and offline -- about how they work, and I've seen advantages and
disadvantages to both. And they both have a lot that they can learn from each other.

I'm going to run through a few of those lessons that I think they should be sharing.

What Do Broadcasters Have To
Learn From Bloggers?


First, what do broadcasters have to learn from bloggers?

1. Use “I.”

Be personal, subjective, and human.

Have an opinion.

Have a smart opinion.


Lesson one is the scariest: use the pronoun "I." Be personal. Be subjective. Be human. Having
an opinion earns the trust of the audience -- but only if your opinion is smart. Knee-jerk
opinions will get you torn apart -- if you take a position, you must be ready to defend
yourself from attack, because you will be attacked. A lot.

2. Win Fights.
Proves you’re trustworthy.

Go for what your audience would consider a win.


But that's a good thing! Winning a ﬁght proves that you're trustworthy. You don't have to win
in everyone's eyes -- just in the eyes of your audience. Go for what your audience would
consider a win.

Case in point: SF Weekly and Broke-Ass Stuart had a blog spat last year over whether Stuart
owns the term “broke ass.” When the dust settled, nothing was really resolved, but Stuart’s
supporters considered him the winner, and the Weekly’s supporters considered them the
winner.

3. Market Every Story.
Get pageviews

Get inbound links from big sites
Got linked on SFist
Foster relationships

Put big sites in your story


Grow your audience by marketing each story you write. You'll die without pageviews. Look at
related sites with big traffic and ask them to link to your story. *

They'll be more likely to do so if you've fostered a relationship with them, and even more so if
you mention them in your article.

Spend As Much Time Marketing
As You Spend Writing.


Spend as much time marketing as you spend writing.

4. Correct Transparently.

Explain what went wrong

Show that you fixed it


Correct immediately and transparently. *

Don't make mistakes disappear -- it undermines your credibility. Explain what went wrong
and show that you ﬁxed it.

5. Participate in Comments.

Mandatory

Fact-check

Sources

Contact best ones privately and interview


Participating in the comments is mandatory. Commenters can become sources. Pay attention
to the good ones, write to them privately, and interview them for your stories whenever you
can. If they're interested enough to comment, they may have information you can use.

6. Moderate Comments.
Get rid of anonymous

Get rid of conversation-dominators


Anonymous comments do nothing for you. Get rid of them. Get rid of low-value commenters,
too: people who want to dominate every conversation. Send them a warning privately, and if
they don't back off, ban them.

7. Link.

Mandatory

They’ll link back


Citing your sources is mandatory online. Link to other sites as much as you can. Your readers
will love you for it; and more importantly, other sites will love you for it and will link back.

8. Share.

Make it embeddable

Creative Commons

Walled garden with lots of doors


Don't stop sharing there. Make your media embeddable. Creative-commons it so people can
remix it and attribute it to you. You can have your walled garden, just make sure it has lots of
doors.

What Do Bloggers Have To
Learn From Broadcasters?


That brings me to part two: what bloggers can learn from broadcasters.

1. Own the Story.

Become known for the quality of your work.


A walled garden can be good if you have a story that’s so exclusive and interesting that you
can own it. Become known for the quality of your work.

2. Call Sources.

Get quotes

Verify


Exclusives are great. You can get them by using this thing called the telephone: call sources,
ask questions, get a quote. Verify what they're telling you.

3. Call Good Sources.

Recognizable names


Always call at least one source. They might have an even better story for you to write. Go for
the big gets -- the recognizable names. Your readers will be more interested if they know
who your source is.

4. Document Everything.


Document everything, and keep your documentation. When Mike Huckabee was quoted as
comparing the children of gay parents to puppies, he tried to claim that the reporter “grossly
distorted” his statement ... but a tape recorder was on the table in front of him, and the
reporter was quickly able to post a recording online proving otherwise.

5. Go to the Library.

History Center on the 6th floor of the SFPL

Bring a laptop and scanner


Go to the library. In particular, go to the history center -- it's on the 6th ﬂoor of the SFPL --
they've done half your research for you already. Just tell them what you're writing about and
they'll pull out folders full of past articles on that topic. Bring a laptop and a scanner because
they charge you for using their copier.

6. Be Attractive.
Make them want to look at you.

Photoshop


Be attractive. Your audience will appreciate following someone they they want to sleep with.
Get a sexy headshot, then photoshop it to look even sexier. * Because we live in a shallow
society, this holds particularly true for women and gays. I wish none of this was the case, but
it is.

Where Do We Agree?


Now that I've covered the differences between bloggers and broadcasters, I want to touch on
the areas where they overlap -- often without realizing it.

1. Always be First.

Make competition link to you.


Always be ﬁrst with the story. Be the source so everyone links to you.

2. Steal and Append.
Make it your own.


If you weren't ﬁrst with the story, just steal it and stick something extra on the end. Now it's
yours.

When I was researching an article on water, I discovered that in 1998, an Examiner reporter
named Lisa Krieger had * lifted large chunks from a Chronicle piece ten years earlier.
Journalists copy, and always have.

3. Constant Sifting.

Newspapers, Twitter, police scanners,
forums, newsletters

Ignore the noise.


Always be sifting through news sources. Newspapers, twitter, police scanners, forums,
newsletters -- sift wide, sift fast, ignore the noise, and focus on the potential stories. *

When I write for NBC, I sift about ﬁfteen hundred items every day. Of those, I’ll turn four into
articles.

4. You Are Writing a Book.

Have a bigger project.

You cannot afford to be writing fishwrap.


You are writing a book. Each article that you write is like a little grant, a fragment of research
for some bigger project. You cannot afford to be writing ﬁshwrap.

I was recently asked to write for a blog that pays $10 an article. That’s not an unheard of rate.
But think about all the work that goes into an original piece: research, interviews, writing,
gathering images, marketing once it’s posted. For $10, you simply can’t generate original
news. If you’re going to write posts for $10 or less, and lots of online journalists do, they
need to be investments in something that can make you more money down the line. If you
write them once and they disappear into the cyber-ether, then you’ve just wasted your time
for peanuts.

News Is Interesting


The way we consume news is changing, but the reason we consume news it is not. News is
interesting. People love amazing true stories, and there are a billion amazing true stories to
be told. And we can now tell more of those stories than ever before, which means journalistic
scarcity is over. But it doesn't mean that value is over, just that it's changed.

VALUE = BLOGGERS + BROADCASTERS
Old Games on New Platforms


And that new value comes from journalists -- bloggers and broadcasters -- who can play the
old games on the new platforms.

THANKS.
MattBaume.com


Thank you very much.

Fourteen Things Bloggers and Broadcasters can Learn from Each Other

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