Additional menu

Windsor Digital

Handmade digital strategy from the heartland.

Imagine if a mainstream site acknowledged the existence of blogs

By

Tip of the hat to the folks at bthesite.com for including prominent links out to Baltimore based and Baltimorecentric blogs in the main well of the recently redesigned site.

(Disclosure: I helped create bthesite.com and argued loudly for the inclusion of local blogs)

The local blogs have been there since day one, but were somewhat hidden in the left rail. Now, they’re pushed out front and center.

It’s great to see a major-market news organization showing signs that it realizes it lives in a wider web.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I've always thought that the links to local blogs and other outside news sources was one of the best things about bthesite.com. Kudos to you and others who pushed for that feature. Now I wish its sister (or parent?) site baltimoresun.com would do the same. Some of the heaviest traffic sites on the Internet are ones that act as smart aggregators of information, and help the reader make sense of the huge amount of information on the web.

  2. Gus,

    Though b's use of links is still fairly rudimentary, it was the central-focus of the business plan at launch (since somewhat watered down with more internal content). The idea was that the audience b is trying to reach (think: 20something) doesn't need yet another traditional news source on the web, but they might find something akin to a local Fark or Drudge useful.

    Jeff Jarvis had a short but critical post this summer discussing the notion of a “link economy,” in which he argues that the value of an online site is more in the links it has to other relevant content than what it creates on its own:

    http://www.buzzmachine.com/2008/06/18/the-link-…

  3. except with the redesign, we can't see a list of all the blogs the 'b' is aggregating from. We've apparently been removed altogether, which isn't really that surprising.

    The 'b' also lost a little luster when they eliminated anonymous comments. With a staff of 21, someone could have taken time out to play bad cop.

  4. I agree with you on the listing of all blogs. I've already logged a complaint/request with the right people, but, given my absence from the masthead, that's all I can do about it.

    Moving the blogs to the center is a very good thing. Losing the full list is a step backward, in my opinion.

    One other thing that the center well is designed to do is allow for regularly-updated features on local bloggers. Whether that gets implemented is up to the staff at b.

  5. The idea of the Sun entity aggregating local content was definitely intriguing, but the theory was probably better than the reality. Let's face it, the local blogging community isn't as mature as some other metro areas.

    Don't get me wrong, there are some good ones out there, like baltimorecrime and but aggregating any blogspot.com blog based in baltimore could lead to an amateur-ish opinion of the site. Although written by locals, most of the content was not about local.

    By the way, just saw one of our posts pop up on the site. Not exactly one that showcases our reporting 🙂

  6. except with the redesign, we can't see a list of all the blogs the 'b' is aggregating from. We've apparently been removed altogether, which isn't really that surprising.

    The 'b' also lost a little luster when they eliminated anonymous comments. With a staff of 21, someone could have taken time out to play bad cop.

  7. I agree with you on the listing of all blogs. I've already logged a complaint/request with the right people, but, given my absence from the masthead, that's all I can do about it.

    Moving the blogs to the center is a very good thing. Losing the full list is a step backward, in my opinion.

    One other thing that the center well is designed to do is allow for regularly-updated features on local bloggers. Whether that gets implemented is up to the staff at b.

  8. The idea of the Sun entity aggregating local content was definitely intriguing, but the theory was probably better than the reality. Let's face it, the local blogging community isn't as mature as some other metro areas.

    Don't get me wrong, there are some good ones out there, like baltimorecrime and but aggregating any blogspot.com blog based in baltimore could lead to an amateur-ish opinion of the site. Although written by locals, most of the content was not about local.

    By the way, just saw one of our posts pop up on the site. Not exactly one that showcases our reporting 🙂

  9. Gus,

    Though b's use of links is still fairly rudimentary, it was the central-focus of the business plan at launch (since somewhat watered down with more internal content). The idea was that the audience b is trying to reach (think: 20something) doesn't need yet another traditional news source on the web, but they might find something akin to a local Fark or Drudge useful.

    Jeff Jarvis had a short but critical post this summer discussing the notion of a “link economy,” in which he argues that the value of an online site is more in the links it has to other relevant content than what it creates on its own:

    http://www.buzzmachine.com/2008/06/18/the-link-…

  10. except with the redesign, we can't see a list of all the blogs the 'b' is aggregating from. We've apparently been removed altogether, which isn't really that surprising.

    The 'b' also lost a little luster when they eliminated anonymous comments. With a staff of 21, someone could have taken time out to play bad cop.

  11. I agree with you on the listing of all blogs. I've already logged a complaint/request with the right people, but, given my absence from the masthead, that's all I can do about it.

    Moving the blogs to the center is a very good thing. Losing the full list is a step backward, in my opinion.

    One other thing that the center well is designed to do is allow for regularly-updated features on local bloggers. Whether that gets implemented is up to the staff at b.

  12. The idea of the Sun entity aggregating local content was definitely intriguing, but the theory was probably better than the reality. Let's face it, the local blogging community isn't as mature as some other metro areas.

    Don't get me wrong, there are some good ones out there, like baltimorecrime and but aggregating any blogspot.com blog based in baltimore could lead to an amateur-ish opinion of the site. Although written by locals, most of the content was not about local.

    By the way, just saw one of our posts pop up on the site. Not exactly one that showcases our reporting 🙂