Wednesday, August 17, 2005 11:27 AM
Steve Rubel over at the
Micropersuasion weblog
pointed out a
story this week in the
St. Petersburg Times about a local company's
weblog posting being picked up (within 24 hours) first by a couple of national media outlets, and, judging by a Google News search, ultimately the international news media.
This brief report highlights the growing reality--and power--of the blogosphere in generating news. Because of the ease of and speed at which information can travel, a simple note added to a weblog in the morning can find itself part of a news piece later that day or week. You can bet that reporters at local papers are (or will be) aggregating the feeds of all of the local companies in their "beat" so that they may more easily keep up with news and events. And, it is not a stretch to assume the same will ultimately happen with reporters who cover the legal world.
If you step back and think about it, if you were covering the legal beat in a large city, wouldn't you want to subscribe to the news and headline feeds of all the firms and lawyers in town? The information would automatically flow to you every morning, and you could weed through it looking for ideas and storylines in a matter of minutes. It would not necessarily replace the current reporting process, but would instead add another tool to the reporter's kit.
The SP Times reporter's take on weblogs as news generators? Here is his lead:
"Press releases are yesterday's news. Even e-mail isn't fast enough anymore. So how did Clearwater's Sunbelt Software get international attention for its discovery of an identity theft ring?
It posted the information on the company Web log, or blog."
Good stuff.