Gannett Buys Blog Syndication Services; Will TDW be Blogging Next Door to Rayagn Swan?

Could Hoosier bloggers day find ourselves quoted in the Indianapolis Star, the Louisville Courier-Journal, or in Gannett's Indiana newspapers in Richmond, Lafayette, Fishers, Noblesville, Muncie, and Marion -- and sooner rather than later?

Blogs (at least the best of them) are about to take another leap into respectability and social acceptance.

Jennifer LeClaire of TechNewsWorld reported this morning that Gannett is among the customers for a syndication service for 600 of the best bloggers. Pluck, maker of RSS readers and other fine software, is releasing the service on Tuesday. (I cannot tell if that means today -- probably does -- or next Tuesday, April 18th.)

Besides Gannett, the Washington Post Co., the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Antonio Express, and the Austin American-Statesman are among the launch clients for the new service.

As for Indiana, imagine Doug Masson, Joshua Claybourn of Indiana Barrister, Mike Kole, Gary Welsh, TDW, and the  Bilerico gang going head-to-head on the pages of your local paper? We'll need the Indiana Law Blog and the Indiana Blog Review to mediate.
 

Tech News World reports:

"It was inevitable that newspapers would recognize there are some really good writers and excellent journalists out here in the blogosphere," WhatsNextOnline President and blogger B.L. Ochman told TechNewsWorld. "It makes sense to bring some of our content in -- and getting paid for it is not a bad thing, either. People will do a lot for exposure."

Pluck's BlogBurst service bills itself as a tool that gives publishers "access to the best of the blogosphere," and provides editorial management tools that help filter and select appropriate content. BlogBurst's editorial team screens the content before passing it along to media giants.

So ... Move over, Matt Tully. Move over, RiShawn Biddle. Move over, Raygan Swan. Move over, Leo Morris. Move over, Tracy Warner.

Make some space for non-newsie bloggers.

Strikes me as transitive. BOB (Best of Bloggers) = Newspapers = BOB = Newspapers = Our Grandkids Are Going to Ask Which Came First, The Newspaper or the Blog?

Comments

[Bil Browning]

Thanks for the vote of confidence as one of Indiana's best blogs! :)

[Mike Kole]

Interesting development, to say the least.

This reminds me of the mid-90s, when newspapers were adding websites. Typically, reporters and columnists turned their noses up at the websites. We're the guild! We're the professionals! That website fad is nice, but it isn't serious journalism! Leave that to the amateurs.

So I, along with dozens of other free-lancers, were hired at cleveland.com, the arm of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, as happened at newspapers across the country.

As we sopped up more and more money, and the website got more and more hits, the staff writers got edgy. We're the guild! We should be on the website, not those amateurs! Of course, management understood the wisdom of not duplicating efforts, so the free lancers were either hired onto staff or faded away.

Similarly, blogs have long been decried as amateurish, faddish, and mainly not produced by the writers. Now the news writers have their own blogs, but they too often remain solidly out of touch with the average person because they can't shake the idea that for something to be news, it has to be BIG.

News flash- no trend begins life as anything but small. Microsoft started in some geek's garage.

There is a ton of news that is unreported or underreported, thanks to this 'big news' mentality. Blogs and bloggers fill the gaps very nicely.

Thanks for the inclusion in your list of good blogs. I appreciate it!