Survey Reveals Bloggers Open to PR Pitches

A recent survey of 610 Weblog owners conducted by the Blog Search Engine reveals that bloggers are wide open to receiving corporate PR pitches (see questions #6 and #7).

"An overwhelming amount of bloggers, 90.7%, have never been contacted by a company or organization with product or service information, asking the blogger to blog about them. This may be because the public relations industry has yet to direct a large amount of its efforts toward bloggers."

Even more interesting ...

"Although the majority of bloggers have yet to be contacted by a company or organization with blogging info related to a product or service, 73.9% off all bloggers are open to receiving and blogging about such information."

More data like this and before you know it Jason Kottke, Anil Dash and other influential bloggers will rise to the top of our "A lists."

OJR "Blogologist" Roundtable

OJR has a virtual roundtable of academic "blogologists" on how blogs are changing academia, politics and traditional journalism. The panel features Alex Halavais and Kaye Trammell, who I have mentioned previously on this site.

Om Malik on "The SlashDot Effect"

Om Malik comments on the tsunami of traffic that hit his Web site when an innocent post he wrote was "Slashdotted" (Wikipedia def.).

NPR Airs Show on Blogs and Journalism

NPR's "The Connection" ran a show on blogs today. The archived broadcast can be found here.

Warning: If you haven't already blogged on, you might just miss the revolution. Blogs are those online journals covering everything from knitting to the inner workings of Wall Street. They are also the place where both insiders and outsiders meet to chew the latest political story over, and over, and over again. They are addictive, just ask all those 3 am web warriors in their stocking feet tapping away in the glow of their computer screens.

Blogs offer a constant rush of political opinion: the gloating, the jeering, and those knockout punches. But not everyone thinks bringing punditry to the people is a good thing. New Yorker writer George Packer argues that by blurring the line between journalism and pure rant, blogs may not be the best thing for democracy...so who writes for you?

(Source: Rebecca MacKinnon)

Covert Celebrity Bloggers

The Edmonton Journal looks at the possibility that some celebrities are covertly blogging.

"Some are ordinary people pretending to be celebrities, some are celebrities pretending to be ordinary people. The fun is in deciphering who's who."