Who's the hottest blogger in Baltimore?
The answer might surprise you. He is Brian Stelter, a 21-year-old student at Towson University, whose nonstop reporting of the ups and downs, ins and outs of the television news industry has earned him the faithful attention of a national audience of television news people and broadcast executives.
Earlier this year, when CBS publicists handed out a photo of Katie Couric, altered to slim her by 20 pounds or more, it was Stelter who broke the news.
Stelter feeds the bottomless appetite of his TVNewser blog around the clock seven days a week - passing along news tidbits fed to him by TV executives, publicists, journalists, agents and other bloggers. He offers links to newspaper and magazine articles on broadcasting, network news releases and anything else he thinks might tickle a news professional's fancy.
He started the blog in 2004, when, he says, he got tired of talking back to his television and decided to share his take on where the cable news industry was going. Since then, he's got a ground-up education on everything from the ethics of gossip to the economics of cable.
When it comes to blogging, Stelter says, we haven't seen anything yet. He predicts a coming sea of focused news and gossip blogs established to meet the needs and interests of groups ranging from the Towson University community to commuters on a particular highway.
Here are some of his observations on blogs and blogging from a recent interview posted as a podcast at www.baltimoresun. com/blography.
What is your blog about?
It's about television news, pretty broadly defined. The cable news networks like Fox, CNN and MSNBC. And then also the broadcast networks like NBC, ABC and CBS. I write about the anchors, the ratings, the drama behind the scenes and what they are putting on the air. What they are covering on TV.
How do you learn what readers of your blog want?
The best thing I ever did was to create a little box at the corner of the screen on my blog called the anonymous tip box. It was just in e-mail form, very simple, where you could e-mail comments to me. But it was totally anonymous and people could say whatever they wanted, and they did. ... I get about 100 anonymous tips a day in my e-mail and about half are worthless, but the other half are a really good check and balance for me.
Is that where you get a lot of your news?
That's where most of it comes from. One of the best things about the blog is that it writes itself, at least in my case. Because a lot of what I am doing is posting what's going on. If someone, screws up on CNN, or MSNBC announces a new anchor, or if Fox News has a great ratings day, someone will e-mail me and tell me that. And I'm able to really feed off these readers.
But are you are a traffic cop?
I am a filter and a moderator, and it is desperately needed sometimes. Does having a tip box featureture on your site help you learn what subjects your readers have the most interest in?
That's definitely true. I take Katie Couric as an example. My traffic doubled the day that she premiered on the CBS Evening News. ... I was looking at that traffic, and looking at my e-mail during the day, and for that reason posted more and more about her because I knew the appetite was there. ... By the end of the day, there were 25 posts because people really couldn't get enough.
How are news organizations - newspapers, TV, radio - how are they likely to change because of the very things you are talking about right now, let's say over the next five years?
My belief is that it's going to be about niches more and more. The other hat I wear as editor of the student newspaper at Towson University, it's a twice-weekly newspaper, it's called The Towerlight. It has a clear market: the college campus. That makes us in some ways a lot safer than other newspapers that have a much broader market. And the same issue for television and radio. I think hyper-local is where it's at in many respects. People can get some information about national, international news anywhere. So they are turning to sources that they trust, know and recognize for local news. I think blogs are the same way. Millions of blogs are out there, but millions of blogs aren't read. There is a group at the top that are the important and the prominent ones, and in that respect, like I said, they are going to be more like the mainstream media. So I think we will see this kind of shake-out, where traditional media like newspapers, television and radio, will have to become more local and more convenient to the consumer. And on the other hand, the blogs are going to be becoming more like the traditional media.
Can you, just for the sake of definition, and future reference, ... define new media?
I am in a class right now writing for new media, and I'm not sure if we even defined it. I would define it as blogs, and podcasting, and Internet news in general, you could even say satellite radio news, that's a tough question. I would say new media in general is interactive, and that's the biggest element I would look for when trying to define it. ... [Here is] a silly example from my blog. I had someone e-mail me complaining about CNBC, the business news network, because they were endlessly hyping Dow 12,000. They were putting flashy graphics up on the screen and screaming about it every hour. He sent an e-mail complaining about this thing, saying, "Why can't you guys move on, you're obsessed with this silly unimportant number." And CNBC responded, a spokesperson e-mailed me within the hour with an answer to that comment, explaining why they thought it was newsworthy and why they were hyping it up so much. Ten years ago that would have been unheard of. That person's voice wouldn't have been heard by CNBC, and they would have no reason to respond.
How does new media deal with journalistic standards like objectivity?
I think in my case, because my audience is mainly journalists, I have to be credible. I know that if I screw up big time once, then it's over, game over. I will have to struggle to climb back up if I make a huge mistake and it looks like it was intentional and it looks like I didn't check the facts. So I have a very good relationship with the networks and with the spokespeople at the networks. And I know I can call on them and they will treat me the same way they will treat a reporter from some newspaper because they know the audience is similar and because the reporters that will be calling them are reading my blog. So I think in my case I have to have objectivity and I have to be credible. Because I would lose my audience without it.
One of the things that I see is what I'll generally call aggregation. In other words, you're a blogger, I'm a blogger, several other people are bloggers, and one way that we can bring this information together ... somewhat like we do with reporters and newspapers and on television. Do you see that aggregation if you will, as something that will naturally flow from something that is happening right now in new media?
I think some of the best blogs and some of the most valuable blogs are the ones that are aggregators. I think that my blog is that, as a filter of everything else out there. I always wished that there was a filter of everything out there about Baltimore. There might be and I just don't know about it, or about Towson, or even about Towson University, or even about my college. Because there is so much information [these days] that we need those aggregators of content. I think that can be applied to almost anything. I think there can be a TVnewser about every conceivable industry, or brand or topic. And I think that's where the mainstream media is going to be challenged and also has an opportunity.
As a journalism student, do you at all sense that some of us older folks are afraid of the give-and-take that we never had to deal with before?
I don't want to use the word "afraid." (Laughter) I would rather say that the younger generation is more open to the give-and-take. To give an example here from Towson, I decided to start a column, a short little column by the editor, explaining why we do what we do; a lot of students wonder, "Why did you put that picture on the cover? It embarrasses this university." Things like that. Or "Why do you only give a page worth of news for national news?" I think the audience deserves answers to those kinds of questions. I think younger people, both in the journalism world and the audience for that journalism, expects it. Definitely I think we are more open for that give-and-take than older generations probably.
Finally, what has surprised you most about your blog?
I think it is the way the readers write it. And it didn't happen overnight. When I first started it, I had to go out and find everything to post, and I had to write every item without any quotes or without any information to back it up. But literally in a matter of weeks and months, the audience really started creating the blog themselves and I became the filter. I didn't realize it for a while, but it happened pretty quickly, where there was so much information coming in that I was just pumping it out looking at what belongs on the blog. And I built up those standards and that credibility just along the way. It was kind of like feeling around in the dark, trying to figure out how does this work. So it wasn't always pretty, and I screwed up a couple of times. I hosted things that I wouldn't have hosted if I was doing it again. But you learn by doing and the readers write it themselves and that was I think the most surprising thing, the interactivity. If I had comments on my blog, then it would be impossible to manage. But I do have that tip box and it keeps me centered all the time. I will keep doing whatever I have to do to keep those readers because I live and die by it and live and die by that feedback as well.
john.lindner@baltsun.com