Power of Words

Stew Rieckman, executive editor of the Northwestern, incorporates some of today's technologies with yesterday's.

The competition to be first to break any story is fierce. Print journalism suffers from the 5 o'clock news, which in turn suffers from those 24-hour news shows. News journalist are restrained in ways that bloggers aren't; the facts need to be checked (regardless of what some major networks seem to think.) Bloggers just hit the update button and it's published. What about the editoral and opinion pages?

Stew's has some goals for the revamped Northwestern site.

One thing we are doing differently, however, is that we will hot link to local and regional bloggers off our Opinion page. I am compiling a list of Oshkosh bloggers to include on the page. We will feature the blogs and news sites that are already linked from my blog. But if there are additional blogs you want included, just shoot me a comment.

The advantage to the local bloggers is that the link on the Northwestern site should hopefully drive more traffic to their site. The problem with the blogosphere is getting notoriety. This should help bloggers like Stacey Penney of Oshkosh who has an interesting blog, Raspberry Latte, that is always updated, always lively and always conversational.

Granted, he has some lovely things to say about my blog. I'm grateful to hear that he's read it, liked it and wants to send some traffic my way (even if he spelled my name wrong.) I'm most interested in finding out how many blogger are near me and what their lives are like. I've lived in Oshkosh for two years, Fond du Lac for two year before that, then Neenah for a year. Before that was the college routinue of 9 months in one place and 3 in another, neither of which were in Wisconsin. I know my neighbors, but not which neighborhood bar to go to.

I've read the one's linked to on Stew's blog, which are political or news commentary. He is missing my writing group, but I'll send him an email. Political blogs are easy; pick any subject to cheer or jeer. Journal blogs are harder and missing from his blogroll. I hope that Stew is sucessful in find more of them and posting entries about them. The ideas expressed in these yet unknown journal blogs are the documented values of today's people, not a reporter's view of them whether the reporter be journalist or blogger.

The power a blogger has is an unrecognized force. I often "hear" news from my blogroll and seldom read the paper. I'm glad to see that the Northwestern is working with it, not against it.