Lauren Fisher
The Next Web
September 8, 2010
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
- {openx:49}
In a letter to its members last week, Associated Press made the announcement that bloggers should be cited as a news source. This is a significant move from the AP, given that they have a history of not exactly ‘getting on’ with bloggers. Given that such a large news organisation has made a point of recognising bloggers as a viable news source, which they should have done a long time ago, it has much wider implications on how bloggers affect the news agenda and overall news industry. We’ve already seen some developments in this area, such as publishers employing bloggers on the ground, but I think this goes one further than that. The announcement has served to recognise the work that bloggers put into breaking and reporting stories. But interestingly they make a point of saying that they must credit information where it occured from a website, so you would hope that this would cover Twitter as well, given that so many stories break on here. The details aren’t clear on quite what this attribution would look like (is it the website or the individual that’s credited?) but this is definitely a positive and exciting move. Importantly this has implications for the individual blogger opposed to blogs overall. Even though the AP states that attribution to a blogger or other source doesn’t have to occur at the start of a story, it still means valuable visibility for bloggers in front of a wide audience. If you’re a blogger that breaks news then this has huge implications on how high up the news chain you could get. Instead of just having to go out and find stories yourself, if you get in front of the right people, it could mean that bloggers are approached with the right information and maybe even given exclusives ahead of traditional publications. This may be looking a bit too far into the future, but the possibility for this can certainly be seen now.
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