Journalists can learn a lot from bloggers. Essentially bloggers purposes are to feed information to an audience on whatever topic they choose. Bloggers focus on their readers and their audience and make sure they answer the question of “What’s in it for them?”
Bloggers can also give a fresh perspective on reporting and sometimes can get the news of faster to the audience. (watch video at :35 seconds to get the joke of constant blogging.)
Traditional media needs to look towards the web for help, not steer clear of it. Traditional media should incorporate Internet use into their stories. Link readers the helpful sites that have something in common with their own article, a video taken of a specific event they covered or to pictures.
The single most important thing traditional media should do to keep readers and gain new ones is to have them get involved. Like put somewhere in your article that they can go online and comment about your story. However traditional media shouldn’t spend all their time adapting their stories to online friendly audiences because some people won’t ever use the Internet.
Neo-luddites, stick-and-bricks communities and the digital divide, will see the Internet as a problem and want to continue to read their news in print or simply never have the choice between print and online. Traditional media needs to learn how to balance the happiness of both sides of the party. The numbers are growing (scroll down to blogsophere stats) towards the Internet. Jump on board traditional media.
