Despite the uninspiring headline "Transparency Begets Trust in the Ever-Expanding Blogosphere", this piece in the Online Journalism Review takes a good look at the relationship between webloggers and mainstream media:
"'People trust The New York Times and Washington Post and link to them,' [Technorati founder David] Sifry says, 'but there are a huge number of people who are going outside the bounds of traditional media to these new media forms to get their information and, more importantly, to participate in the discussions around news and topics.'
He says we shouldn't be too surprised by the results, which reflect a shift in user behavior that has been taking place for some time. The idea of the Web as a place where we randomly surf for news or conduct task-oriented hunt-and-peck Web searches has given way to a new metaphor: the Web as virtual corner bar, where community and conversations reign.
'The Web is not chiefly about a library or a news stand,' Sifry says. 'You have to start thinking about the Web as this humongous event stream. The Web is a set of ongoing conversations that weave together into this new kind of omnipresent social fabric.'"
OJR takes a look at Technorati's attention index, and points to four reasons that bloggers might be trusted over mainstream reporters - niche expertise, transparency in motives, transparency in process and forthrightness about mistakes.
Perhaps that's going a little too far - after all, the anonymity of blogging offers far more inscrutability when it comes to "transparency in motives" than most of the other big media mentioned on the list - but it's no surprise that some sources are more popular than others: it shows that building up trust with readers is a hugely important to online publications... still something many commercial brands don't seem to realise.
[PS: Guardian Unlimited comes in at #5]
