Seattle PI Calls for Volunteer Hyperlocal Bloggers, Gets Angry Reaction
by Matt on Jul 5, 2009 in Industry
This has been interesting to watch: About 10 days ago, SeattlePI.com (the former print newspaper that shut down in March) put out a call looking for neighborhood news bloggers and offering a deal: You blog for free, we’ll train you for free.
Okay, not the best deal imaginable — we all like to get paid for our time and work — but it could be a great deal for someone who’s thinking about starting a neighborhood blog, but not sure they want to do all the startup work on their own. And it’s definitely a good deal for someone who’s not an experienced blogger, interviewer, photographer, reporter, etc. (I, for one, would love free photography training from a pro.)
But the reaction in the comments has been about 4-1 on the negative side. Here’s a sample:
“Volunteers, huh? Why not ask us to pay for the privilege?”
“Forget the goofy incentive plan and provide easy-to-use links to the neighborhood bloggers. If you can’t bring yourself to pay them, put ads on their sidebars. It takes time and costs money to do good blogging.”
“It does seem like, recognizing that there are already neighborhood blogs in most of the Seattle neighborhoods, trying to create a new, parallel system that allows the P-I to monetize the content while not paying the authors is…not what I would want.”
“You get free content, while you teach people what they could easily learn from free information sources on the web, in order to compete with already existing blogs? Stay classy, P-I.”
Some of the comments on the original post, including at least one I reproduced above (the third one down), are from some of the many existing neighborhood bloggers in Seattle. One commenter wonders if this is “sour grapes” from Seattle neighborhood bloggers, and as a completely ignorant outsider, I wondered the same thing. Then again, I live in an area that I think is starved for local blogging and I’d love to see more local blogs spring up.
What are your thoughts on the SeattlePI.com offer? If it was a well-known entity in your hometown doing something similar, would you welcome it or not? Comments are open.
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6 Responses to “Seattle PI Calls for Volunteer Hyperlocal Bloggers, Gets Angry Reaction”
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The PI should be offering to syndicate existing bloggers’ content, perhaps via an ad-revenue-share deal based on impressions. But without even the possibility for revenue, I would fail to see the incentive as well, assuming I had a high-ranking Local blog already running.
Agreed w/David. Give the bloggers a platform… More of a voice. Use links to aggregate the bloggers for the Seattle community, but allow the blogger to remain independent.
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I can see why the PI wants to generate content (for free) that would attract additional readers (and advertisers) but I don’t see why anyone who would be any good at hyperlocal blogging would want to associate with the PI and its very limited readership. I am a hyperlocal blogger in Seattle, and I think it’s much more likely for me to develop viewership on my own than by associating with the still-experimental remnants of this old media play.
[...] Paidcontent UK also says these will be “properly paid positions,” which is stark contrast to the Seattle P-I’s effort earlier this year to hire and train local bloggers on a volunteer basis — a decision that sparked a fair bit of protest. [...]