Splat | WiseTome.com

In my last post, I talked about what it takes to blog, and the different types of blogs. That led me into doing a bit of mining the web and I went through a couple of articles, that made me to look at Blog as a online magazine.

I will try to go over few things that would demand a discussion when the two - blogs and magazines - are put in one article :

• Blogs and traditional publishing
• Magazines venturing into online space
• Blog as online magazine

Blogs and traditional publishing

After reading Stephen Baker’s and others view over at Blogspotter, one can see the two sides of the argument - is blogging journalism or not. Stephen goes over the rigor of process followed to get the articles in a traditional media, and about the validity of articles published. Publishing companies have the resources to work on fact-checking, proof reading and getting legal help on sensitive issues. Blogs are arguably made on the spur of the moment. But the other side of the argument is that all communication mediums have both excellence and substandard practices. Magazines and newspapers too have an abundant line of tabloids - blogs, due to the low entry effort have some more. That should not be the argument to state that bloggers do not maintain standards. Bloggers do indulge in proof reading, and fact checking - though they may not have resources to get legal help but they do go by their instincts.

Magazines venturing into online space

In a way, online publishing had been sought after by the publishing companies that earlier were only limited to traditional medium. We have all seen this happen several years back. Initially, they were just online version of their paper printed cousins, but over years, there has been a shift towards a more scan friendly, less verbose versions that make it easy to read on screen. There are even some ventures where the magazine has only an online version and there are some more that have working subscription models for their revenue. The shift of information disbursement has been from both sides - the traditional publishing companies as well as contemporary online ventures.

Blogs as online magazine

There are few blogs out there, that may be called magazines in a traditional sense. The revenue model is driven by publishers. The advertisers pay the blogs to put their advertisement. The blogs give these ads along with their valuable content to the readers. The readers - hopefully - buy products or services offered by the advertisers; thus completing the cycle.

Some blogs really have the potential to become magazine. It would require some rigor in terms of proof reading and fact checking in terms of effort put by the blogger. If smart partnerships are built up, and blogs are presented as an online publication, and tie it up with a advertisement or subscription revenue model (or a combination of those), then we have an online magazine.

That may not be what a blogger might wish out of his or her blog, but there is nothing stopping them from viewing their blogs in this perspective.

What are your views?

Links:

• Editorial Process: the magazine vs the blog by Stephen Baker at Blogspotter
• Email Newsletters, Magazines and Blogs by Meryl K. Evans at Meryl.net
• Evolution of the online species - print periodicals versus online periodicals by J. C. Herz at Find Articles