What's the purpose of tv and radio blogs?
A couple of weeks ago Andrew Grant-Adamson, who teaches journalism at the , used his blog "What's the Purpose of Newspaper Blogs?".
Lots of, perhaps even most, print and broadcast news/media organistions have launched blogs. back in August showed that 6 of the top 10 UK daily newspapers had launched journalist blogs and Grant-Adamson's survey of newspaper websites turned up dozens of examples of these:
"The raw figures gathered this afternoon are Times 40, Telegraph 32, Guardian 12, Sun 10, Mail 5, Mirror and Independent none that I could find."
Not stopping there, Grant-Adamson began analysing the number of blogs linking, according to , to The Times and to .
According to , the most linked to blog at The Times is that of religion correspondent who has 772 links from 160 blogs and a technorati rank of 15,049. Second place at the The Times is the blog of columnist who had 162 links from 90 blogs (rank: 28,569), closely followed by The Times with 202 links from 87 blogs and a rank of 29,614.
Over at The Telegraph, Grant-Adamson was way ahead of with 658 links from 160 blogs and a technorati rank of 19,501. Second and third on the Telegraph blogs list, as ranked by technorati, are the blogs of Brussells correspondent , with 321 links from 41 blogs (rank: 76,288) and Beijing correspondent with 49 links from 33 blogs (rank: 96,051).
What does Grant-Adamson say about this?
"A check through the Technorati rankings, unsatisfactory as they are in some ways, seems to confirm the view that some bring little benefit to their papers.
Really? Do the technorati rankings of newspaper blogs really tell the story that Grant-Adamson says, that they bring "little benefit to their papers"?
First of all, I'm not entirely sure that technorati's mechanism for ranking in working properly. It seems to me, , that the rankings are a bit flakey, at least some of the time. [Grant-Adamson himself mentions that rankings did seem to fluctuate whilst he was doing the research]
Secondly, there are lots of other benefits to be brought through newspaper and media organisation blogs:
I'm not saying that links from blogs aren't important - they are increasingly important because of the way that google rank is determined (ever tried typing in?) and also because links FROM bloggers are increasingly driving web traffic - WashingtonPost.com Executive Editor Jim Brady says that one-third of the referrals washingtonpost.com gets now (via Jeff Jarvis).
Guardian Unlimited's Head of Editorial Development,, seems to agree with the point that simply counting the numbers may not tell the whole story and posted the to Grant-Adamson:
"...not sure *counting* blogs adds much understanding as to *why* newspapers run blogs, but at Guardian Unlimited we see them as a useful way to have a dialogue with readers, and do things with the way we tell stories that we could not otherwise do. It also gets our journalists used to writing in a different way; blogging is, for me, the first form of journalism born from the web."
Shane Richmond also responded to Grant-Adamson's research, saying that, as AG , the purpose of the Telegraph's blogs is about "filling more niches, unlimited by space, experimentation, interactivity and personality."
Another interesting part of the debate has been that both The Telegraph and Guardian have made some of their usages statistics for blogs known.
Shane Richmond, at The Telegraph, reveals that:
"In September the blogs got page views, almost 12,000 hits per day. We had 34 active bloggers at that time, so that equates to roughly 10,500 hits per blogger. The site isn’t even a year old yet so traffic is at a decent level. Page views have more than doubled in the last six months I’m confident that we will be able double them again in another six months."
As for The Guardian's Comment is Free, Jeff Jarvis is , revealing that, as of the 16th of October, "To date, CiF has played host to 6,000 blog posts and 240,000 responses." The Guardian's reader's editor , stating that Comment is Free had 2.7 million page impressions in June (no doubt it's higher now), equivalent to over one-third of the total PI's on the Guardian Unlimited network of sites.
So where is all this leading me? The ´óÏó´«Ã½ has a lot of blogs that, thus far, have fallen beneath the radar of this debate. As the Senior Producer heading up the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Blogs trial, I couldn't help but start doing my own technorati searches to see how our blogs fare...
Below, I've listed the top ten ´óÏó´«Ã½ blogs, according to Technorati. Most of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s 43 blogs aren't "claimed" so I have listed them in order of links and numbers of blogs linking rather than strictly by technorati rank.
1. ´óÏó´«Ã½ Blogs links: 6,494 rank: 178 []
2. The Editors links: 1,379 rank: 4,865 []
3. World Cup links: 611 rank: not claimed []
4. Nick Robinson links: 533 rank: 10,638 []
5. ´óÏó´«Ã½ Persian 412 links rank: not claimed []
6. World Have Your Say links: 387 rank: 38,217 []
7. Pods and Blogs links: 211 rank: 41,342 []
8. Rooze Hafton (Arabic) links: 130 rank: not claimed []
9. Island Blogging links: 126 rank: not claimed []
10. Talk About News Night links: 112 rank: not claimed []
For comparison sake, I also had a look at links/rating for the Guardian's page (links: 25,975 / rank: 70) and the (links: 3,956 / rank: 3,047).
We also keep track of other quantitative metrics, as I'm sure the newspapers that Grant-Adamson has looked at do. I can't be specific about how much traffic any individual ´óÏó´«Ã½ blog is getting, but I can say that the list above, based on links and technorati ranks, doesn't exactly mirror our list of top ten based upon unique users or page impressions.
The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s network of 43 blogs had over 2.06 million unique users in October and generated over 5.7 million page impressions. Nearly all those blogs launched in the last six months and the number of people finding, reading, commenting on and linking to them is growing rapidly.
Since launch, and counting only those on our main blogging platform (we're using two), the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s bloggers have made around 4000 posts and we've had, across those blogs, well over 100,000 comments. When all the blogs are taken into account, the average post generates between 20 - 30 comments and several blogs get 100 or more comments on nearly ever post. That is, I think, a good measure of highly engaging content. We don't keep track of what number of those comments is spam, but the number is surprisingly low as a percentage of the total - probably upper single digits although, having not dug around for the exact number, I base that more on a gut feeling rather than actually statistical certainty. It should also be noted that many of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ blogs have associated websites where audiences have other opportunities to interact with ´óÏó´«Ã½ staff and each other through message boards, debates, comments on article pages, etc.
Are the numbers important? Well, I can't argue that numbers aren't whilst at the same time bragging that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ blogs currently get significantly more traffic and higher numbers of comments, if not always more inbound links, than either the Guardian's much talked about Comment is Free or The Telegraph's blogs.
But we need to keep those numbers in context. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is a relative newcomer to blogging. The idea of blogging - and by blogging I mean fully engaging in the use of blogs as a technique, not just as a technology - can, on the face of things, sit awkwardly alongside some of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s editorial values: truth and accuracy, impartiality and diversity of opinion, editorial integrity and independence, serving the public interest, fairness, and privacy.
Bloggers outside the ´óÏó´«Ã½ often thrive upon, and many blog readers expect, the expression of strong opinions. The biggest challenge for the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has been to enter a world where, in some respects, our name and our values, as well as audience (and regulators) expectations of us actually make it difficult for us to fully engage. I think that our biggest successes, so far, have been:
These successes, and our failures, don't show up in the technorati rankings, the number of inbound links, or in the number of users or posts or comments. Yet it is the elements I've listed above that are, at least at this point in time, the most important and meaningful to me. I'm sure each of our bloggers has their own thoughts.
If Grant-Adamson had asked "What's the purpose of broadcast media blogs", I probably would have responded with the list above. We're in this space to open up, engage with our audiences, find the appropriate voice, encourage participation and experiment with ideas and tools. Even if there was no technorati we'd still be here, mucking about, trying to figure out why media companies and news organisations blog.
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