Conclusions
Hero, villain, conflict, audience identification with characters, and emotional appeals are all elements of good storytelling. Journalism, even at its most elevated political discourse, is still storytelling. These blogflops all lacked one or more basic storytelling elements. Furthermore, in their reliance on dissecting other media over original storytelling, they diluted the potency of already weak stories. Instead of telling their own stories, blogs re-told the stories of others and did not suggest much to do about them.
This is not to say that bloggers and other new-media citizen journalists
don't do amazing things. Memogate, the resignation of CNN executive Eason
Jordan, the exposure of White House reporter Jeff Gannon (a.k.a. James
Guckertt), and Howard Dean's capture of the National Committee Chair all
attest to that. However, for the 62% of online Americans
who don't know what “blog” means,
I suggest: Don't believe the hype. I urge MSM not be charmed by the novelty
of the situation into over-reporting it, or to cut corners in their professional
standards out of fear of being scooped. To researchers, I say: Bloggers need
to be understood as part of the political communications system -- not overestimated.
As to bloggers: the power of your technology and distributed labor is dazzling;
your enthusiasm and effort is humbling, yet some basic lessons in storytelling
would go a long way toward capturing more of that large untapped readership,
and clearer routes to action might bring about more of your desired
social changes.