The Herald and bloggers

Back on Jan. 6 I asked why the Herald was ignoring South Florida bloggers.

I know that many people at the Herald read my blog.

But just to make sure my question didn't go unread I sent a link to my post to the Herald's Rick Hirsch who is the Herald's Senior Editor for Multimedia.

The next day Rick sent me an e-mail asking if I'd like to meet him for coffee to discuss a few things they were working on.

Apparently I was reading some one's mind at the Herald when I made my Jan. 6 post.

When we met Rick informed me that they were moving ahead with adding a blog aggregator feature to the Herald's website that would look something like this page on the website of the Knoxville (Tenn.) News.

I asked Rick if it would be OK to post the news but he told me they were still working out the details.

A few weeks later I asked him for a progress report and he told me they were still working on contract specifics and set up.

Well, this morning we get word from the other Rick at SFDB the the Sun-Sentinel has rolled out a feature called the "Blog of the Day." And it looks like the Sun-Sentinel is putting together the "Ultimate South Florida Blogroll."

I've always liked some of the features of the Sun-Sentinel's website so I'm looking forward to seeing how this shapes up.

In the meantime I dropped Rick Hirsch at the Herald another note and asked him how the aggregator was coming along.

He responds:

"Thanks, Bill. Still moving forward on the blog exchange, by the way. really is going to happen."

To be fair, the people at the Herald have a lot on their plate.

Parent company McClatchy has ordered another round of company-wide cuts and many Herald staffers are just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So blogs and blogging probably aren't at the top of their list of concerns right now.
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UPDATE: In what some may call a natural extension of blogging, the NY Times is launching two websites Monday that will feature "local citizen journalism."

Bloggers or citzen journalists. Doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of difference to me!