May 11, 2005

The Scene Does BlogNashville

The Nashville Scene's cover story on the BlogNashville conference is now online, and it's a good read.

Writer Brittney Gilbert - a freelance writer and blogger who recently was hired by WKRN to run their new blog Nashville Is Talking, skips trying to capture the conference in all its complexity and diversity of content and instead uses the very self-reflxive nature of the conference - bloggers blogging about bloggers and blogging - to explore whether blogging is at a "sell high" moment, or is still early in its revolutionary evolution.

I tend to agree with documentary filmmaker Andrew Marcus, who tells Gilbert:

"Blogs are a revolution, not a fad!" he exclaims. "Blogs as we know them, the blogosphere as we know it—those terms may be fads. Those may go away. But the monopoly the mainstream media has held on national discourse and dissemination of information in this country, that is gone. It is gone forever."

I'm also quoted in the Scene's story and, much to my relief, they didn't make me sound stupid the way the Scene often did to conservatives under the previous publisher and editor.

There was a lot of talk at BlogNashville about how blogging is changing the social and political landscape, and it's here that many people think its future lies. Convention co-organizer Bill Hobbs writes the conservative, politically oriented blog HobbsOnline (www.billhobbs.com), and he's particularly attuned to the ways that news and political coverage is changing as a result of blogging. "I fully expect we'll see the emergence of blog-only media operations that do original reporting and compete favorably with newspapers and broadcast," he says. "The economics of blogging are just too good, it's almost zero-cost compared to printing and distributing a newspaper or broadcasting TV news. And blog publishing software combined with digital video cameras and wireless Internet enables almost instantaneous publishing that broadcasters and newspapers simply cannot match."

Hobbs says one of his many goals in arranging this meet-up was to "erase some of the antagonistic wall between mainstream media and bloggers."

P.S. A couple of corrections: Attendance at BlogNashville was 250-300, not 400. Also, "most" attendees were not from Nashville - only a third of the people who registered to attend were from Nashville, and many of them didn't show.

And, finally, Gilbert interviewed me via email, which I was glad to do because I was simply too wiped out after BlogNashville to do a coherent phone interview. I've posted the transcript of the email in the extended portion of this entry. Click "...read more"

Here is the transcript of the my interview-by-email by Brittney Gilbert for the Scene:

Brittney - Here are my replies. Please do me a favor and run it
through a spell-checker.

1. Can you tell me about how BlogNashville came to be? Who had the idea to host something like that and who made that idea a reality?
I don't remember the exact sequence of events, but more than a year ago the idea was floated by Rex Hammock and me of having a blog conference like the "BloggerCons" held at Harvard's Berkman Center and at Stanford Law School. Then, last fall, the idea surfaced again thanks to Robert Cox at the Media Bloggers Association, and I volunteered Belmont as the host site. We floated the idea into the blogosphere and people seemed to like it, so we ran with it.

2. Registration was free, which is amazing. Dave Winer talked about the first one-day blog conference he put on cost participants $500. How is it that BlogNashville was free?
The only reason to charge $500 for a conference like that is to line your own pocket. We raised $7,500 in three equal donations from the Freedom Forum, Hammock Publishing and WKRN, and that was almost enough to cover expenses. Both the Freedom Forum and Belmont were generous with facility space. Rex at Hammock Publishing also spent some additional money for the Friday night reception downtown, and Robert and I each put a small amount of our own money into the conference. I've made enough in blog consulting to be able to give a little back to help the blogosphere - locally and beyond - to grow and improve.

3. Did you think the conference was a success? Will this be an annual event?
Every person I spoke with said they were pleased and answered yes when I asked if they got what they came for. I think most people were also satisfied with the ideological balance of the event - we wanted a blogger conference that was friendly to liberals, moderates and conservatives - and to non-political bloggers - and we succeeded.

The Media Bloggers Association would like to see it become an annual
event held in different cities each year.

