Rita pushes blogs and podcasts to forefront

ABC News reports that the Hurricane Rita only heightened the public’s awareness of the value of blogs and podcasts.

As Hurricane Rita approached, editors at the Houston Chronicle decided to experiment: They hand-picked about a dozen Web diarists and asked them to post regular dispatches on the newspaper’s online blog all without any editorial intervention.

‘One of the benefits to blogs is that they tend to be more personal, they tend to provide more the emotional feel of an event,’ said Dwight Silverman, the Chronicle’s interactive journalism editor. ‘In traditional reporting you put on your poker face and do your writing. … It’s not supposed to be the writer’s emotions.’……..At The Wall Street Journal’s Web site, News Tracker summarized the latest developments in a blog format reverse chronological order. The site, re-activated after an initial 12-day Hurricane Katrina run, even links to resources at other news sites something common in blogging but still rare for traditional media.

Must be what is turning Internet users onto lawyer’s blogs, as opposed to their Web sites. Blogs, though very professional, are personal and get away from the stock marketing speak one reads on one law firm site after another.