Beat blogging has merit for legal reporters
'Imagine a live social network connected to the beat, made up of people who know the territory the beat covers, and want the reporting on that beat to be better.' That's the concept of Beat Blogging, an initiative launched by NYU Professor Jay Rosen's NewAssignment.Net.
Per J.D. Lasica, my source for this post, 13 news organizations want to see if it works. They include the Houston Chronicle, the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, PA, ESPN.com, MTV, the Seattle Times. Some of the beats per JD: Child welfare, Dallas public schools, "green" tech, Big Pharma, digital music, Procter & Gamble.
Jeff Jarvis talking about the project, makes a lot of sense:
I like to think of this as turning reporting inside-out: Before, the reporter put himself at the center, because it was through him that reporting flowed to the press and public. Now there can be a network of people who report and advise and the reporter should be asking himself what he can do to help them do that better; the reporter stands not at the center but at the edge, which reporters must learn is where the action really is...... I return to the wisdom of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg when he advised media moguls at Davos not to think that they could create communities but to instead realize that these communities already exist and so they should be asking what they can contribute to help them do what they already do better. Mark's prescription: give them elegant organization.
Beat blogging has great merit for not only reporters employed by legal publishers such as Incisive Media's ALM, but also beat news-reporters at newspapers and television stations. Who better to both provide information but to direct what is likely to be followed by the publisher's audience?
Greta Van Susteren at FOX News' On The Record is already doing this. Greta, a lawyer, regularly updates her blog, GretaWire, in which she solicits feedback and ideas on crime stories from viewers. Not unusual to see 3 to 5 posts a day with tons of comments.
As Jeff says, we're just tapping into a community that already exists. Our job then as publishers is to give the community elegant organization.
