Betsy Morgan, senior vice president of digital media with CBSNews.com (CBS-A), was in London talking about how the media company can utilize bloggers more in its strategy.
She talked about what she called, the 'micro journalist' and the role they have to play with traditional media companies. Of course here comments are pretty slanted toward big media being the decider in all of this, yet there are some insights that are helpful.
First, she understood the need for CBS to get in contact with these journalist bloggers in order to extend their reach into targeted, niche areas that are such a strength for bloggers.
She said: "They are bloggers that aren't necessarily trained journalists but are becoming experts in certain niche topics, who have robust presence on the web and an audience and a continued dialogue. They are the new world of micro journalism.
"Where those micro journalists sit is between the trained traditional journalist and the casual couch blogger, it's an area that is really interesting to us.
"We can harness that expertise in micro areas where CBS News might not have great deep expertise. Those micro journalists can be really useful to us.
"The challenge is identifying who those people are and how we pluck them out."
While all this is being spoken in a superior tone and is condenscending, it does show the strength of blogging and of online marketing and focus in general.
What's really being said here is that there is no way for traditional media companies to cover things really indepth. They need the bloggers to really cover things like they can be covered. Morgan's quotes are really attempts to cover up the fact how desperately they do need bloggers and citizen journalists.
In reality it is micro journalism and niche topics and marketing that are the ones with the future. Those covering the general, shallow topics like traditional media can only offer a broad brushstroke of what's happening in the world or an industry.
It's them that really need us, not that we need them so much. It's the typical comment that we are waiting like a dog at the side of the table waiting for the crumbs of our masters to fall so we can lick it off of the floor that is still typical of the arrogance of traditional media.
Still, seeing and recognizing the strengths that niche blogging and online marketing represent, is a good reminder of what it is most of us need to focus on to succeed in the current online climate.
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