A First Blog of the First Draft of History - New York TimesAt the height of the riots early in November, the Swiss weekly, L'Hebdo, decided to send reporters to the town of Bondy, northeast of Paris, on rotations of 7 to 10 days.
Working from a tiny room borrowed from a local soccer club, the reporters have been doing a lot more than writing their typical weekly stories for the magazine, which is based in Lausanne and has a circulation of 44,000. They have posted short and long reports several times a day, as well as photos, on the BondyBlog (www.hebdo.ch/bondyblog.cfm).
Months later, the reporters are still there.
Here's another telling quote: "In the beginning, they saw it as a nuisance, additional space to fill, but within a few weeks it became the main reason to spend those days in the neighborhoods. In addition to a dozen magazine stories, the journalists have posted some 100,000 words on the blog so far."
There's already a book deal.
I think I can understand why they learned to love the blog -- I'm sure it was much easier and faster to keep up with the events by posting blog entries than it was to write and print traditional stories.
When you think about it, if news organizations start to pay people for maintaining dedicated news blogs of events like those in France, freelance journalists will have a new way to make fast cash. Instead of being paid once a week for a story, they could get paid daily (or even several times daily), for posting multiple articles on a blog in one day.