Today my web journalism class was “treated” with a guest speaker — Morning Call columnist Bill White. White’s been a columnist for a long time, and it shows.
While he writes both columns and blogs for the paper, there’s a definite preference for the printed product. He talks about regretting the personal elements in the blog that used to be in the columns.
He also mentioned several times that the blog doesn’t generate the same amount of readers — which I attribute to the newspaper and not the medium — and he mentioned several times that most bloggers do it “as a hobby”.
Does this attitude sound like someone who thinks online journalism is the future?
I bet if I showed Bill some of the stuff I’m working on he would think it’s “just a hobby” and that it’s a bit useless.
Old media attitudes can’t translate online
Today my web journalism class was “treated” with a guest speaker — Morning Call columnist Bill White. White’s been a columnist for a long time, and it shows.
While he writes both columns and blogs for the paper, there’s a definite preference for the printed product. He talks about regretting the personal elements in the blog that used to be in the columns.
He also mentioned several times that the blog doesn’t generate the same amount of readers — which I attribute to the newspaper and not the medium — and he mentioned several times that most bloggers do it “as a hobby”.
Does this attitude sound like someone who thinks online journalism is the future?
I bet if I showed Bill some of the stuff I’m working on he would think it’s “just a hobby” and that it’s a bit useless.
It doesn’t really make sense.