The “Blog For Us” feature on SeattlePI.com may become a main source of life support for the 146-year old “paper.” Reader bloggers help the staff cover topics that they would not have otherwise been able to cover. But such a system raises questions about ethics, transparency and objectivity.
SHOOT: It makes sense that cheap-as-air bloggers can provide vital life-support for cashstrapped Media. We will see the best citizen generated media really coming into its own now. One reason is thousands of newly unemployed journalists will become - you guessed it, freelance bloggers.
Earlier this month the Seattle Post-Intelligencer became an online-only publication and reduced it’s staff by eighty percent. They essentially evacuated the entire economy class of a Boeing 757 and left only the 20 first class members to stick around.
The change is drastic. The PI is one of the first major newspapers to make such a bold decision. The digital-only publication will struggle with revenue strategies, and The PI Twenty will have to become ironmen of multimedia, athletes proficient in beat blogging, social media, web video, photography and more.
As its former competition, The Seattle Times, is left with the burden of gathering “all the bright red boxes that held the product of its deceased rival,” skeptical journalists are placing bets on just how long the PI will survive.
The answer is easy. As long as the readers want.
Blog For Us
It all started back around January 2006. That’s when the Seattle PI began inviting readers to blog for them.
Once A Newspaper… Always A Newspaper?
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