The American Mind

As time goes on old and new media will look more and more alike. Newspapers like the NY Times and the Washington Post have installed weblogs as well as publish stories before their print editions go to press to make their operations truly real-time. The Huffington Post, a group weblog, will establish its own news bureau:

Arianna Huffington, who started HuffingtonPost.com, said yesterday that the site had hired Melinda Henneberger, a print journalist most recently with Newsweek magazine, as its political editor. The site has about 2.3 million unique visitors a month, making it one of the more popular blog sites.

Ms. Huffington said Ms. Henneberger would hire a number of other journalists to begin producing original content, “with attitude.”

“Now is the time to generate our own original content,” Ms. Huffington said. “It was always our intention, once we had the money, to hire people to do reporting.”

Softbank Capital, a venture capital group, invested $5 million in the site earlier this year. Ms. Huffington said she planned to hire investigative reporters as well as a multimedia team to do video reports and wanted to make the site more interactive.

The site already offers a mix of opinion and breaking news from wire services and other sources, but Ms. Huffington said she wanted to produce reported pieces that were expressed with individual voices.

“That’s the combination you need online,” she said, adding that unlike bloggers, who generally file when they want to, her reporters will have deadlines and regular schedules and will travel for their articles. Also unlike bloggers, Ms. Huffington said, they will be paid.

Jeff Jarvis writes,

It’s the next step for HuffPo and the blogosphere, to add more original reporting as it becomes worthwhile to do so. And it’s the next step for more and more institutional journalists to venture into the future…. Note, too, that it will soon be more difficult to tell the difference between old and new, as blogs and reporting and reporters blog. It’s all news.

For a few years there’s been plenty of talk about how webloggers could get paid for their writing. We are moving toward a future where it won’t be about how writers get read. They’ll be on multiple platforms. Stories written will be easily transfered from the computer screen to a newspaper. Cleaver editors and producers will turn appropriate stories into podcasts, videos, or multimedia presentations. If gadgets like cheap, always-connected e-books take off watch out. Writers will be able to free lance their work to multiple firms, be hired by just one, or even start their own operation.

The internet and the blogosphere have reduced the costs of getting writers’ work out there. No longer is it hidden on an editor’s desk because he doesn’t have enough space to accept all the good submissions. The big challenge is getting noticed among the talent and the dreck.

“Huffington Post Will Add Original Reporting to Its Blog”