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a user’s command.
The AP has created such a system
and is using it to power a comprehensive
news service, called the Mobile
News Network, for the Apple iPhone
and other smartphones. In the future,
we hope the AP “metadata” tags
will help surface more relevant and
timely news content through search
engines.
Still to come, to complete the
business model shift, are the revenue
streams that will drive the new distribution
of smart content. For the
Mobile News Network, national and
In 2006, as a producer with the toprated
TV news affiliate in Knoxville,
Tennessee, I frequently found myself
holding onto bits of information,
news tips, commentary from the local
blogosphere, and peculiarly fascinating
local stories and photos—items
that didn’t fit neatly into our on-air
or online news coverage. To many in
the newsroom, this was the throwaway
chaff of the newsgathering process.
But I’d been keeping a personal blog
for several years and was active in
East Tennessee’s surprisingly rich and
diverse blogging community, so I knew
without a doubt where this kind of
material would fit best: in a blog.
However, at that time, the idea of
a blog coming directly from someone
working in the newsroom was an unpopular
one around our office water
cooler. Blogs, I was advised, were
flighty, rabble-rousing fluff, not to be
mixed up in any way with the serious
journalism we were practicing within
the inner sanctum. A newsroom blog
70 Nieman Reports | Winter 2008
local advertising is being pursued to
support display of headlines, stories,
images and video clips on the phones.
Constituent newspaper members of the
AP are joining the network to build
the scope and scale that new digital
businesses will require to succeed.
As Google’s advertising model has
proven so definitively, a business built
on clicks requires a network of massive
numbers, not just a single Web site.
While the old packaged media models
may have enjoyed bigger returns on
smaller bases, they dealt in scarcity,
not ubiquity.
would simply confuse
viewers/readers
and water-down our
brand. Discouraged, I
dropped the idea.
Then, however,
in early 2007, I
ran across a blogger
working from
within a television
newsroom in another
area of the state, doing
exactly what I
had envisioned, and
drawing a large and
highly participatory
readership. Her name
was Brittney Gilbert, and she was the
brain, as well as the face, behind the
cutting-edge blog “Nashville Is Talking,”
(NIT) hosted by WKRN-TV. 1
Gilbert was the first blogger ever
hired by a local news station specifically
for the purpose of blogging, and she
plied her trade right out in the middle
of the newsroom. Working as a sort
When information is available
any time, any place, as it will be for
generations of news consumers to
come, models must be constructed
to connect huge numbers of people
with personalized bits of information.
Those models will be driven by the
aggregation of content, advertising and
audience on a very large scale—perhaps
not all in one place, but virtually all
connected. �
Jim Kennedy is the vice president and
director of strategic planning for The
Associated Press.
Blogging From Inside a TV Station’s Newsroom
‘Comments on the blog began generating tips that turned into leads for on-air
reporting, and the blog became a tool for promoting and teasing stories we
planned to air or publish later that day.’
BY KATIE ALLISON GRANJU
1 http://nashvilleistalking.com/
of human aggregator, she injected her
singular voice and sensibilities into
multiple posts throughout each day,
most of which pointed her readers to
the smartest content from the many
dozens of Tennessee-based blogs from
which she drew her material. Gilbert
acted as sort of a salon hostess, guiding
and shaping but never overwhelming