More on Herald Blogs or Moron Herald Blogs?
You decide.
In my earlier post today I discussed what I think is "wrong" with Oscar Corral's blog. I was speaking to a friend about it and he suggested what I suspected. That Herald reporters are not supposed to opine on their blogs. Which to me defeats the purpose of a blog. Blogs aren't just for aggregating news of interest to a particular group, that's what newsgroups are for, they are for news analysis.
So I began to wonder what purpose these Herald blogs that are popping up daily is. Are they simply a promotional tool for the Herald and herald.com?
I decided to see if I could find any blog guidelines or FAQs on herald.com and I noticed that Andres Oppenheimer has a new blog as of today. I know I'll be checking that blog daily.
Now Oppenheimer is a columnist so I suspect that guidelines for him might be different than those for Oscar Corral who is a reporter. But Matt Pinzur, the Herald's education writer has a blog now too and he seems to inject much more of his personal thinking into his blog posts. Take a look and let me know if I'm right about this. Also consider that Greg Cote has a blog in which inserts his personal opinion. Like Oppenheimer he's a columnist but he also writes news items.
It seems that Oscar Corral's "arm's length" approach is a personal choice rather than a rule set by his employer. He either doesn't get it or doesn't care. Perhaps his blog only exists to pay lipservice to Tom Fiedler's memorandum about the importance of the Internet to the Herald's future.
1 comment:
I really don't have a dog in this fight. I'm a big believer in bloggers having the freedom to do with their blogs whatever they want. I would rather challenge their views than quibble with whatever editorial policies they might have.
For what it's worth, Corral is probably operating a leash controlled by his bosses. News reporters have to be very careful and not give off any signals that might suggest a bias. Otherwise, they are toast. The perception is just as important as the reality.
That said, I wonder how many people read Corral's blog. He has a link to my site, which I appreciate, but I have not detected an uptick in my traffic because of it. Sure, I'm not as popular as Babalu and others, but I would think I would have more traffic via a Web site controlled by a large newspaper.
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