[Dead or alive: recent screenshot from NYT's site]
The New York Times's coverage today of top bankers facing critics on the House Financial Services Committee is at least the third time I've seen live blogging in use at the paper of record this week. Yet, as someone who's deployed that shop-worn phrase, what would dead-blogging be?
What's been your best -- and worst -- experience live-blogging? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green sidebar, upper right.
Something Gannett would do.
ReplyDeleteMy teenagers and I were talking about this stuff, including Twitter, the other night. The two generations agree it's too much of a good thing, overwhelming.
ReplyDeleteI see the old MSM grabbing at these things in an effort to be ahead of a curve, after so disastrously missing the www curve. But this level is likely, IMHO, to be like the end of the tech bubble. Too much for too few eyes and too little free time to read it all.
That's not to say the technology of live-blogging and live-texting is bad. It's good for certain purposes. If I'm a student in Jay Rosen's media classes at NYU, for example, I'd be tracking his Tweets. If I'm paying for his class I'd want to absorb as many of his thoughts as I could.
But, if I have time to read a live blog, wouldn't I just turn on the SPAN and watch it live for myself?
I tried to watch a live blog the other day for the news conference and regretted it. It was more like being the naughty pupils chatting in the back of the room and missing everything the teacher had to say -- and leaving ignorant.
I live blog often. The blogging surrounds the sports team I cover.
ReplyDeleteMy readers love this stuff. They beg for more. They want me to live blog every possible event ... press conferences, games, even interviews. They have shown their approval by making my blog the most read element of our site. It's not close.
Question: How do you blog AND take notes at the same time?
ReplyDeleteI can understand l'blogging a sports event, where you don't have to take voluminous notes about every play of the game - just the highlights.
But I can't see how a reporter can liveblog a meeting, say, and still take enough notes to cover it for the daily paper. To make a liveblog interesting enough for people to follow, you've got to have a steady stream of posts, right? And if I'm posting, I'm not focusing on taking notes of what people say, the nuances of how they say it, and the basic facts of the matter. I'm going to miss quotes, miss information.
When I cover my city council meetings, for example, I'm feverishly writing about the important stuff, trying to make sure I have both the facts and the context correct. Yeah, there are times when I don't write anything, because they're talking about rules of procedure or honoring the local Lions Club or whatnot. But for the important stuff - which is what liveblogging is supposed to be about, right? - I'm already busy.
I don't know... Maybe I'm just not talented enough to do both things at once.
Hmmm, maybe I should live blog my next massive dump?
ReplyDeleteMy TV station's sports department considers "liveblogging" to be:
ReplyDelete1. Post a story in the CMS (instead of in the blogging area) about the game you're about to watch, and how there'll be coverage at 6 and 11.
2. Post a story in the CMS (instead of in the blogging area) about the first quarter.
3. Post a story just after the first half ends (again, in the CMS).
4. Stop liveblogging.
I did liveblog a political event once and had a great time doing it, but then, we had a news crew there so I didn't have to actually cover the hard news. I was there for the color. Only one of the other seven livebloggers we had on that election night understood what I was explaining to him during the orientation session.
I've live-blogged a few times, also. In the end, I decided it was way more fun for me than it was for everyone else. Ever try reading one cold?
ReplyDelete