Its Official: The NYT Has Gone Blog Crazy!
About a year ago, I first posted on the NYT's blogging efforts (MSM Blogging Review: NYT Starts Blogging too).
Since that time, the New York Times' blogweeds* have proliferated in number. As of this morning, the Times now has thirty -- 30! -- blogs.
Compare that with the WSJ's "mere" nine blogs (Washington Wire, Law Blog, MarketBeat, Wealth Report, Informed Reader, The Juggle, Health Blog, Tax Blog, Deal Journal). We first posted on the WSJ's blogging efforts around the same time.
Nine is quite a few, but thirty?! That's a helluvalot of blogs for a mainstream media outlet. And, this number doesn't include the blogs the Times has shuttered - like their real estate blog WalkThrough, which was actually pretty good.
Gee, I wonder if the print media world is a tad nervous?
Some of these blogweeds are extensions of the columns done by regular contributors: Times' chief financial correspondent, Floyd Norris, on the High and Low of Finance; David Pogue covers Technology; Andrew Ross Sorkin edits news on M&A, I.P.O.'s, and VC stuff; Eric Asimov discusses wine; Food critic Frank Bruni reports on restaurants. Pretty standard issue stuff.
Then there is this new slice of what can only be described as "celebrity blogging" -- Dick Cavett on television (Talk Show), Andy Kessler on business and technology (Wall Street Wired). I'll bet more celeb blogs will be popping up soon on the Times site.
Of all the Times' blogs, Cavett seems to have burst out of the gate the fastest; His first post in February elicited 768 comments so far, and most of his posts have comments numbering in the 100s . . .
Although Cavett's sparse output -- 9 posts from February til April -- his work is not really blogging; occasional feature writing in a blogging format is a better description for it.
~~~
"Blogweed" is my term for the tendency to add blogs, using quantity as a growth mechanism for page views. Just as weedy plants
have naturally evolved to colonize disturbed environments, so too do Blogweeds follow a parallel evolutionary path, evolving to
colonize disturbed media environments . . .
Monday, April 09, 2007 | 06:33 AM | Permalink
| Comments (7)
| TrackBack (0)
add to de.li.cious | 
digg this! | 
add to technorati | 
email this post
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/763/17549450
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Its Official: The NYT Has Gone Blog Crazy!:
Comments
with all this liquidity flaoting around maybe swartzman is taking a closer look at "the big picture".
Posted by: fat mary | Apr 9, 2007 9:49:57 AM
I have to say that your blog stands alone in quality, freshness, etc. That is despite the fact that I do not agree with all your conclusions. We appreciate all your hard work.
You deserve alot of credit, snaps, and good kharma Barry.
Thank you.
Posted by: Fred | Apr 9, 2007 10:00:43 AM
Interesting concept with the "Blogweed" term and the explanation that accompanied it.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a few people picking up on that term and using it.
Posted by: David Shvartsman | Apr 9, 2007 12:48:48 PM
And what about ulterior motives? Aside from increasing page views, what else might these media giants have up their sleeves?
Posted by: Irving | Apr 9, 2007 3:03:25 PM
Recently several of my colleagues at the "Gray Lady" have expressed in no uncertain terms their fear & loathing of the Blogosphere, a paranoia that seems to run to the top of the organization, especially among the editorial staff.
They're especially freaked-out by the proliferation of hard-news blogs, which they fear (rightly so) will one day relegate them to the ash heaps of history...FWIW the circulation numbers are MUCH worse than they publicly will admit.
Perhaps the public has discovered how biased and one-sided the NY Times actually is, and that reporters are lazy humans at best?
Personally I look forward to the day WE evolve completely out of the cult of "journalism" - Nothing but a bunch of gossip hounds looking for advertising revenue and a quick trip to meglomania.
Vivo La Revolución del Internet!
Posted by: KaliExpat | Apr 9, 2007 5:53:10 PM
I recently stumbled on how online newspaper groups, such as Gannett, believe this sort of "community interaction" might allow them to take market from competitive radio. It's part of what they term "crowdsourcing". See Crowd Control
Posted by: Guambat Stew | Apr 11, 2007 1:12:57 PM
Search for in all major search engines simultaneously on the site http://www.iknowall.com.
Simultaneous search on Google, Yahoo and MSN Live Search.
Try http://www.iknowall.com
Posted by: iknowall | Jun 1, 2007 3:15:51 PM
