Gannett Co, Inc., publisher of USA Today, claims to be the ``USA's largest newspaper group in terms of circulation'' (Gannett). Its papers have a paid circulation of close to eight million copies each day. It owns twenty-two TV stations and employs 51,000 people. MediaNews Group ``is one of the largest newspaper companies in the United States situated throughout California, the Rocky Mountain region and the Northeast'' (MediaNews). Its daily newspapers reach an additional two million readers. Locally, MediaNews owns the Los Angeles Daily News, the Long Beach Press Telegram, and the Pasadena Star-News, among others. It's no surprise that when Gannett and MediaNews came together to start a Los Angeles website, they went big. Though the purchase price is officially undisclosed, rumor has it that the partnership paid ``nearly half a million bucks'' on just their domain name, LA.com (Reed). Expensive domain in hand, the two companies created a city guide, including restaurant reviews and ``No-Brainer Itineraries.'' The site also featured a ``blog,'' a popular web format commonly associated with websites maintained by individuals. Though the blog format is a very fluid one, at its base the blog includes a collection of dated entries and is usually updated frequently. What makes any of this significant is the way the blogging community reacted to LA.com. Many felt that the new site was trying to use its blog to buy its way into a community that has been built largely on the basis of its separation from corporate control. The group identity that bloggers create is something that only comes to the forefront when it is under attack. The controversy that surrounded LA.com provided an opportune window into the customs and practices of blogging culture, and clearly shows why those customs exclude corporate involvement.
Blogging is a phenomenon that has exploded in popularity over the past five years. Rebecca Blood's 2000 article, ``weblogs: a history and perspective,'' traces the culture back to a list of twenty-three sites published by Cameron Barrett in early 1999. At the time of publishing, these ``weblogs'' were mostly links and commentary. Blood reminisces that ``It was easy to read all of the weblogs on Cameron's list, and most interested people did.'' The number of such sites quickly grew, and over the course of the next year several sites opened up that offered free tools for individuals who wanted to start their own blogs. Today these tools are easy to use and available to any individual who can access the Internet and wishes to have their thoughts and opinions available online. This accessibility is key to the power of the blog format.
On January 22, 2004, local community blog LAVoice.org editor Mack Reed posted a review of the LA.com site. His review focused largely on the site's target audience but also mentioned its blog, LA.comfidential. The next day another community blog site, LA Blogs, picked up the story, linking to LA Voice's coverage and expounding slightly on the blog. Comments posted in reply to LA Blogs became the focal point for community response.
Most blogger concern over LA.comfidential focused on the corporate nature of the site, and whether a corporation could even have a blog. To some, the two are mutually exclusive. Last week I was talking with Shmuel Bowles, a Michigan native now blogging from Spain, discussing why it is that blogs are a significant development. ``Blogs undermine governments,'' Bowles commented. ``Blogs undermine corporations. Blogs undermine all centralized control of information. Blogs give a voice to oppressed people.'' Blogs undermine these established powers by leaving them out of the equation. No longer must an article be published in a national magazine or newspaper in order to be read by a diverse mix of influential people. Today that same readership can be acquired by anyone: just publish it to a blog and a tangled web of links and referrals will propagate it around the globe on the strength of the argument, not the reputation or reach of the news outlet that carries it. Blogs provide decentralized power to individuals. Sean Bonner, a local blogger who writes for his own blog as well as blogging.la, agreed. ``I think [Bowles] is totally right, with a blog I have a voice,'' Bonner wrote, ``even if it's only to 5 people, it's MY voice and I get to decide what I say. That would never fly with a corp because I might say something someone on the board of directors wouldn't agree with.'' While blogging has traditionally been associated with freedom for individuals to say what they wish, corporations are far more concerned about controlling their image. Bonner writes
Blogs have traditionally been the voice of a person, or of a few people expressing their opinions and talking about things on a personal level. That's something big corporations don't like ... Once there's a board, and editors, and everything else, it's no longer a blog, it's a column. That's not better or worse, it's just different, and with LA.Com it ticked me off that they had a column that they were pretending was a blog (Bonner Email).He then explained one major reason he got involved in the debate over LA.comfidential - its use of a single pseudonym for a collection of authors. ``When a major media company hires a bunch of people to pretend they are the independent voice of one person, I had to say something'' (Bonner Email). LA.comfidential has since changed this policy, and now its authors each post under their own name. Though this change more clearly identifies the individuals involved, it does not remove from them their corporate control.
