Last month, I mentioned that I’d been in contact with a magazine reporter who was working on a story about weblogs and some of the potential pitfalls that can come about when recording your life online for the world to see. As I mentioned at the time, while I at first wasn’t terribly concerned about the tone of the article, as our conversation progressed, I started to worry that it was going to end up all gloom-and-doom.
It appears that Anil has also been contacted by a reporter working on a similar story (possibly the same reporter, or another reporter also working on the story for the same publication, though I can’t be absolutely sure about that), and he ended up having some of the same reservations that I did. In his response to the reporter who contacted him, he expressed a desire shared by myself and, I’m sure, many others in the weblogging world: rather than focusing solely on the things that go wrong, that the media also look at the things that go right, and just why we all keep our weblogs going even in the face of the potential downsides.
One thing I would suggest is considering a, well, more uplifting angle. There have been an awful lot of “blogs can cost you your job!” or “make money fast with blogs!” stories, and very few that cover the positive reasons people have weblogs.
For a lot of your audience, this is their first impression of what weblogs can be, and frankly, if they were all about dire consequences, there wouldn’t be millions of people publishing weblogs every day.
Most of the people in my social circle have met their spouses/significant others, gotten apartments, gotten jobs, made friends, or (in my case) all of the above because of their weblogs. All that plus they get to participate in a new medium instead of just passively consuming media.
From what I know of [name of publication], the audience is one that appreciates a good positive human story, and it’s also much more likely that you’ll get some good cooperation or participation from people in the weblog realm who can help strengthen your story.
I’ve just sent a link to Anil’s post to the reporter I’ve been talking with, in case we are dealing with separate people. With any luck, should this article eventually appear, there will be a bit more to it than mere horror stories.