February 14, 2005

The Bloggy Future of Journalism

Earlier today I linked to a story in the Nashville City Paper about the emergence of NashvilleZine.com, a collaborative blog about the local rock scene. If you read the whole story, you realize that NashvilleZine.com is emerging as a competitor to two local print pubs, the Nashville Scene and The Rage, and its doing so with volunteer contributors and very low overhead.

And if you think about that for long you realize why blogs are such a threat to traditional journalism. The Nashville Scene is not a huge media operation, but it is not small either, with a few dozen people on the payroll and overhead ranging from office space lease to printing costs to distribution costs. The Rage, meanwhile, is produced by the local Gannett daily, again with a sizeable staff and plenty of overhead.

NashvilleZine.com could probably run for the rest of recorded time on what Gannett or the Scene spend in a month. And therein lies the seed of the blog revolution that may well turn journalism as we know it on its head.

A few months ago I had a conversation with a friend in the media business about a possible business plan for HobbsOnline. (Memo to my boss - it was idle chatter!) We were discussing how a single blogger, armed with a notebook PC, wireless Internet access, a digital camera and a digital video camera, could provide much more thorough and complete coverage of the Tennessee state legislature and state government than any newspaper does. Nashville's daily papers, The Tennessean and the City Paper both cover the legislature, but neither provides complete coverage because neither can. They are limited by space, by deadlines, by editors and by cost. A statehouse reporter can file one, maybe two, stories per day - and that forces them to focus on just one or two issues. They don't cover every piece of legislation. They don't even cover every piece of important legislation. They cherry-pick.

A solo blogger journalist, on the other hand, could report live, via a blog, from the legislature from morning until night, and file a far wider range of stories and briefs. On the hot issues, a quick hallway interview of a key senator could be video recorded, edited on the PC and uploaded in less time than it would take the local TV crew to get back to the station.

As my friend and I were discussing it, we realized the only obstacle is not technology but money. But if there were, say, just 2,500 people in Tennessee who wanted better news coverage of the legislature enough to pay $10 a month for it, such a news operation would be possible. There'd even be enough revenue for the solo blogging journalist to hire a research assistant, and to construct the website so that subscribers could even get email or IM alerts when there is new news on specific legislation or topics of interest to them.

The economics of Big Media operations may have made sense at one time. I'm not so sure they will for much longer, if they even still do now.

I am sure, however, that the future of blogs and journalism will be a hot topic at the BlogNashville conference May 5-7 .