By Adam J. Shapiro, Executive Editor WNBC.com
I remember growing up, and making sure I was awake at 6:45 each morning before school, so I could hear the baseball scores on 1010 WINS. It was the only way to find out what happened… highlights were hard to find back then. If I slept through the sports report, I was out of luck.
We all know how it’s gone since then: information became much more available, all the time. CNN was doing news all day, and then came MSNBC and Fox.
Once we got comfortable with 24 hour cable networks… the Internet arrived. Now, it’s a whole new ballgame. I find it amazing that in 25 years, I went from being dependent on a radio report to having news/information/opinion/blather/rumor/video-on-demand/slideshows at my fingertips all day long.
That’s why we tried something a little different last night… the WNBC.com Blogger Summit. We invited more than 100 of New York’s most-read bloggers to come here, have a few sandwiches and shrimp with us, and talk about the future of media.
Truth is… we don’t know what’s coming next either. No one really does yet (although there were plenty of folks there with some strong theories), and I don’t mind admitting it.
The discussion was lively, to say the least. We want to develop a relationship with the bloggers there, because frankly, we can’t possibly cover every nook and cranny of a viewing area of 23 million people. So our hope is that the bloggers would want to work with us, tipping us off to some good scoops, and we’re not too proud to tell the world on television which blog is responsible for us having this information.
My feeling is… people aren’t sitting home with a scorecard, keeping track of who breaks what story. They just want info that matters to them. We in the media are the only ones keeping track.
I’ve been fascinated by the reaction the bloggers have given today, online.
For example, “AllergicGirl” wrote…
It was a potentially interesting start to a much longer conversation and possible conversion of media. I’m curious to see what the next few weeks and months will bring. Very interesting, WNBC. [And no, Allergic Girl did not eat any of the shrimp].
Let me tell you something, Allergicgirl… I’m curious too. I hope you were able to enjoy the dessert tray…
I don’t know what the other 129 bloggers were expecting out of the NBC blogger summit … in fact, I don’t know what I was expecting. But to recap in as few words as possible: WNBC TV wants to work with bloggers. They want to trade stories, links, photos and video. Interesting. Though a relatively early move for the local TV news industry, possibly in some ways too late.
You may be very right… we may be very late. Our hope is that breaking down the “big media” walls will help to change that.
We had some people who loved the event (I won’t link to those because it could be painfully self-serving) and certainly had skeptics.
I won’t pull out any quotes from ModernFabulosity… the entire entry is wrapped in sarcasm. Side note: it’s hilarious.
I’m curious what you think of all this, and where we’re all going. If you have a moment, post a comment. I’ll dive in again later.
I find WNBC to be completly unresponcive to the e-community. I have been trying to email this (below), about a story your network has been airing, a story which in most nations would be prosecutable under laws governing ethnic group defamation… and I find there is no working contact links on your web site.
To the News Desk at WNBC
cc Pavee Point, the Irish Traveller Center Dublin, Ireland
Greetings:
Last night, 2\2\07, and this morning on WNBC news, there was a report of an event involving a person impersonating an inspector for a water service as a confederate robbed the home, in New Jersey. In both reports your correspondents referred to them as members of the Travelers scam group. It is unthinkable that, in this day and age, any other ethnicity would be used to define crime. I called to inform your news desk that this was a clear defamation against an ethnic group, one of the several racialized under the term “Gypsy” and that such use was an ethnic slur. I received a disinterested and rude response from the person who answered the phone. Thereafter, the station continued this defamatory reporting.
Dr. David Crowe, who reports to the United States State Department on the status of discrimination against Romany (“Gypsy”) people in Eastern Europe refers to the treatment of Travellers and Romany people in the US, as the “last great civil rights movement yet to be commenced.”
Your reporting sets back the commencement of that rights struggle. If you have an interest in accurately reporting on this community, do contact me and I will put you in touch with scholars who testify in court and publish papers on the reality of this community as well as spokespeople for this community.
Respectfully
Lawrence V. Otway, Juris Doctor
This is an interesting post. A few months ago, Rob blogged about The TINY overhaul of this blog space…”more fun” is what I can recall. And that’s what we got, fun…little bits of fluff, pictures of Prince, talk about Martha and how cute Rob is, some sports stories, etc. The sad part is that Rob and his producers, in my opinion, had been up to good before this overhaul. From his earlier posts I learned and gained access to bits of current events that I had never been exposed to before. From his writing I was connected to and gained access to sites and information including, but not limited to: Vanity Fair, the Huffington post, Frank Oz, The War Tapes, and other readers of this space whose opinions served to inform me even further. In short, I was learning something about my country from a familiar face who felt safe. Rob’s blog space, which seemed to be supported by the production staff in terms of what content would be shared, provided just enough additional information to fuel curiosity about the world around me. It seemed like a perfect place for an interested viewer to come to find links to political information that very often seems overwhelming or out of reach to an “ordinary Joe” such as myself. The tricky part, I suppose, is the idea of biased free reporting. I am under the impression that reporters are supposed to be neutral. Bloggers are opinionated. This seems to a a huge conflict. How will news programs continue to keep sponsors if and when TV news start to have opinions? Personally, I feel that access to information is crucial in a free society. Who cares if I don’t agree with an opinion? Isn’t it just as valuable not to agree? And/or to provide a forum for debate? To let ideas grow.. and to be a part of informing and thereby educating the public at large? Good luck finding balance between the obvious popularity of people seeking opinionated and entertaining forums for informed exchange and the more traditional view of what news is suppose to be. I would love to know what Rob and his team are reading about Iran, or finding in obscure newspapers from around the country, or thinking about that navy lawyer who took on the president. I do not need them to tell me what to think. It was nice, however, to know that they took an active interest in their work, that they valued other reporters, and that they valued ideas.