The fake blog… Bad LANGuage: AP’s Pop Culture Blog ***
Suw Charman, at Corante, looks into the story behind this alleged “blog,” and notes:
AP have obviously and spectacularly failed to understand what ‘syndication’ means in the blog sense or what a blog actually is. And what’s worse, the entries I’ve read so far are just not very good. Whilst it’s true that I have read drivel less interesting in my years as a blogger, this poor copy of Wonkette is written by someone who is supposedly a professional writer and it really should be better.
AP have a long, long way to go before they can claim membership of the blogosphere. Firstly, they need a blog. Secondly, they need a blogger who can write interesting and compelling posts. Thirdly, they need to engage with the blogosphere directly, on a first person basis, not try to latch on to the buzz through the intermediaries of news sites like Yahoo.
Question is, do they have the backbone to break their old media habits and truly embrace blogging?Not only is the AP “blog” not a blog, even if it were a blog it wouldn’t be a very good one. The author is a recent college graduate who appears to have the reality TV beat at the AP. I guess they need to repackage that content as many different ways as possible, but calling it a blog is just confusing…
*** This is a Yahoo News search that I made to try to get all the “blog” entries.
It is like a news feed, with no links. Blog is indeed a curious label – but it does signify that the AP sees that blogs are popular and they want a cut of that.
Now they just need an R&D department to figure out what blogs really are.
Man, even when I was e-mailing a news roundup to my friends, I always at least included links. That’s just pathetic.
– Maybe AP could spike up readership by offering action figures at a discoount…..
Re: “Poor copy of Wonkette”
Bit redundant, innit?