March 27th, 2006, 10:19 am

Blog! Blog! Blog! - quoth the slavedriving newsroom

To pay, or not to pay? Tis the question newsrooms are asking themselves regarding their company bloggers.

To blog, or not to blog, might well be the feeling of newsroom reporters asked to take on a double identity: mild-mannered objective reporter by day; witty, caustic and opinionated blogger by night.

This Washington City Paper article focuses in on the pay policy of the Washington Post regarding its bloggers - in a piece that’s informative precisely because it’s a microcosm of the multitude of emotions regarding newspaper-sponsored blogging.

Be “platform agnostic,” urge bosses - while reporters maintain that this is extra work, different work, and hard work for them to do while performing their objective print-bound reporting.

What’s the result of this chasm of conflict? Quoth the City Paper: “A month into the experiment, it appears that washingtonpost.com is getting what it’s paying for” - which is polite for “the blog ain’t so hot, honey.”

What’s my take on the whole she-bang?

Crikey! Would you ask a sportswriter to cover cops and courts? Or a broadcast journalist to write a column? (Try reading Anderson Cooper’s if you want to see how badly that turns out).

I agree the newspapers should produce blogs, podcasts, videocasts, and whatever’s next. But we should begin the long, hard process of realizing that these are specialized skills. Some folks got ‘em, some folks don’t. Identify who’s got the goods in your newsroom, and shift the job responsibilities around accordingly.

If papers want to be “platform agnostic,” they ought to consider the full-range of products they want to produce, and the full-range of tasks that are required to produce them.

And then they should begin the process of creating non-traditional job descriptions, based on the skills of the individuals they have and the ones they ought to hire - not giving anyone too much work, or giving folks work that they aren’t suited for.

There’s them crazypills I keep taking.

Illustration lifted totally illegally from the Washington City Paper’s Robert Ullman. Robert, if I had money to pay you for this illustration, I surely would. I’ll take it down if it bothers you. I just heart it so much!