Some journalists come off pretty snooty about believing bloggers should not be considered in the same breath as journalists. The high and mighty attitude usually stems from journalists not wanting to be belittled into the same mold. Bloggers don’t have editors or credibility a great deal of the time, so their resources are strapped. Some blogs are just opinionated claptraps of nonsense or what someone ate for lunch, but some can actually do real journalism.
It seems that as much as journalists rubbed off on bloggers, bloggers are rubbing off on journalists. The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) just sent out an email alert today to tackle information gathering within the entire journalism community.
An unidentified senator placed a “secret hold” on a bill similar to the Open Government Act that was passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. I am not so sure what exactly a “secret hold” is or how right it is that politicians should be able to keep secrets about our political process, but SPJ alerted everyone to use the resources of the entire community to call up every senator’s office and check to see who was the one to place this secret hold.
One of SPJ’s main crusades is the pursuit of expanding the freedom of information within the United States. I wouldn’t be a member if I didn’t already believe the organization was doing great things for journalism AND blogging. I also have to point out how interesting it is for them to take the citizen journalism approach. Embracing citizen journalism is the next step for the fourth estate in my opinion. If these types of efforts could be incorporated into some kind of social network of journalists online, the freedom and fast flow of information could be greatly improved.
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With BioWare’s roleplaying masterpiece “Mass Effect” coming to the Xbox 360 sometime in the future, advertising people are watching and thinking.
The Gaming Insider over at MediaPost points out the possibilities of using “choose-your-own-adventure” style gameplay to monitor what’s hot with gamers today. The example Josh Lovison uses is a racing game where players could assign points to their vehicle and advertisers could see where point values were distributed to see what consumers want in their cars.
The problem with that is that no one is going to value safety in a racing game or evaluate their racing car in the same way they would when they go to the dealership. A man that places all his points in speed and acceleration may be buying a minivan to tote around his three kids when he gets to the actual car dealership.
This idea seems like a bad direction for advertising since it will be unpredictable. I think a more fruitful direction for advertisers to look is in sponsored games and in-game advertising. The Burger King games have been a huge sleeper success being as cheap as they are. Advertisers would be smart to take a game like Grand Theft Auto 4 and sponsor the in-game advertising. Making the game cheaper for gamers would make it a guaranteed top title as well as give them hours or exposure since gamers would see logos over and over again as they steal cars and beat up gangsters.
Using the gamer platform for research would only work for a small few game concepts and not give much valuable insight to what people actually buy. Gaming is a place for escapists and not a huge playground for realists unless we are talking casual games.
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Nielsen’s research makes us all look silly.
In an article in Advertising Age, Nielsen research has found that campaigns get more buzz when they have an advertising campaign to go along with that word-of-mouth publicity. It certainly makes it easier to get people talking when they see an ad, but until now, not much had been said for advertising alongside a grassroots or word-of-mouth campaign.
This insight is a good one to have out now since B2B executives say word-of-mouth gets them to buy and pass on the word to their fellow businessmen.
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