Global PR Blog Week 2.0

By Octavio Rojas, Weber Shandwick, Spain | Weblog
EDITORS’ CHOICE | Mainstream media and Citizen Journalism

• En Español

Citizen journalism in Spain organizes itself in an intermittent and decentralized way, without commitments nor apparent rules. There are not experiences like Ohmynews or Bayosphere.

The most similar case in Spain is Vilaweb, which offers local information of Catalonia and Balearics Islands, communities in which Catalan -one of the official languages of Spain- is the common language.

The fact of having its contents in Catalan not only define its public, but also restricts its scope and won’t allow it to turn into a national media (though it is not its aim).

On the other hand, it is worth saying that some bloggers that have been outlined in their “journalistic” activity have been hired by Spanish media to help them in their informative labour with a new and fresh touch that they have imposed on their own blogs:

1. Ignacio Escolar - Informativos Tele5
2. Antonio Delgado - Project development Web and Programming of the Vocento Group

Spanish MSM have answered with great readiness, though with unlike wisdom, to the opportunity that blogs and their ecology are offering, and especially they have begun to give shy steps to take advantage of the seam that undoubtedly citizen journalism means for them.

A year of changes

In the Global PR Blog Week 1.0 I wrote the article “Possibilities of the blogosphere for the PR industry in Spanish-speaking countriesâ€?. In the above mentioned text I aimed that only a small group of Spanish MSM was offering RSS and none of these was offering blogs of any type.

One year later, the situation has changed drastically and the main Spanish MSM not only offer RSS but have incorporated blogs in their informative offer, some of these with great success.

There are four forms in which the media have incorporated blogs:

1. Journalists’ blogs: Written by recognized journalists on diverse topics: politics, technology, cinema, etc. Bloggers have doubts about them as blogs, indicating that they are more traditional columns in a blog layout. These blogs are not characterized specially by the interaction of the authors, though they receive dozens and, sometimes, hundreds of commentaries, their authors are not used to answer and establish a real dialogue with readers. Some examples are:

• Victoria Prego – Politics
• Javier Pérez de Albéniz – Television

2. Thematic Blogs: They are blogs focused on a specific topic. Its contents can come from journalists’ own contents and from industry information provided by different sources (wire agencies, etc.) Some examples are:

• Formula 1
• Grupo Salvaje – Cinema
• La Tejedora - Technology

3. Special events blogs: They arise to make a special coverage to big events with a “blog touch”, that is to say, emphasizing the human side of the news and giving free rein to the notes of “colour” of the events. In these blogs not only journalists can post contents, but prominent figures related in some way to the event. Some examples are:

• Blog de campaña – Special Basque elections 2005
• Desde el vaticano - Succession of Pope John Paul II
• Diario de Campaña - Special Galician elections 2005

4. Readers’ Blogs: Probably these blogs are the natural examples of the role that citizen journalism could have in Spanish MSM. They are blogs that media outlets offer with their own CMS. Some examples are:

• Diario Qué!
• 20 Minutos

Regarding Readers’ blogs, the free newspaper Qué! not only has offered blogs to their readers but it dedicates a full page to include their information.

The contents are mainly photographs to denounce problems in the city, results of surveys on topics of current importance and some commentaries.

But probably the most relevant thing happens when the editors of the newspaper check some posts and, if they see some information that can be of special interest for the readers of the newspaper, they get in touch with the blogger and ask him to corroborate the information before publishing it in some specific section of the newspaper.

An example was the news that I published in the blog that I have in Qué! on the possibility of infection of the systems of navigation of different models of Lexus via the bluetooth that is used for the mobile telephone free hands connection.

An editor of the newspaper contacted me to verify the history, after Cinco Días, an economy diary, had published the story.

On the other hand, 20 Minutos, another free newspaper of great success because it gives a great importance to the letters of the readers, was the first media outlet that allowed commentaries in all its news on the purest blog style. Also, it gives the opportunity to its readers to contribute with their own contents on diverse topics, being the last of them “Vacations“.

20 Minutos launched several journalists’ blogs successfully and the last step on its strategy regarding the Spanish blogosphere has been the summons of a blog contest, with more than 2.000 at the moment. Besides a cash prize, one of the big inducements for getting such a high participation is the possibility of turning into an official blogger for the newspaper.

The journalists do not take part in the “conversation”

This situation does not mean that the Spanish blogosphere is dominated by MSM blogs.

The interaction between the authors and the readers is still anecdotal, and still it has not been possible to establish a real “conversation” between the Spanish bloggers and the journalists of the mass media.

The “buzz” generated by bloggers have imposed some topic in the agenda of the Spanish MSM (discussions in favour of open source systems, for example), whereas the different mass media - with or without blogs - have not managed to imposed topics in the discussions of the Spanish blogosphere.

Though the bloggers mention and connect the online versions of the most important Spanish media and, even, some of them even scan the versions in paper of some magazine, no article of the traditional mass media has managed to prevail and to monopolize a “conversation” in the posts of the Spanish blogosphere.

This situation is due to the scanty “real� participation of the journalists in the blogosphere conversations. Journalists propose topics, but it is very rare when they answer to the commentaries of their readers and much less they write commentaries in other blogs.

Journalists are defending the unidirectional model of information that is contrary with the spirit of openness of the blogosphere.

For Spanish bloggers, important blogs, international media or corporate web pages could be more important sources of information than Spanish MSM.

It is important to emphasize that an increasing number of Spanish bloggers indicates in their blogs that they have stopped “consuming” mass media, and prefer to be informed via blogs instead.

This trend is coherent with the last information of different reports that indicates the increase of time dedicated to Internet, whereas it diminishes the consumption of other mass media as the TV, magazines and radio.

The future

The Spanish MSM will incorporate -in an increasing and supported way- the informative offer that their readers are willing to provide to them.

The success of media like 20 Minutos, El Mundo and Qué!, have encouraged other MSM to try similar formulae to stop the loss of their audience and to incorporate a new type of public who now prefers not receiving only information, but taking part on it somehow with commentaries and even with its own content.

Surely, in the GPRBW 3.0 I will be able to write many innovations, because one year in the blogosphere is an eternity and everything could happen.

About the author

Octavio Isaac Rojas Orduña is Senior Account Executive at Weber Shandwick, in Madrid, Spain. An award-winning radio scriptwriter in Latin America and Germany, he joined Weber Shandwick in 1997. He has offered strategy consultation for both multinational companies, such as BBC, McDonald’s, Siemens, Unilever, Kodak, LEGO, and Spanish companies, and industry associations. He is a columnist and regular contributor for on line and print media in Spanish in Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, USA, and in Portuguese in Portugal and Brazil. Octavio won a Standard of Excellence Award in Web Award for the creation of the Spanish rabbit meat association “INTERCUN” web site. Octavio has a personal Web and a blog in which he offers articles and news about communication, media and PR on a daily basis. He just published his first book “Public Relations. The effectiveness of influence“, probably the most updated PR book with a global perspective.