Another widely shared concern about corporate blogging is that it represents an attempt to profit from the community that bloggers have created. A fundamental part of the Internet is the ability for one site to link to another. Though there have been court cases involving specific sites that wanted to restrict others from doing so, they have generally been unsuccessful and this ability to cross-link is regarded as an acceptable practice. Blogging thrives because of the way this linking builds a community and allows ideas to propagate wider than just the audience that happens to come to any one individual's site. This community is created through the content an author chooses to link to, as well as the sites they list in what's commonly referred to as a ``blogroll'' - sites the author reads or relates to. In her 2000 essay, Rebecca Blood wrote that ``It was, and is, fascinating to see new bloggers position themselves in this community, referencing and reacting to those blogs they read most, their sidebar an affirmation of the tribe to which they wish to belong.'' This community is fed by blogs linking to others. There is a sense of a collection of equals. Adding a corporation into the group, especially with a site that is looking to generate revenue through advertising or additional content, disrupts that balance. Though corporate money can generate traffic, which then might be fed out to other blog sites via links to quoted content, some bloggers still don't find the concept appealing. ``It's like the dangling carrot that lures bloggers into thinking that well, yes, you can totally re-post from our site more than the usual because our little indie blog will get more traffic from the corporate one,'' Caryn Coleman writes. ``It just re-iterates that La.com DOES have money behind it and that there is money being made from other people's writing'' (LA Blogs). Once the equity of the blogging give and take is soiled by money, bloggers are less likely to desire to continue as willing participants.
Corporate bloggers also have a different motivation for what they write than an individual's blog might. I asked Sean Bonner whether the content he posts to his blog is what is interesting to him, or what he thinks would be interesting to his readers, and he gave an answer that I think would typify most individual bloggers. ``I generally lean more towards what I'm interested in, because my audience wouldn't be reading it if they weren't also interested, so it kind of works out. But I won't write about something I'm not interested in just because a bunch of other people might be'' (Bonner Email). A corporation, on the other hand, can ill afford to resist bowing to the will of its audience. Responding to a comment by one of the authors of LA.comfidential, Jonah, creator of LA Blogs, writes
I know that your intentions are noble Brian, but let's be honest, your primary task at LA.com is to bring eyeballs to the ads that surround the weblog. Otherwise we wouldn't be staring at alluring women offering dates and ATT commercials when we read the weblog ... I would be impressed if you linked to someone's entry on spotty ATT wireless coverage and poor customer service in the area (LA Blogs).This is a perfect illustration of what seems to be the fundamental problem with corporate blogging. There is a conflict of interest between the open nature of the blog format and the restraints of corporate image and sponsorship. Tony Pierce, a local blogging figure, has often mused about writing a corporate blog. On January 15 he wrote a post titled ``dear clear channel radio.''
what id like to do is write a blog for you. whats a blog? it's this. what would your blog look like? it would look sorta like this but it would be different.
what it would be would be the story of the radio station that waltzed into the city of angels playing x and rancid and planted the flag for the new alternative.
it would be the daily tale of the radio station that taught kroq that radiohead should get played more (Pierce ``dear clear channel'').On January 28 he wrote a similar post to hotel chain Best Western.
lots of people learn things from blogs.
thats why i would like to work for you and write a blog for you.
i would like to travel to all of your locations and write a little something about the facility and the town (Pierce ``dear best western'').But even Pierce realizes that a corporate blog would present him with a litany of issues his personal blog doesn't. On January 30 in a post titled ``this was an interesting week in blogging,'' he writes
worked my ass off today and i was walking home from the subway and i thought about what it would be like to be a pro blogger. and all the way home i thought how it would probably suck cuz nobody would ever let you get away with calling the new york times or cbs or the president of the united states [names] and when all this is said and done, if you truly want to be a great writer
which i would hope a journalist would want to be
i would imagine that you would want to have a body of work to leave behind that people would be able to look at and say yeah and be impressed and want to tell their friends about
as opposed to a collection of middle of the road phil collins lyrics disguised as commentary and being presented as journalism (Pierce ``it's been'').For now Pierce's fanciful propositions to Best Western and Clear Channel will remain just that.
When the Internet was first beginning its transition from an academic medium to a commercial one, it went through a stage where individuals were its most influential participants. It might be thought that blogging is that same sort of a stop-gap of individuals providing information until the corporations can step in and do what they do best - take over. I don't think this is the case, however. In blogging is a new medium with opportunities far different from those that have preceded it. The customs and practices of blogging are not available to corporations because their very nature opposes them. This is the significance of the blog. It is a medium free from control, available to all who would choose to use them.