I asked a few editors I've worked with for a number of years about ScooptWords. Is there value in the service for an editor? Would they use it?. Here's one email I sent, one response and my reply. I've edited the correspondence slightly and 'anonymized' it for no real reason other than I think I should,
Bloggers who sign up will put a button in their blog sidebar indicating blog content is for sale. If an editor sees something they like and would like to run it they click the button to purchase the content. Upon first purchase, we negotiate a rate with the publication per 1000 words. If possible we agree a 'blog content rate card' for the publication buying blog content. This means that after the first purchase all subsequent purchases are just one or two clicks, no further negotiation needed.
What I'd like to know from you is;
- Do you think there's blog content worth buying for your magazine? If you do, would you use a service like this?
- If it doesn't appeal, why not?
- Can you see other editors using it?
- Or is it just a crap idea?
From my point of view, I can see it working quite well for short snippet, local insight sections in mags and papers and in trade magazines - assuming that is, we get the kind of bloggers we hope to get signing up for the service.
Once we have a good number of sign ups we intend to build an aggregated, categorized, searchable site of blogs specifically for editors to use. We will also be promoting small blog syndicates affiliated to us consisting of blogs focusing on similar topics.
I'd appreciate any thoughts on this. I'm trying to gauge general editor reaction to a service like this. By all means forward this email to any editors/bloggers/journalists you think may be interested.
And here's the response, also edited and anonymized,
I like your blogging idea in principle, but foresee big problems:
- The quality is still way too variable. I'm all for citizen journalism, but 90% of the writing out there is truly woeful
- Bloggers, with a few exceptions, do not have the standards of accuracy, ethics or attribution we require; they need basic journalistic training
- Bloggers, by nature, are individualists and in the game to be able to write what they want and how. Fine. But sometimes, we need content in a different style - i.e. less personality, less "what I did today" diary writing, less "here's me sounding off and being clever" stuff...and more information. Straight, well-written articles, basically. Will bloggers be prepared to compromize? Perhaps. But if they are, how are they different, in that case, from any other freelancers or feature agencies?
Thing is, Graham, there are very few good writers among the press corps, period. And even fewer among the blogging public. Guys like you, who take a very professional, methodical approach, are a real exception and are blazing a very exciting trail. I admire your site and find it really inspiring, actually. This is clearly the direction that written media is going. But it's still very early days.
What I would do is go for quality not quantity. Present yourselves as a blogging elite - a small handful of big, award-winning blogging names that can be trusted. And tailor the content to some degree - you'll find it hard to sell straight reprints from your sites. Limit it to no more than a dozen top bloggers, covering different fields and territories, and leave it at that. Draw a huge black line between yourselves and the ordinary blogging masses and make sure editors are aware of it. Maybe even think of something to call it other than blogging - that word has too many associations with amateurism.
Be aware of your competition. There are groups of foreign correspondents getting together now - in Asia and elsewhere - for projects virtually like this, filing their pieces and video-logs to a central website, which editors can download from. The offering is very similar, only in the case of journalists there's a track record that editors find reassuring. How will you take on competitors like this?
I probably sound negative, re-reading the above, but actually I do like your idea a lot. I'm just pointing out pitfalls...
To which I responded,
Great points, much appreciated. Key to remember - we are acting as agents/sales mechanism ONLY at the very beginning. Aggregation and active promotion of quality blog content will come when we know who signs up/shows an interest in the service. We're all journalists, ex-journalists, editors working on this, so we HOPE we can gauge what's hot and what's not.
I didn't mention this, but we are launching in conjunction with a large conglomerate of well known, previously published bloggers. We offer them the route to market. It's syndicate groups like this that we aim to highlight. The one we're launching with has a list of quality global bloggers and is led by Tim Worstall the well known UK blogger behind the 2005: Blogged book. We also have a deal to highlight and aggregate quailty media related blogs that sign up with us through a well know journalism site. We're looking at the same for Finance, IT and other sectors.
It would be great if quailty bloggers - and by that I mean jobbing journalists who also blog along with your regular joe bloggers who are not journalists - could syndicate work on their own or through small syndicates like Tim's and the group of foreign corrs you mention. We hope the service we offer takes the painful bit out of the process (negotiation, billing, chasing up payments etc.) and lets the bloggers get on with blogging. If the group of foreign corrs you mention already have this sorted out then all well and good. If they don't, they can use our service. Have you got a contact or contacts, seriously, :)??? Or in your eyes would you rather deal direct with the syndicate rather than agents like ourselves?
I agree there is a big danger of 'watering down' the product by opening it up to all to join in. But the key thing for me here is you never know what blogger will stumble into a story at any given point and suddenly become a major source on a major story. If we limit the service we, and the bloggers, will miss out. That's the nice wee element of chaos input for us. Again, we don't know if there's really a market for this stuff NOW, but we believe there is and always will be a market for good, informed writing regardless of where it comes from. Content that, as one editor at told me, "would walk into many papers"
I do also believe we are 'ahead of the curve' as they say, but that blogging is the way that ALL journalism is going, but that there is no bridge that allows non-journalist bloggers into the mainstream media. We hope to be that bridge. Or one of them. A reliable one :)
Cheers. Again, much appreciated and thanks for the very kind words about my own little blog.
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