By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer
The Web sites of dozens of newspapers are starting to feature outside
blog postings on travel, health and other topics in a further blurring
of the line separating traditional and new media.
The travel section of the San Francisco Chronicle's site, for
instance, had a box in the middle Wednesday with such posts as "The
Intricate Architecture of Barcelona" from the RealTravel blog. The
sports section of the Austin American-Statesman site had items on the
University of Texas teams.
The posts supplement the Web journals, or blogs, maintained by the
newspapers' own staffs and come from Pluck Corp.'s new BlogBurst
service, which collects postings from about 1,000 blogs and
distributes them to newspapers, mostly for online use.
Bloggers who participate get greater exposure for their writings - but
no money, for now. Newspapers get more coverage in areas for which
they may not have enough reporters.
Pluck charges papers largely based on traffic - and thus ad sales -
the posts help generate, and the company may one day share those
revenues with the bloggers, too.
Dave Panos, Pluck's chief executive and co-founder, said the company
is reviewing all blogs ahead of time to make sure they are topical and
aren't apt to use offensive language. However, Pluck won't vet every
post.
Newspapers concerned about quality control can opt instead for
prescreened feeds -- five to 10 a day in a given topic instead of
dozens or hundreds.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.
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[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The same sort of arrangement was made
with this Digest, and a few other internet newsletters: The source of
my news wire here preselects five feeds per day specifically for
teleocm news and to appear in the Digest, then the other stuff on
the wire goes into the 'td-extra' areas such as 'newstoday.html' and
'internet-news.html'. Its a great system, really; they all get my
feed -- those who want to use it -- and I get all their stuff. PAT]
Anick Jesdanun (ap@telecom-digest.org)