The problem with “blogging,” right now, is that no one really knows what the word means.
To put this in media theory terms, is “blogging” the box or is it the content of the box? Is blogging a software technology, or is it one type of writing that takes place inside the environment created by that software? Are all blogs created equal? What happens when mainstream-media people create blogs? Is that still blogging?
And what does all of this have to do with religion news in mainstream media?
Actually, this is one of the topics looming over the cross-pollination talks right now between GetReligion and Jeffrey Weiss at The Dallas Morning News.
When some people use the term “blogging” they are referring to those first-person-obsessive sites where one person — anonymous, in some cases — is pouring out his her her feelings abut the world on one specific topic. What are the credentials here? The reader may or may not know.
Then there are blogs that are sort of like law firms. A small team of people with some credentials focuses on a subject of mutual interest. You may not agree with these people, but you know who they are and you know why they are doing what they are doing. GetReligion is such a blog. So is the new religion blog at the News.
A blog of this kind can provide all kinds of content, ranging from actual news (a kind of digital wire service), to in-depth niche analysis, to highly personal commentary. Is all of that blogging?
To cut to the chase — if Weiss “breaks” a story in the newspaper’s blog, is it broken with the same mainstream-media status as if he had been able to print the story in the dead-tree-pulp edition? Is it “broken” if he writes an actual news story and puts it in the blog, but not broken if he puts the same material in the blog in some other form? Like a series of chatty, personal posts? Is one news and the other opinion?
And besides, how many people have the time, or choose to take the time, to read these blogs? If a newspaper splinters its audience in this way, is that good or bad for coverage of the topic (let’s say religion) being covered? With that background, here is a chunk of Jeffrey’s response to my first post on the death of the large News religion section and its new digital work:
… (The) newswpaper bidness (as they say in TX) is in trouble. Not trouble as in “losing money” for the most part. But trouble as in “no longer making the truckloads of money it used to.” And for a publicly traded company that’s big trouble. Readership is down for just about all of us. As is ad revenue. So that’s why the cuts.
But here comes the web! Save us all, right? Leave the bidness side aside — will it?
A couple of years ago, I knew that if I checked several key news sources, I could stay generally on top of major news. As Google News and Nexis gave me more tools, my net widened. [GetReligion] is part of my regular info feed. But the news content providing system is going through a major change. Non-professional blogs are contributing. Most of them not so much. But a few — if you cover Baptists there are a few that can’t be ignored — are as necessary to me today as checking Atlanta was a few years ago.
But which ones? How can I tell? And how can the info consumer, what we used to call a “reader” — tell? How do my readers find me? My bosses say they are happy with the Religion blog. But our hit totals are a tiny fraction of the circulation for the dead-tree paper.
Credibility is the only real coin of the realm.
What think ye, readers?
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Comments (4) |
January 20, 2007, at 10:11 am
I understand the economics of removing the religion section and posting most of it’s guts on-line. However, I have found it most uncomfortable to sit at Starbuck’s or in my easy chair clutching a monitor in my lap so I can read the religion section. I also have way too many friends who do not have nor want a computer. Perhaps they are old fashioned, depends on ones perspective. DMN Religion Section was the best. Sorry to see it scattered here and there and unaccessible to lots of folks who are techie deficit.
January 20, 2007, at 11:45 am
I am not a media person, but I am sympathetic, a little bit, to the business pressure that they are under. If advertisers think of the Religion Section as a ghetto to be avoided, then it makes sense to break up the section, and place those articles in other places. It is a pity to have them all disappear to the website, since I think they probably do have a healthy readership in paper circulation. The Memphis Commercial Appeal broke up their Religion Section about three years ago, and I have to say I do not miss it. Most of their religion stories had become pretty much local interest only features that happened to be about church people doing local mission/ service work. After a few years in the late 1990s of actively pressing for coverage of religion that included real doctrinal content, they had pretty much dropped meaningful coverage of ideas long before they dismantled the Religion Section (they now have a religion page that appears once a week, plus other scattered articles, but there is very little content that pertains to ideas there). The appearance of ideas is pretty well relegated to columnists, and our local columnists are left-leaning self-identified Christians who preach ecumenism and universalism at us. It is better to reduce their space, as they recently did by promoting one of them.
January 20, 2007, at 11:12 pm
It’s the question of “what is a religion blog?” that prompts this response.
I would expand the inquiry not so much in the direction of “what is a blog?” but “what is religion?” With estimates that at least 30% of Americans identify themselves as “spiritual, but not religious” doesn’t the very term “religion blog” prejudice the reader towards news coverage that overemphasizes happenings related to those Americans still participating in organized religion? As the author of two blogs that could only be categorized as pan-denominational, multi-faith, or integral, I know there are many dozens of blogs (and probably hundreds I don’t know about) in the spiritual category. These are blogs that are largely ignored by those that cover only “religion blogs.”
To cite one example, Sharlet at The Revealer, for example, included hundreds of religion blogs in his blog’s link list back when it was still being updated, but virtually no spirituality blogs. Membership in an institution is required, I suppose, to be taken seriously (no matter what 30% of Americans say).
Another example of bias is BeliefNet’s BlogHeaven, where currently about 95% of their blogs treat spiritual subjects from within the framework of a particular organized religion (that’s 19 out of 20 by my count).
This is hardly an isolated trend at The Revealer or BeliefNet; but it’s a bias that gets repeated here at GetReligion simply by defining the category in question as “religion blogs” as opposed, say, to “religion and spirituality blogs” or “spirituality blogs” or “worldview blogs.”
January 21, 2007, at 5:49 pm
To Joe Perez:
Excellent point.
The subheadline for the blog has a more inclusive feel:
“Our writers and editors explore issues of faith, spirituality and values - and bring you news of local religion events.”
But you are right that simply calling it “Religion blog” does cut out some who understand that word narrowly. I will take this up with my bosses.