4. What do you think is the most significant thing born out of the conference held this weekend? What was your favorite part?
I had several goals for the conference, including helping blogging evolve as a legitimate and respected form of journalism, erasing some of the antagonistic wall between "mainstream media" and bloggers, raising awareness of bloggers and blogging among the Nashville and Tennessee media, and forging connections between Belmont's New Century Journalism and key figures in blog-journalism such as Dan Gillmor, Ed Cone, Mark Glaser and J.D. Lasica. I'm putting a big fat check mark next to all of them.

My favorite part was the pre-conference training session for bloggers in the techniques of computer-aided research and reporting - skills they can use to improve the journalism that they do.

5. What most surprised you about any one (or more) person that you met?
Many of the bloggers I met didn't look how I thought they might.

6. What would you have changed about BlogNashville if you could?
We wanted to audio-stream the sessions online, and didn't get the details worked out.

7. What was your particular involvement in the event? I'd like to know how you contributed pesonally--financially, by working late hours, by donating, whatever.
I handled all the on-campus arrangements, and media relations for the
event, as part of my day job at Belmont, while Robert Cox handled inviting and confirming the various speakers, and Rex Hammock handled arranging the off-campus social events. I also put the Friday night panel together with Dr. Sybril Bennett, the Executive Director of Belmont's New Century Journalism Program. We haven't tallied up all the final budget numbers, but I probably spent about $200 of my own money on the event.

8. How do you see blogs evolving in the next say, 5 or 10 years?
Blogs are just a publishing tool - that's like asking someone in Gutenberg's day how books are going to evolve. But I'll make a few predictions. Mainstream journalism will become more interactive with its readers and viewers, and blogs will be one way they that. I see newspapers increasingly posting their stories online in blog format, allowing comments from readers and having reporters answer questions and address commenters' concerns and criticisms.

I fully expect we'll see the emergence of blog-only media operations which do original reporting and compete favorably with newspapers and broadcast. The economics of blogging are just to good - blog publishing is almost zero-cost compared to printing and distributing a newspaper or broadcasting TV news. And blog publishing software combined with digital video cameras and wireless Internet enables almost instantaneous publishing that broadcasters and newspapers simply can not match.

Newspapers are limited by space and the cost of newsprint and ink, while television news is limited by time, but bandwidth costs almost nothing and blogs aren't limited by space or time. A single reporter armed with the right technology can run rings around his newspaper and television counterparts. Blog-based reporters will be able to report more stories and do it more rapidly.

I also see a day when many if not most elected officials have blogs as a way of communicating with the people directly, bypassing the media filter.

Beyond that, I see a day when thousands of people write blogs on everything from their hobbies to their political opinions to their areas of career expertise, and reading blogs is as natural to most people as reading newspapers used to be and watching TV is now.

9. How have blogs changed Nashville specifically? How will they continue to do so?
I think we pasted a milestone two weeks ago when WKRN's Chris Bundgaard became the first reporter history to respond to a blog that had pointed out an error in a story he did, re-check his story, and then issue a correction. The station even posted a correction online and credited a blogger with catching the error.

In the same week, however, WSMV's Alan Frio responded quite differently to another blog post catching a factual error in a story he had reported. In a rather dismissive email to one of my readers, Frio claimed his story was "fair" but didn't address or admit the error. So, we have a ways to go.

Another way blogs are shaking things up is how they are impacting the legislature. Twice already this year, blogs have played a role in the legislative process. A few weeks ago, several bloggers focused on a piece of legislation that would have taken away the right Tennesseans now have to force a referendum on wheel tax increases passed by their county commissions. Bloggers covered the story intensively for two weeks, eventually leading to legislators who had sponsored the bill on behalf of the lobbyist for the Tennessee County Mayors Association to admit they'd been mislead about what the legislation would do, and to withdraw their support for the bill.

The mainstream press didn't cover the story until bloggers had been on it for six days, and even then the first story - in the Knoxville paper - was filled with factual errors. Even worse, if blogs hadn't covered the story, its doubtful the mainstream media would have, and the legislation might well have passed without the public ever knowing about it or having an impact.

Last week, blogs forced the mainstream media to focus on House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh's rule-breaking maneuver to kill a piece of legislation he didn't like. Without initial coverage from the blogs, I doubt the story would have been covered at all.