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Blog News Network Agency

Bueracrats of the past, meet the reporters of the future.
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A small agency with the primary purpose of simply and easily providing 'press credintials' to bloggers, so that they could more easily obtain journalist accesss to restricted events and areas.

Secondary purposes include providing a network of heavily news-oriented blogs and offering wriitng and investigative journalism advice to interested bloggers.

To get credentials, one must:

a) have a blog, that is b) focused on politics, world events, or events of local interest, rather than one's own life, and that c) has been online with significant content and regular updates for, say, three months, and also d) put the organization's banner on your blog.

In cases where someone is 'on the ground' at an event of large public interest, this can be contracted to a) and d), allowing any interested party to bring updates to the world.

Posts that use information obtained with these credentials are tagged, and links aggregated onto the agency's main website.

I thought of this because of a recent post on Alas A Blog, from someone who's now in Tonga and has been unable to enter the damaged section of the city to find out what's going on, for lack of press credentials.

gisho, Nov 27 2006

Technorati http://technorati.com/
[Alysonwonderland, Nov 29 2006]

Blogniscient http://blogniscient.com/
[Alysonwonderland, Nov 29 2006]

Bloglines http://www.bloglines.com/
[Alysonwonderland, Nov 29 2006]

[link]






       Half baked indeed. The other half of that idea is a Croatian web portal I saw recently (there are probably many others around the world, but I haven't seen them) which encourages bloggers to write articles on current topics, from film, music, politics, technology, book reviews, etc etc., anything other than their own lives exclusively. The article with the most reader votes (buns :) gets... well, let's face it, a compliment; a prize with the monetary value of "good boy"; a laurel wreath; something of no real expense to them; and in return, they have a few hundred people submiting articles each day.   

       Combined with your idea, you get a world-wide news agency. The authors of the best articles get fame, and exclusive press passes, which allow them to go where the "common folk" couldn't, and report from there, thereby ensuring successful articles, and thus, more fame (and a percentage of the profits from the ads to the left of the article ;)...   

       The impromptu journalist pool is endless, and such a portal should be a success. I think. A bun to your idea.
Veho, Nov 27 2006
  

       Without the credentials part, alot of the blog network you describe is baked... with sites like technorati, blogniscent, and bloglines, a whole searchable and subscribable (is that a word??) network available to anyone. I'm sure more than a few regular media reps use this as a resource to find those individuals who write well enough and are in the middle of a situation such as the one in Tonga. When there was a coup in Thailand, I noticed coverage by several news networks using both those in-country blogs and telephone interviews with those bloggers as sources.   

       Good idea to advance this further with an independent press agency with credentials, but as soon as something was organized and bloggers had to "apply" for credentials, you would possibly be changing the nature of blogging into another biased political entity to be controlled by those running it.   

       A bun idea anyway despite my cynicism.
Alysonwonderland, Nov 29 2006
  

       I thought you could get press status as a freelance journalist, which is effectively what you are suggesting. I believe it helps to join your contries press society or gorup though.
webfishrune, Nov 29 2006
  

       I know the blog/news idea is baked [Alysonwonderland], I know of one, and I believe there are many others. I was just contemplating the possibilities of such a demi-blog news portal adopting [gisho's] idea.
Veho, Nov 29 2006
  

       [webfishrune], probably so, but it's surely harder to get. I don't know much of the mechanics, but the process for accreditation for freelancers will surely be oriented more to people who sell their stories to the paper - this agency is to help out people who are essentially self-publishing news, not selling it.
gisho, Nov 29 2006
  
      
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