Associated Press connects to bloggers

Technorati teams up with the Associated Press. Wow. Now that makes perfect sense for the people feeling the greatest pressure from bloggers: paid journalists.

The media needs good sources to provide and confirm facts. Bloggers, by their very nature as distributed authors, tend to leverage the Web as a personal publishing platform. Bloggers and blog tools (templated web pagess / RSS / news readers) have changed the way that news is gathered, reported, delivered, consumed, and archived.

Of course I love reading the polished copy of trained journalists. Their story construction, editorial copy read: correct spelling, and polished presentation make reading their output a pleasure. I will continue to read the breaking news in Techmeme, Rojo, or a handful I respect inside Microsoft product teams or others close to the news like TechCrunch or Engadget.

If I hear about something in a print publication any more, it’s really the “official” news of what I probably read hours or even days before. Bloggers often are closer to the news and provide a peronalized, human slant on the story. Bloggers are truly the new journalists armed with modern day pen and stenographer’s notebook laptop and web connection; printing press WordPress, Movable Type, Blogger.com; and photo equipment digital cameras and Photoshop touchups.

I’ll keep my eyes and ears open for that big-scoop-story from time to time in the Wall St. Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, or New York Times. But it’s highly likely by the time the big boys report, the story will be old news. Blogging has got to be another frustration for print publishers and editors everywhere.

Comments

One Response to “Associated Press connects to bloggers”

  1. Scott Baldwin on May 24th, 2006 11:08 am

    I think it’s awesome – the world is flat (insert plug for Thomas Friedman here). I like how you identified that bloggers add the human slant to what is happening, which can be negative, positive, or neutral — it doesn’t matter because it’s reality.

    Any thoughts about the LAPD blogging?