|
Media Bloggers Association
MBA's first "edited feed" can syndicate foreign policy-related posts from selected bloggers to news sites. |
Yesterday I caught up with
Robert Cox, president of the
Media Bloggers Association. My timing was fortuitous: as it turns out, just then MBA was debuting its long-awaited new site which features a new suite of services for members and media partners.
When MBA first launched a couple of years ago, it focused on media criticism blogs. Cox said that narrow definition fell away pretty quickly as MBA saw a need for an expanded mission, reflected in its new membership criteria.
MBA is working on a deal to provide liability insurance to its member bloggers. Also, MBA is piloting a service to syndicate content from select MBA bloggers to mainstream news and media partner sites.
This syndication will happen through edited feeds published by MBA. The first example -- a feed of foreign policy news and analysis from selected MBA bloggers -- is available online. Other feeds for additional topics will follow, Cox said.
These feeds are "edited" because Cox designates an editor for each topic area. That editor selects at least 24 high-quality MBA member blogs to include in the topic feed. According to Cox, the editor is accountable to the media partners and to MBA for what goes out on the feed. Editors can perform close-to-real-time monitoring of their feed, and they can remove individuals posts from feeds as warranted.
Said Cox: "Since the feed will chug away 24/7, for practical reasons the monitoring features would be used primarily to fix an error minutes or hours after the fact. ...The best 'protection' for the media partner is that the editor can very easily add/remove blogs from the feed. A blogger who causes any kind of problem can be removed immediately and all their recent posts removed (and likely the blogger would be expelled from the MBA)."
Right now MBA is negotiating with its first potential media partner for its edited feeds. Cox says that while MBA will offer this service at no charge to media partners during the pilot phase, he hopes this service can eventually become a revenue stream for MBA and member bloggers.
Cox got the idea for the edited feed service when he attended a Poynter online ethics conference in August. "I spoke with a lot of people from mainstream news sites there. They said they wanted to include good blog content, but they needed quality, accountability, and transparency," he said. "They all remember the wikitorial fiasco. We're trying to provide a comfort level so they can work well with bloggers."
