Traditional media begins to embrace

Traditional media begins to embrace bloggers

Alongside transparency in real estate, I've been fascinated with the new transparency in journalism and the sea change taking place in how news is being reported. I've addressed how the traditional media is losing credibility because bloggers and other citizen journalists often have deeper insight into their subjects of expertise (albeit sometimes with less journalistic acumen) than the "beat reporters". Next, I discussed how the rise of pundits like Ariana Huffington and Michelle Malkin have received public credibility (at least in their own circles), and paved the way for the same credibility to be bestowed on bloggers like those listed in the Forbes' top 25 Web celebs.

Bloggers will inevitably manifest a larger presence in traditional media... maybe this is my bias but the uncomely term "blogging" handicaps its legitimacy as a new media force, as if it were tainted by its associations with personal diaries and MySpace.

Here are two examples this week of our own real estate Web celebs getting their message onto the traditional media platform of the Chicago Tribune.

• StPaul RE's Teresa expresses how her traffic bubbled with the publishing of her article Do Real Estate Blogs Really Build Business? first by Mary Umberger at the Chicago Tribune then on Realty Times.
• Later in the week, Ms. Umberger interviews FoREM's Joel Burslem about a coffee bar branded by a real estate brokerage. (Mary Umberger gets it!)

Here's the point: As late as 2001, traditional media - and it applies to all media: news publishing, television, music, films - thought they were the sole source of and gatekeepers to "content" (remember all those "digital rights management" companies back then?). The collective Web2.0 internet forces unleashed after 2001 - blogs, Napster, MySpace, YouTube - have spawned new sources of content that compete with and upend the business models of traditional media. Traditional media are now adapting to the sea change - they've decided to "open it up" to news sources that aren't on their payroll. That's why you can expect bloggers like Joel and Teresa to become the new real estate information sources.

Inman News, which I consider the real estate "fourth estate", is on the same path... opening up Inman Blog to guest bloggers (and we appreciate it Jessica and Brad!)

I've also posted a companion piece at Transparent Real Estate further describing how newspaper publishers fought against internet disintermediation and miscalculated, and why their myopic vision has implications for the (just as) myopic real estate industry.

--Pat Kitano, Transparent Real Estate

Labels: disintermediation, new media, real estate industry

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