The Internet has created a medium where anyone can post opinions and information. Of course users vote with their mice and the best sites typically get larger audiences.
Now as the poor economy continues to struggle, and as magazines and newspapers continue to struggle, there are a growing number of influential journalists, who although not still working with a publication are communicating with their audience online.
The upshot is that as a PR practitioner the media landscape becomes more fractured and you have more sites to monitor and target. I am not solely talking about blogs here, though they are the most obvious agent of change.
Infoworld recently moved from the traditional tabloid format to a magazine. In the process they reduced the number of columnists and one of those who will not be contributing to the new magazine is Ed Foster who for many many years wrote the “Gripe Line” where readers could raise issues around problems with IT vendors, and not just technical problems but problems with licensing, contracts etc.
Now Ed has create Gripe2Ed a website which will continue the good work. It is a good example of the fragmenting that is going on and why it means PR people will have to be on their toes more now than at any time in the past.
“Because the gripes I�ve been covering here show no sign of stopping, I�m not going to stop addressing them, either. It’s my intention to keep publishing this column or one very much like it. To do so, I�m going to borrow a little from the open-source philosophy and publish an e-mail newsletter that is free to all who want to read it. And, if possible, I�d also like to keep it ad-free because gripes and ads don�t really mix. “
Murphy's Law 