Our Year of the Blog

Blah, blah, Blogs: Probably the most hyped online development in 2003 (along with growth in site registration), but will these self-important online journals actually change the way newspapers do journalism on the Web?

Editor & Publisher's 2003 in Review

SeattlePI.com went blog-happy in 2003. That's really the only way to put it.

The war got the ball rolling, spawning five blogs covering various angles from the views of ordinary people on the streets of Puget Sound, to the daily experiences of a photographer embedded aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

In the months since, blogs -- or "online journals," as they were usually billed in the print edition -- became a standard part of the storytelling toolkit for staff visiting remote and/or exotic places. Foreign editor Larry Johnson recounted the trials and tribulations of life in post-war Iraq. Reporter Mike Lewis sent daily dispatches from on board a fishing boat during the crab-fishing season in Alaska's Bristol Bay.

Blogs also became part of our daily repertoire. The Mariners Weblog, maintained chiefly by Mike Thompson and Shannon Fears, is now a popular forum for discussion and dissection among online M's fans. Reporter Todd Bishop's blog on all things Microsoft has been a hit since its September launch.

All of that came to mind as I thought about the rather cynical quote from trade journal Editor & Publisher above. I don't think there's any question that our blogs have changed -- and enhanced -- how the P-I "does" journalism. They flesh out our coverage, adding both nuance and context that you can't pack into the inverted pyramid structure of traditional newswriting. (A good example is the "backstage" report The elusive Jeffrey Parson from Todd's blog.) They've also made SeattlePI.com more participatory, sparking lively discussions and debates between readers that are sometimes more interesting than what we have to say.

That's not just my opinion. My blogging colleagues made similar points when I asked them the same question. Here's what Shannon had to say:

It's like a new level between the common fan (such as we have on our forums) and the beat reporters, and it strengthens the web of information that was always disparate and somewhat hard to find (if not impossible) before. Essentially our blog expands coverage of the M's from the two-reporter, three-columnist realm to the entire world of Mariners influence, including what's thought of them back east, among the farm teams, etc. Mike has broadened that even further by encouraging discussion on roster moves and salary offerings, so now our coverage is also interactive as well.

Todd, whose main gig is writing for the newspaper, says blogging has affected how he does that job as well:

I can understand why people would see the weblog phenomenon as hype, because really it's just one more method of publishing information. But as a reporting tool, it's especially effective, because of the high degree of interaction it encourages. In particular, it's a good way of developing a beat -- floating ideas that could turn into stories, discovering which issues are most likely to touch a nerve, communicating with people about various subjects, and sometimes even developing sources.

On the last point, I had a situation earlier in the year where someone who e-mailed in response to a post on computer viruses ended up being the person responsible for patching his company's computers, giving him a unique perspective on the situation. I asked him if I could call him the next time a story like that came up. He agreed, and I called, interviewed him and used a comment from him in a story a few weeks later. In that way, the weblog isn't a replacement for traditional forms of reporting or journalism, but it's an enhancement, one more trick in the bag.

So, what do you all think? Have our blogs made SeattlePI.com a better news source?